[Plugin] Material_Maintenance v2.2 - 2013-01-13

Myhand · 11 Nov 2012, 21:27

After trying to clean up a fairly large model and finding it hard to figure out which materials to replace, I have updated the Material_Maintenance plugin to include the following features:

Shows material thumbnails to help identify materials
You can now choose if you want to change materials in:
- The current selection
- The whole model (does not include component definitions)
- Component definitions.
Is much faster
You can now identify where materials have been used in the model by:
- Construction Lines
- Highlighting the faces and component instances with selected materials
Selecting all entities with the selected materials applied.
Allows you to list components that contain the selected materials in their definitions

You can download it here:

http://www.keepingmyhandin.com/Downhome/Sketchup/material_maintenance_2

Bob James · 12 Nov 2012, 07:19

There is a bogus blue download button that sends you to a bad place. Really bad.
Clicking on the file name leads not to a zip download, but to a page that looks like an ftp site.

The arrow to the right is the "real" download button for the zip file.

Myhand · 12 Nov 2012, 08:45

@bob james said:

There is a bogus blue download button that sends you to a bad place. Really bad.
Clicking on the file name leads not to a zip download, but to a page that looks like an ftp site.

The arrow to the right is the "real" download button for the zip file.

I apologise Bob! I had a "Comments" widget from PNXE at the bottom of my pages to allow guests to leave comments. This widget is free but supported by adds and I see some of these adds now have "Down load" buttons, which is very annoying. I have now removed the widget at the bottom of the pages. Will need to figure out another way for users to leave comments.

And yes you are right the little arrow to the right of the zip file downloads the file. Clicking the file name link directly browses the content.

Please do let me know what you think! Given that people now cannot leave comments on my blog anymore I might open a thread just for feedback on this Plugin.

Cheers,

Myhand.

thomthom · 12 Nov 2012, 11:19

@myhand said:

http://www.keepingmyhandin.com/Downhome/Sketchup/MaterialMaintenance

Nice looking UI

I had a quick look at the source and got a couple of suggestions:

#typename is terrible slow! It's string comparison which is a slow operation in any language - but especially in Ruby. #is_a?() is much faster to use. More info: http://www.thomthom.net/thoughts/2011/12/never-ever-use-typename/
Mostly the plugin is wrapped in a class, but you have some variables and methods you add to the global namespace - that would be, they get added to Kernel - which inherited by Object which then means it'll be in every other object. It's recommended that you wrap everything in its separate namespace - since the SketchUp environment is a shared one. Common convention is that authors pick a root namespace (mine is TT, TIG uses TIG as a root module for everything. Then each plugin get their own module within the author module.
More info: http://www.thomthom.net/thoughts/2012/01/golden-rules-of-sketchup-plugin-development/
It appear you're using a recursive method to traverse collections of entities. This will eventually lead to a stack overflow and crash SketchUp if the entities collection is large enough. Unroll your recursive loop into a flat one to avoid that.

thomthom · 12 Nov 2012, 11:23

@myhand said:

After trying to clean up a fairly large model and finding it hard to figure out which materials to replace, I have updated the Material_Maintenance plugin to include the following features:

Ah! Didn't notice this before I posted.

Can you please provide just one download link and keep the original post updated? It makes it much easier to keep track of changes and knowing how to get the latest. Links and info within a thread is very easily missed.

thomthom · 12 Nov 2012, 11:40

More comments:

Avoid using global variables. You can easily conflict with other plugins if they pick the same variables. Instead make use of a instance or class variable within your namespace. (See #2)
Model.start_operation will be much faster if you set the optional disable_ui flag to true.
def clearMaterialWithConstructionLines()

<span class="syntaxdefault"><br /></span><span class="syntaxkeyword">@</span><span class="syntaxdefault">constructionList</span><span class="syntaxkeyword">.</span><span class="syntaxdefault">each do </span><span class="syntaxkeyword">|</span><span class="syntaxdefault">c</span><span class="syntaxkeyword">|<br /></span><span class="syntaxdefault">  activeEntities</span><span class="syntaxkeyword">.</span><span class="syntaxdefault">erase_entities</span><span class="syntaxkeyword">(</span><span class="syntaxdefault">c</span><span class="syntaxkeyword">);<br /></span><span class="syntaxdefault">end<br /></span>

Erase operations, or any entity operation, is quite slow. Try to use a minimum of them.
This one looks can be written as:

<span class="syntaxdefault"><br />activeEntities</span><span class="syntaxkeyword">.</span><span class="syntaxdefault">erase_entities</span><span class="syntaxkeyword">(@</span><span class="syntaxdefault">constructionList</span><span class="syntaxkeyword">);<br />&nbsp;</span><span class="syntaxdefault"></span>

Faster than doing an erase operation for each entity.

