Questions about realization of tools

[dacastror]

Hi, I'm trying to create a tool and I have arisen various questions in the process.
One question is how orienting a tool as shown in the image? since there are no faces on which to place the tool and degrees_of_freedom is in this case = 3

Another question I have is, How to detect the position of the tool outside the edit window?, (as happens with the orbit tool).

and the other question is, what command I can use for prevent my tool this cropped and disappears only when I leave the drawing window?

sorry for these "gif" can be a bit annoying but needed to illustrate my questions
(google translator)

[thomthom]

#1. You make special cases for that. When you don´t hit any geometry, Make a pickray and see if it intersects any of the XY, XZ, YZ planes.

#2. Don´t think you can with just pure Ruby. The native tools do that because they are done in C++ and capture the mouse. Unfortunatly there is no way to capture the mouse from the Ruby API.

[dacastror]

@thomthom said:

#1. You make special cases for that. When you don´t hit any geometry, Make a pickray and see if it intersects any of the XY, XZ, YZ planes.

Thomthom thank you very much!, That's what I'll do

@thomthom said:

#2. Don´t think you can with just pure Ruby. The native tools do that because they are done in C++ and capture the mouse. Unfortunatly there is no way to capture the mouse from the Ruby API.

It is a pity. I thought this might serve me

require 'Win32API'
 
getCursorPos = Win32API.new("user32", "GetCursorPos", ['P'], 'V')
lpPoint = " " * 8 # store two LONGs
getCursorPos.Call(lpPoint)
x, y = lpPoint.unpack("LL") # get the actual values
coor_mouse = " y = #{x},  x = #{y}"

but at the end I think can not because onMouseMove only respond within the drawing window.

any suggestions to prevent my tool display incomplete?

.

[thomthom]

What if you also hook into the event callback of when the cursor moves? Ignoring the Tool class' events?

[thomthom]

@dacastror said:

any suggestions to prevent my tool display incomplete?

?

[Jim]

@thomthom said:

@dacastror said:

any suggestions to prevent my tool display incomplete?

?

getExtents, maybe.

http://www.sketchup.com/intl/en/developer/docs/ourdoc/tool#getExtents

[dacastror]

@jim said:

getExtents, maybe.

thank you very much Jim!, this solved the problem, cost me a bit to understand how to implement it, but it goes

@thomthom said:

What if you also hook into the event callback of when the cursor moves? Ignoring the Tool class' events?

I tried but it works very slow when the cursor is outside the window of Sketchup,

[thomthom]

Got a bare bone example that shows this slowness?

[dacastror]

@thomthom said:

Got a bare bone example that shows this slowness?

Yes,

require 'Win32API'
 
Thread.new {
   x=1 
   while (x<1000) do
     getCursorPos = Win32API.new("user32", "GetCursorPos", ['P'], 'V')
     lpPoint = " " * 8 # store two LONGs
     getCursorPos.Call(lpPoint)
     x, y = lpPoint.unpack("LL") # get the actual values
     coor_mouse = "  #{x},  #{y}"
     Sketchup;;set_status_text coor_mouse, SB_VCB_VALUE
   end
}

Note : to see how slow returns coordinates, should be small the Sketchup window and put the cursor outside it, to stop the program move the cursor to the right until x >1000

(Google Translator)

[thomthom]

Threads doesn't work well in SketchUp Ruby. It's Ruby 1.8 and they are not true threads.

And I see you are polling GetCursorPos. I was thinking if there might be a callback function you could register instead.

[dacastror]

@thomthom said:

Threads doesn't work well in SketchUp Ruby. It's Ruby 1.8 and they are not true threads.

I did not know this , thanks

[dacastror]

I give up, I can not understand how to use view.pickray x, y for the intersection with the XY, XZ and YZ, and thereby be able to guide a tool, really I can not see how this is done

I could only understand that returns two points, one coincides with the point of view and the other (I think) is a vector pointing toward the cursor, but do not understand how to use this to get the intersection with the respective flat front or behind me

[Dan Rathbun]

View.pickray() can take ANY screen co-ordinate (it can be, or may not be the mouse position.)

