[Plugin] Component Comparison

thomthom · 26 Oct 2010, 21:44

The tolerance is more of a debug thing at the moment. During my testing I had some cases where SU's own tolerance of 1/1000" was too strict.

These leaves: are you sure they really are all geometrical identical? The plugin does not take into account scaling, for instance, a square of 20x30 and one of 20x40 will not be made into one component where one is scaled.

wyatt · 26 Oct 2010, 22:10

Then no, they are not identical. The length and width of each component varies. The ratio of l to w is the same (hence the square). I guess I thought the tolerance setting could be used to adjust how the similar components were replaced. I can use the component browser and replace components manually to simplify the model, but it would be great if there were a way to automate that process.

[Edit] Do your Selection Toys select by component area? That would definitely help if the tolerance method isn't possible.

Chris Fullmer · 26 Oct 2010, 22:39

I tihnk what you are looking for is a good idea Wyatt, but its definitely different than what the original scope of this plugin was. This one is supposed to find virtually identical components and make them all use the same definition.

But a replacer that just looked for fairly similar components could be interesting too. Maybe it fits within the scope of this plugin even. I can see where it does have some usefulness in the scenario you outlined.

wyatt · 26 Oct 2010, 23:26

I don't know if it fits Thom's original idea for this plugin or not; I'll leave that for him to decide. But what I would like to have is a tool that would, based on a selection set, calculate the range of area values, ask me how many intervals I'd like to set, and then replace all the components in a given range with the resized component. So if I had leaves that ranged from 30 to 80 square inches, I could set 5 intervals and it would resize the components based on that 10 square inch interval, so a component with an area of 42, would get "rounded down" to 40. There might be other ways to do the same thing; this is just what I was hoping I could get CC to do for me. Even if I could select components by those area intervals, it would be a huge help.

thomthom · 27 Oct 2010, 06:20

Making tree leaves into components appear to be a often requested feature, so maybe a plugin designed specifically for this. One that finds all rectangle faces in the selection and converts them into one component with scaled instances.
That could work. For Component Comparison it'd not be so easy as it's already doing some heavy work comparing complex objects, but if one limits the scope to simple primitive...

wyatt · 27 Oct 2010, 13:15

Thom, that sounds like it would work great, and cut several steps from my current workflow.

guaucorreo · 7 Jul 2011, 08:54

excuse me,
this plugin can´t compare similar objects with DIFERENT scale ¿is there a plugin that make that?
thanks

halroach · 29 Nov 2011, 07:35

Hi Thomthom,

This plugin is great!
Very helpful when importing lame models from Autocad and 3DSMax.

Just a little note.
As I was searching for this thread to see if any changes have been made, specifically wondering if detecting scaled objects will be possible (like the post above this one) - I was having a hard time finding this thread in the forums. Partly because the search engine here isn't great, but also because the name of the thread and the name of the plugin files and commands are different. In sketchup it's "replace similar objects" and here it's called Component Comparison...

thomthom · 29 Nov 2011, 08:05

I've had no time at all to work on this. There's much more that needs doing before even attempting to detect scaled components.

bhbarchitects · 16 Dec 2011, 10:23

Thanks thomthom really cool time saver.

How did you get on with rendering in 3ds max?

Matt

Piasek231 · 28 Aug 2014, 10:13

Why plugin does not work. The example in the link:

Thank you for the clarification.
Regards.

tt_su · 1 Sept 2014, 08:46

hm... hard to tell without the model. But this plugin is just an experiment, not a final product.
One thing I did notice in your video was that when you exploded one of the faces turned white. That seemed to indicate some geometry merging happening. If that is the case and the objects doesn't have the same number of faces and vertices it won't be able to find a match.

Piasek231 · 16 Sept 2014, 14:53

Thank for Your answer.
The *.skp file is downloaded from this post. Any way I using Sketchup in my work (design office), I have many components and nested components in my project. Will be nice to use plugin ( like Your plugin) to unfiy components to simplify my project . Do You know some alternatif plugin? With kind regards MP.

vtol · 14 Dec 2014, 05:48

@thomthom said:

I've had no time at all to work on this

That is back from 2011 - is the development of this plugin dead now by end of 2014?

I used the plugin, which picked up quite some instances but by far not all, one apparent are the wheels in this case, which are of the same geometry but just rotated

Before

After

cotty · 14 Dec 2014, 07:48

There are only 8 wheels, maybe you can replace them manually?

vtol · 14 Dec 2014, 09:12

I most certainly can, but that is beside the point, aside that the plugin missed other components as well - which is to be expected reading the status at the top.

The point was that rotated instances are not mentioned yet as shortfall and whether the plugin's development has ceased - in which case I am not seeing the point of being listed, in spite of the limited abilities.

cotty · 14 Dec 2014, 09:35

Didn't it work for the screws?

Which comment do you think will be a greater incentive for plugin authors?

Thank you for the great amount of time you put into this, even if it does not cover all cases yet.
"I am not seeing the point of being listed, in spite of the limited abilities."

Box · 14 Dec 2014, 10:04

Hmmm, yes, I'm not sure how solving 145 components for and missing a few means it is a failure and should be removed from any "lists".

vtol · 14 Dec 2014, 10:53

145 components is not half of the remainder (not just a few). Whilst this ratio is appreciated, and I never unvalued the amount of effort/time spent for this alpha version, it should be legitimate to ask whether there is further development (intended) or not. And if not I reckon it to be legitimate to mark any such plugin as such, or else how is the user to know?

thomthom · 16 Dec 2014, 14:12

The timestamp of last update gives a good idea of the activity for extensions. Now sure what a special mark would be useful for. I've not made any concious decision that I will never update it again - in fact, I really wish I would find time. But alas time is a rare commodity these days.

Removing it would probably upset more people, as there are a good number of people who swear to this extension.

One thing I'd like to point out to everyone is that all my free extensions is available on GitHub or Bitbucket - open for contribution if anyone wants to make a stab at improving. It's something I've been missing in the SketchUp extension community - collaboration.