Retrive the tool selected before launching my plugin

njeremy2

Hello everyone ! (35°C in South of France)

Today I have a new enigma, I need to create a plugin which allow us to choose 3 points and find the center of the them.
This part is done but for this plugin I need more.

My plugin should work like that :

I select the tool (circle tool for example), a component or something else...
I launch the plugin
I select my 3 points
The center is draw and the circle tool is activate on the center (or component placed here).

example :

I search on Google Sketchup API and automatic sketchup PDF, I use Sketchup.send_action "selectCircleTool:" for activate the plugin circle tool.

I should retrive the tool before lauching the plugin, I try this :

tools = Sketchup.active_model.tools
Sketchup.send_action "#{tools}"

or

tools = Sketchup.active_model.select_tool nil
Sketchup.send_action "#{tools}"

I succeed how to pick a component to put in the center but I don't know how to retrieve a tool selected before
Someone can help me ?

Dan Rathbun

tools = Sketchup.active_model.tools
current_tool_id = tools.active_tool_id
# may be 0 if no active tool, so watch out!
# this might happen just after SketchUp starts

# you can get active tool name IF, and only IF
# active_tool_id != 0. If it is 0 and you call
# active_tool_name, you cause a BugSplat! crash.
current_tool_name =( tools.active_tool_id != 0 ? tools.active_tool_name ; "SelectionTool" )

Then set your custom tool as the current tool,
when done you can use the previous id or name
to call Sketchup.send_action but
you have to have a action string hash, because
some of then differ from the names returned by
the Tools.active_tool_name method.

See these posts for a lookup hash examples:
http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?t=18124

In this one (below) you'd have to cut & paste the hash into your OWN namespace:
(Do not distibute it so that it modifys the Sketchup::Tools class. It's an example for Google/Trimble only, of how the API class might be modified in the future.)
http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=315&t=36177

Also be aware that if the previous tool was a custom tool, then the Tools.active_tool_name method ALWAYS returns the string "RubyTool".
IF this happens you can call the previous tool on Windows by passing the tool id as an integer argument (not a string,) to Sketchup.send_action(), but not on Mac/OSX.

Dan Rathbun

You can also use a Tools observer subclass:
https://developers.google.com/sketchup/docs/ourdoc/toolsobserver

kwalkerman

I think what you want to do is re-select the tool the user originally had selected when they activated your plugin. To do it:

original_tool = Sketchup.active_model.tools.pop_tool

myTool.activate

# Now execute your code.  When you're finished, maybe in the tool's deactivate method;

Sketchup.active_model.tools.push original_tool

--
Karen

Dan Rathbun

Karen that will not work (presently) as the pop_tool() method is bugged. It returns boolean, not the tool object. (I think I entered an API bug for this.) It can also set up the situation where the tool stack is empty if there was only 1 tool in it, and the active_tool_id is 0 until some valid tool is selected.

In addition the push_tool() method only accepts a UI::Tool class object (or the API dictionary says that is what it expects. But since there really is no UI::Tool protoclass, does the method do any typechecking at all?)

Apparently not as:
Sketchup.active_model.tools.push_tool 21013
Does not select the Component Placement tool, but it returns true anyway.

njeremy2

I'm gonna test it right now

njeremy2

Hmmmmmmm
I a little bit hard to use ...

To begin easily, I made a plugin which display the name of selected tool
I will show you the progress

njeremy2

Hmmm, it's little bit weird :

When I retrive the ID of the tool with your solution, I obtain an ID number but when I launch a second time the plugin, I have a second ID number. WHY ???

But, I've try this:

@model = Sketchup.active_model
@tools = @model.tools
@name = @tools.active_tool_name
@name2 = "select#{@name};"

Sketchup.send_action "#{@name2}"

It works for most of tools except for LineTool (it's called "SketchTool" instead of "Linetool"), polygon, axis tool.

Maybe if I can retrive the ID with "@id = @tools.active_tool_id" and "Sketchup.send_action (@id)" it should be better but how do we do ?

Dan Rathbun

@njeremy2 said:

Maybe if I can retrive the ID with @id = @tools.active_tool_id and Sketchup.send_action (@id) it should be better but how do we do ?

1) Yes you CAN use id, but ONLY on PC/Windows.

It does NOT (currently) work for Mac/OSX.
2) NEVER put a space between the method name and the ( of it's argument list.

Dan Rathbun

@njeremy2 said:

It works for most of tools except for LineTool (it's called "SketchTool" instead of "Linetool"), polygon, axis tool.

We know. This is why I told you (in post http://forums.sketchucation.com/posting.php?mode=quote&f=180&p=405232#pr404805 ) that you need a send action lookup hash.

njeremy2

@dan rathbun said:

@njeremy2 said:

It works for most of tools except for LineTool (it's called "SketchTool" instead of "Linetool"), polygon, axis tool.

We know. This is why I told you (in post http://forums.sketchucation.com/posting.php?mode=quote&f=180&p=405232#pr404805 ) that you need a send action lookup hash.

ahhh ok !! lol sorry !

You write too much text and google translation doesn't translate very well !

njeremy2

Now, I'm using name to identify the tool

For this moment it works

I don't understand the ID method, maybe when I feel ill at ease with ruby, I can understand how it works

Thank you Dan and Karen !!