It returns a ray

@unknownuser said:

A ray is a two element array containing a point and a vector [ Geom::Point3d, Geom::Vector3d ]. The point defines the start point of the ray and the vector defines the direction.

[Dan Rathbun]

Perhaps you wish to use model#raytest ?

It can return objects it hits.

View#pickray() does not, by itself, "hit" anything, but could be used for the 1st argument to Model#raytest().

[dacastror]

Guys, how to remove an observer of tools? I created an observer slightly modifying the example shown in the API

class MyToolsObserver < Sketchup;;ToolsObserver
   def onActiveToolChanged(tools, tool_name, tool_id)
      if tool_id == 21100
         puts "tool x"
      end
   end
end

Sketchup.active_model.tools.add_observer(MyToolsObserver.new)

I thought you could with something like this:

Sketchup.active_model.tools.remove_observer(MyToolsObserver)

What is the correct way to remove this observer?

[thomthom]

Keep a reference to the observer instance.

<span class="syntaxdefault"><br /></span><span class="syntaxkeyword">@</span><span class="syntaxdefault">tool_observer&nbsp;</span><span class="syntaxkeyword">=&nbsp;</span><span class="syntaxdefault">MyToolsObserver</span><span class="syntaxkeyword">.new<br /><br /></span><span class="syntaxdefault">Sketchup</span><span class="syntaxkeyword">.</span><span class="syntaxdefault">active_model</span><span class="syntaxkeyword">.</span><span class="syntaxdefault">tools</span><span class="syntaxkeyword">.</span><span class="syntaxdefault">add_observer</span><span class="syntaxkeyword">(@</span><span class="syntaxdefault">tool_observer</span><span class="syntaxkeyword">)<br /><br /></span><span class="syntaxdefault">Sketchup</span><span class="syntaxkeyword">.</span><span class="syntaxdefault">active_model</span><span class="syntaxkeyword">.</span><span class="syntaxdefault">tools</span><span class="syntaxkeyword">.</span><span class="syntaxdefault">remove_observer</span><span class="syntaxkeyword">(@</span><span class="syntaxdefault">tool_observer</span><span class="syntaxkeyword">)<br />&nbsp;</span><span class="syntaxdefault"></span>

[dacastror]

@dan rathbun said:

A ray is a two element array containing a point and a vector [ Geom::Point3d, Geom::Vector3d ]. The point defines the start point of the ray and the vector defines the direction.

Thanks Dan, I now understand better

@dan rathbun said:

Perhaps you wish to use model#raytest ?
It can return objects it hits.
View#pickray() does not, by itself, "hit" anything, but could be used for the 1st argument to Model#raytest().

I've never used it, looks interesting I'll give a look.
For now solve the problem using the parametric form of the line;

x = x0 + ta
y = y0 + tb
z = z0 + t*c

in my case a, b, c is associated with Geom :: Vector3D (parallel to the line)
and x0, y0, z0 is associated with Geom :: Point3D (content in the line)
the intersection with plane z=0 (XY plane), for example would be

ray = view.pickray x, y  #ray[0] -> Point3D, ray[1] -> Vector3d
if ray[1].z.abs>0
   z1 = 0 #Interesting plane
   t1 = (z1-ray[0].z)/ray[1].z
   x1 = ray[0].x + t1*ray[1].x
   y1 = ray[0].y + t1*ray[1].y 
end
#x1,y1,z1 are coordinates of the point of intersection with the plane

For the other two planes is very similar, although in my case I want to compare the different distances of the planes to the point of "eye" for this I did the following

ray = view.pickray x, y

if ray[1].z.abs>0
   z1 = 0 #Interesting plane
   t1 = (z1-ray[0].z)/ray[1].z
   d1 = (t1*ray[1].x)**2 + (t1*ray[1].y)**2 + (z1-ray[0].z)**2
end
#d1 is the square of the distance from the eye to the plane

[dacastror]

Thom thank you very much, really I could not understand how to do this

[thomthom]

The API doc examples are confusing. One learn the hard way.

[dacastror]

is true, on several occasions have been very frustrating these examples