Beware of Material.display_name - it should only be used to display the name of the material to the UI, but not as an ID to reference a material. You can get teh wrong material. More info: http://www.thomthom.net/thoughts/2012/03/the-secrets-of-sketchups-materials/

<span class="syntaxdefault"><br />begin<br />  d</span><span class="syntaxkeyword">.</span><span class="syntaxdefault">refresh_thumbnail</span><span class="syntaxkeyword">;<br /></span><span class="syntaxdefault">rescue</span><span class="syntaxkeyword">;<br /></span><span class="syntaxdefault">end<br /></span>

An alternative, that avoids rescuing and looks cleaner would be:
d.refresh_thumbnail if d.respond_to?( :refresh_thumbnail )

(Btw, what's up with the semi-colons?)

thomthom · 12 Nov 2012, 11:42

That "List Components Containing Selected Materials" function looks really nice. I've yet to test this plugin as I'm in a middle of a large render right now.

Myhand · 12 Nov 2012, 23:54

Hi thomthom, thanks for the suggestions they are most welcome! As you might have gathered from looking at the code, I have never coded in Ruby before, so my use is not exactly idiomatic and the SU API is also new to me. I will implement your suggestions later in the week when I have some time.

@thomthom said:

(Btw, what's up with the semi-colons?)

Probably giving away my age but my background is in structured languages (Pascal, Modula 2, C++ and later Java) so I feel naked without the semi-colons... I find it harder to read the code without them and Ruby don't seem to mind.

Bob James · 13 Nov 2012, 03:01

Anxious for you two to iron out the details

A great interface for what will turn out to be an awesome plugin

thomthom · 13 Nov 2012, 08:25

@myhand said:

I have never coded in Ruby before, so my use is not exactly idiomatic and the SU API is also new to me.

But you have coded before - and that shows. There's quite a few new plugin authors here that have never coded before. That's why I try to have a scan through their first plugin and give some tips.

@myhand said:

Probably giving away my age but my background is in structured languages (Pascal, Modula 2, C++ and later Java) so I feel naked without the semi-colons... I find it harder to read the code without them and Ruby don't seem to mind.

I know what you mean, these days I work mainly with Ruby, but I used to do web-development - PHP, HTML, JS, CSS. Having spent so long in Ruby land I'm not lost in PHP and often get syntax errors because I forget the ;. Still need to use HTML, CSS and JS for webdialogs - and I've had to set myself into C in order to make C extensions - so I get to use my curly brackets. But there are times where I'm jumping between all them languages all at once - not always easy to adjust too the syntax...

Myhand · 18 Nov 2012, 20:45

I only got time to work on this again this weekend. Implemented all thomthom's tips, thanks again thomthom!

Only one I did not do is 5

@thomthom said:

Model.start_operation will be much faster if you set the optional disable_ui flag to true.

As the docs says the flag defaults to false anyway.

I also did the following extra bits:

Changed the main hash keys to symbols instead of strings - Again to avoid String comparisons. I ran a few tests and this actually makes a big difference for large strings, but in practice probably not so much here as the material names are usually not so long
Now shipping as a .rbz file for easier installing
Various other small performance and code complexity enhancements

Works OK on a model of mine that has around 500k entities.

Has anyone tried the previous version out yet?

thomthom · 18 Nov 2012, 21:31

@myhand said:

Only one I did not do is 5

@thomthom said:

Model.start_operation will be much faster if you set the optional disable_ui flag to true.

As the docs says the flag defaults to false anyway.

Yes? The argument defaults to false - so the UI isn't disabled and you won't get the performance gain. The argument need to be true in order to get a performance gain.

I wonder if I have misunderstood something here - or maybe you misunderstood me?

Myhand · 18 Nov 2012, 22:41

@thomthom said:

Yes? The argument defaults to false - so the UI isn't disabled and you won't get the performance gain. The argument need to be true in order to get a performance gain.

I wonder if I have misunderstood something here - or maybe you misunderstood me?

Thanks thomtthom. It is me being an idiot!

