$500 for inference engine plugin
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Hi folks.
Turning inferences on/off may be usefull for a 2D drawing program like AutoCAD but it is not a good idea for a 3D program like SketchUp (SU).
In an empty 3D space viewed as a 2D modeling window, how can SU know what you are refering to or where you are wanting to add such and such geometry ?
Don't fight the Inference engine, it is your friend. Watch all the video tutorials and you will see how to use it efficiently.
Remember that you can zoom, pan and orbit even in the middle of an operation (drawing, moving, rotating, etc). Zooming in will let you avoid too many inferences in a complex model. You may even switch viewing mode in the middle of an operation. You may change Scenes in the middle of an operation. Scenes can remember viewing modes and the settings for the visibility of layers, for example. Layers can control the visibility of objects. Hidden geometries will not give inferences. You see the logic ?
Use groups and component. You can hide the rest of the model while editing a component. This also minimize considerably the number of inferences.
Practice a lot and after a few months you will not want to part from the inference engine.
Just ideas.
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If one more person tells me that the inference engine is my "friend" I will scream! Yes, I know it is absolutely indispensible for using SU, without it SU would be completely unusable, and on and on. Yes, I know all that.
BUT, there are times when it is more of a hindrance than a help. I just want the ability, in those circumstances, to temporarily disable it, do what I need to do, and then enable it again. Just temporarily.
I can only speak for myself, but I know it would make my modeling experience a lot more enjoyable and productive, and a lot less frustrating.
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Well, actually, there is a good point there - there is a difference between inferencing and snapping. I was thinking it would be nice to disable snapping. The issue with inferencing is that there would need to be a way to lock movement to a plane or, yes, you will be lost in 3D space...
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I'd also like to disable snapping on occasions - some times it's just impractical and making it avoid snapping to the unwanted point can be very disruptive to the workflow.
However, there is no way one can hook into the inference engine from the SketchUp Ruby API. This is one of the things that would have been done if it could have been one. Google are the only ones that can address this.
Mind you, if you want to offer that bounty for another issue...
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Which tool do you want to disable inferencing for?
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One could create new tools with optional inferencing (
inputpoint.pick<->view.pickray).
I don't think that it's possible to modify/hack/overwrite the built-in tools because most of them are written in C. -
Ok, I surrender
I was just having a spectacularly bad day. Started a new project this morning, and, while I want it to be accurate, this one that has almost no reference photos. Should probably just abandon it but can't. I was experiencing an unusually large number infernal engine battles, like those instances when you are trying to draw a line, and it's just slightly off axis, and it won't let you unless you zoom in so close that you can no longer reference anything else in the model to figure out what you're doing
Tired of screaming at my computer. At one point I think I was screaming in tongues.
Well, if I can shovel my way to the barn thru fifteen inches of this wonderful Michigan sunshine gonna head to Holland for some much-needed coffee.
BTW, the bounty still stands
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@hellnbak said:
BTW, the bounty still stands[/size]
I'm gonna hold you to that when Google implements
Sketchup.inference_snapping = false 
$$$ -
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Hi folks.
With SU, it is not the inferences that are proposed that are the problem, its more the quantity of those that can be a nuisance sometimes when trying to get a snap from a specific item in a very detailed sector of a model.
Although there are tricks and workaround to minimize the number of snaps proposed by the inference engine, as I pointed out in my previous post, I also feel that sometimes I loose a bit in efficiency because of these.
A few years back, well ... many years ago, after using SU for a couple of years, I proposed, on the now defunct @last Software forum, to add a system of inference filter, like the one that I was using in PowerDraw on my Mac in 1990. PowerDraw later became PowerCadd. I don't use it anymore since SU fills my needs very well but the system was quite simple and efficient.
The idea was to tell the program what kind of inference you want. This was acomplished by pressing some keyborad keys. The list was:
c --> for circle centers and possibly line center (midpointin SU, if my memory serves me well).
x --> for intersections
l --> for line (on edge in SU)etc.
There were only a limited number of these. For example, there was one for a vertex (endpointin SU) or for which I don't remember the key.
Using such a key would limit the snaps to a specific type of item. Press x, for example, will yield snaps only from intersections. Press nothing and the engine works as usual, snapping to everything.
The only problem would be to let SU knows that you are not using a shortcut but are wanting to filter the inferences. Maybe some modifier key or a trigger key or even a serie of icons in the status bar would do the job. Pressing ESC would get you out of this filtering system, or pressing the icon again. Of course, the Status Bar should show the status of this filtering system. Maybe pressing a few icons would allow you to snaps to endpoints and midpoints, for example, or any combination you want. One icon could turn all filters off in one click.
Just ideas.
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Jean,
There are two different things discussed here. One is the snapping to geometry (which you describe in your post) and the other is inferencing (which hellnbak describes in another post about trying to draw a line slightly off-axis)
My thoughts:- turning on/off and filtering snapping would be great.
- having a way (like Microstation or solidworks, etc) to draw in a plane without x-y inferencing. No inferencing at all would mean no control in the z direction... basically lost in 3D space.
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+1 for a simple snap toggle like in acad
and i still don't get it why this is so hard to implement...
but for me the even more important and useful "feature" (lol interesting view... function deactivation as a feature) would be the ability to disable the axes snap (ortho) only! -
@numerobis said:
and i still don't get it why this is so hard to implement...
My impression is not that it's difficult for Google to implement - it's more that they want to keep the UI simple...
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What I would like to see would be a new pane to the Preferences dialog, with checkboxes for the various inferencing/snapping options. The first I would like to toggle would be the various "From outside active..." options. Of course, to be able to assign shortcuts to the options would be cool too.
Anssi
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I'm willing to pay $500 for my dream plugin -- how much are you guys willing to ante up for yours?
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@hellnbak said:
like those instances when you are trying to draw a line, and it's just slightly off axis, and it won't ..
Maybe you should try using Tools_on_surface's freehand tool..
http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?t=11212
and be sure to send Fredo the 500 spot
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yes, tools on surface is great, but doesn't address the snapping issue, nor trying to draw a line in space. I was thinking construction plane would be helpful, but again you run into inferencing for something just off-axis.
@hellnbak: One thing I was thinking was - couldn't you just change your axis temporarily to align, or is this a whole series of non-orthogonal lines?
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@thomthom said:
@andybot said:
I was thinking construction plane would be helpful
Work Plane v2.3 by TIG?
right! sorry, was just going off the top of my head... guess where that was...
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TGI3D has a Move tool that ignores inferencing. You can also lock the movement perpendicular to your view then orbit to another view and it will remain locked to the locked view.
It only works on verts though. Adding groups and components to that would be nice.
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