Get parent name and type of entity

[krisjaniszakis]

Hi there,

I have question about, how to get parent name of current enitie.
It is no problem with ComponentInstance parents but doesnt work with Group parents.

Parent_name(Sketchup.active_model.entities.parent)

  def self.Parent_name(parent)
      if parent.kind_of? Sketchup;;Model
         pname=Sketchup.active_model.title+" <Model>"
      elsif parent.kind_of? Sketchup;;Group
         pname=parent.name+" <Group>"
      elsif parent.kind_of? Sketchup;;ComponentInstance
         pname=parent.name+" <Component>"
      elsif parent.kind_of? Sketchup;;ComponentDefinition
         pname=parent.name+" <Component>"
      end#if
  end  #Parent_name

My aim is to get Parent Name and Type of exact entity
P.S. This code snipet is something similar like TIG ComponentReporter++.rb

[thomthom]

Group and Image entities are special instances of ComponentDefinition. Model.definition doesn't just include the definitions for ComponentInstance, but also Image and Group. Make use of definition.image? and definition.group? to detect what the definition represent.

For a detailed breakdown of definitions and instances in SketchUp, have a look at this article: http://www.thomthom.net/thoughts/2012/02/definitions-and-instances-in-sketchup/

[thomthom]

Btw, ruby convension is that method names start with lower case letters. Upper case is allowed, but they will then look like constants and can cause confusion.

[TIG]

The 'parent' is going to be the ' Sketchup.active_model' or a ' ComponentDefinition' - these are the two entities 'containers'.
If it's the latter, then it could be any one of three 'types' of ' ComponentDefinition'.
Using if parent.image? is unlikely to be needed [unless you already have invented non API other ways of delving into an image and getting its face and four edges !]
if.parent.group? will tell you that it's a group, if you return its parent.name you get something like "Group#123" - BUT if you want the group's 'displayed' name [which might be ''] then you can get it using parent.instances[0].name - Note that this is usually going to be what you want... BUT be warned... if there are copies of the group that have never been edited [which would have auto-make-uniqued them] then other instances might have different names [just like you can individually 'name' component-instances] - so this method only returns the current name of the original instance of a group !
The final version is 'none-of-the-above' - aka an "ordinary" 'component-definition'.
Using parent.name will return the name of the definition.
Because a component can have several instances you cannot get the instance.name simply from knowing the parent - unless of course there is only parent.instances[0] in which case it's parent.instances[0].name [similar to the 'group' example].
If you have a tool that's picking objects - like a picked face inside a picked component-instance [for example] - it will return the definition and thereby its name, but your tool can have several pickhelpers which identify the instance too and so you can get the instance and from that instance.name and instance.definition etc etc...

[krisjaniszakis]

Thanks, it helped me a lot
Basically i used

if parent.group?

to understand if entities parent is group and

parent.instances[0].name

to get parents name.

As i understand as long as I will not be duplicating my group entities I will not get in troubles.

[krisjaniszakis]

Also about entities parents.

Aim is to get parent ID in case the parent Name will be similar to at least 2 entities with:

parent.id

The code is returns me exact ID and also warning in Ruby console:

warning; Object#id will be deprecated; use Object#object_id

Is this warning very important or it is optional ?

[Dan Rathbun]

Yes it will be removed in a future Ruby version.

use object_id or __id__ instead.

Add: The id integers will change from session to session!

[krisjaniszakis]

Thanks