Yes, you are of course right. I got the logic inverted. Changes made and the updated version has been uploaded.

Myhand · 18 Nov 2012, 22:52

@thomthom said:

I've had to set myself into C in order to make C extensions - so I get to use my curly brackets.

Curly braces is what I miss most in Ruby . And of course a good IDE would have been nice... I am generally surprised with the lack of tools and libraries. e.g. no JSON support was a unfortunate surprise, and would have made the GUI much easier.

For this add-in I have written a simple protocol, which supports strings and arrays, but no complex objects or matrixes. Was going to show a tree of the model, but need to pass more complex data structures then, and JSON would have been perfect.

Does the C API give you better access to the model? I would love to be able to change the layer materials (transparency and colour) as this currently requires manual setup in my plugin.

thomthom · 19 Nov 2012, 12:37

@myhand said:

Curly braces is what I miss most in Ruby . And of course a good IDE would have been nice... I am generally surprised with the lack of tools and libraries. e.g. no JSON support was a unfortunate surprise, and would have made the GUI much easier.

For this add-in I have written a simple protocol, which supports strings and arrays, but no complex objects or matrixes. Was going to show a tree of the model, but need to pass more complex data structures then, and JSON would have been perfect.

I've got a bridge in development in my TT_Lib2 library: http://www.thomthom.net/software/sketchup/tt_lib2/doc/
A JSON sub-class of a Hash and a bridge where I can call JS functions just with their name from Ruby and it will convert many types of objects to JS object and the return value of the JS function will be converted back into Ruby objects. Got most of the basic data types working and some of SU's custom classes, such as Vector3d and Point3d.
https://bitbucket.org/thomthom/tt-library-2/

Parallel to that there's a WebDialog bridge developed in SketchUp's Developer Tools they released as Open Source at last Basecamp: https://github.com/SketchUp/sketchup-developer-tools

You could have a look at either repos if it could help you.

It would have been interesting to create a standalone bridge as an open source project, avoiding each developer to create their own version.

cmd · 23 Nov 2012, 21:05

When I launch the plugin, the materials list area is empty and when I select "Re-Load Materials", I receive the following error:

"Error: #<NoMethodError: undefined method `refreshMaterials' for #MH_KeepingMyHandIn::MaterialMaintenance:0x24571cb8>>"

You can see the attached screenshot

Thoughts?

CMD

TIG · 23 Nov 2012, 22:11

@cmd

Do you have a Selection made before this Tool is launched ?
It's not obvious from your screenshot.
You have its 'Materials' option set to 'Select from List' and its 'Scope' option set to list for 'Selection Only'...
This might then invoke an untrapped error ?
This obviously shouldn't happen... BUT it might explain things...
Try using it with a selection and/or some different option settings...

Myhand · 23 Nov 2012, 23:40

@cmd said:

When I launch the plugin, the materials list area is empty and when I select "Re-Load Materials", I receive the following error:

"Error: #<NoMethodError: undefined method `refreshMaterials' for #MH_KeepingMyHandIn::MaterialMaintenance:0x24571cb8>>"
CMD

Hi CMD,

I see you are running on a MAC which unfortunately I cannot test against. It appears not to be able to find the refreshMaterials method, which is definitely there and working on windows. Only thing I can think of is that either:

ruby behaves differently on a MAC (I am not a Ruby expert so might well not have the method syntax exactly right when you add modules etc, and maybe the MAC implementation is stricter that the windows)
or JavaScript behaves marshals the string containing the method name differently.

Few questions:

Do you have a windows machine you can test this on?
Is this happening with all models? I suspect it is as not finding the method should not be model dependent.
have you tried remove the plugin manually (all files) and reinstalling

Myhand · 23 Nov 2012, 23:42

@tig said:

@cmd

Do you have a Selection made before this Tool is launched ?
It's not obvious from your screenshot.
You have its 'Materials' option set to 'Select from List' and its 'Scope' option set to list for 'Selection Only'...
This might then invoke an untrapped error ?
This obviously shouldn't happen... BUT it might explain things...
Try using it with a selection and/or some different option settings...

Good thought TIG, but from what I can see this should not cause the problem. I have specifically tested for no selection, and the error is also not a null pointer error. I think it has to do with it running on a MAC...

thomthom · 24 Nov 2012, 10:46

hm... the error is a missing refreshMaterial method - how can that be OSX specific?