Yet another SphereTool

driven

@ Rich,
I doubt it's worth paying for, it's just been my long term 'try and write a plugin' project because I thought a 'sphere between points' would be useful to me.

I have thought of incorporating TT UV quads if I can understand it, but the basic parameters I'm looking at are.

segments for path
segments for arc
tolerance/clearance i.e. a ball for a race, click race edges and it resizes with clearance. [handy for 3d printing]
face material?

Cylinder is easy if I keep it married to linetool.rb and I was accidentally making torus's yesterday , so maybe I could add those.
I was also thinking of adding a grid plane, after second click, pausing while a profile is added on plane, then continuing to lathe that profile instead.

for now, is the basic tool worth pursuing?
you need 3 or more side as it is a lathe tool
john

thomthom

@driven said:

is context menu access to an options-box considered good practice?

Make it an option - as the context menu can quickly fill out when you have a few plugins installed. If my plugin doesn't have an options window I usually add a simple toggle menu in one of the top menus. (Like in QuadFace Tools)

Let me know if you need clarification on how to implement quads compatible with QuadFace Tools.

driven

I think this will give me 'quad faces'

        # quadify edges...
        edges = gents.grep(Sketchup;;Edge)
        edges.each{ |edge|  edge.soft = true; edge.smooth = true; edge.casts_shadows = false; }

but does anyone know how to write the uv sphere-mapping to a newly formed sphere, I have all the faces, and edges in arrays from the making and also the centre, top and bottom
john

thomthom

No, you set [ruby]edge.casts_shadows = false[ruby] only on the diagonal edge dividing the two triangles making up the quad.

The other edges can be soft,smooth, hidden whatever - but do not set Cast Shadow to false for these.

driven

@thomthom said:

No, you set edge.casts_shadows = false only on the diagonal edge dividing the two triangles making up the quad.

The other edges can be soft,smooth, hidden whatever - but do not set Cast Shadow to false for these.

I couldn't see how hiding those others helped, which is why I asked, so thanks.

Can I expose the diagonals through code, then soften them?
would I need to collect faces.each face.edge_loop.verticies, add an edge between [1] and [-1] then hide those?
will that do it?

thomthom

Does your code currently generate true native quads? (planar)

driven

It is just a 'followme' sphere, so I assume yes, I can only show the diagonals by distorting after completion.
john

thomthom

Basically, a QuadFace compatible quad is either:

a native quad (face with four vertices)
two triangles made to act as one unit (separated by an edges that is soft+smooth and cast_shadow: false)

The reason that cast_shadow needs to be false for the diagonal is that in case the whole mesh is made soft+smooth there needs to be a way to detect what is the diagonal - and since cast_shadow is on by default and it appear most people don't use this property I made that the "magic marker" for the diagonal. This allowed for non-planar quads in SketchUp.

driven

@thomthom said:

Basically, a QuadFace compatible quad is either:

a native quad (face with four vertices)

So, it should be ok as is?

thomthom

It would work. But maybe Rich has hoped for a triangulated version so things can be manipulated without ending up with the edge that SU's AutoFold feature adds. But then again, QuadFace Tools had a function to add triangulation and there is my recent AutoSmooth plugin that both addresses this.

driven

@Rich

is this what you mean? edges as per 'quadface tools' definition
@TT... does this look right, I applied to all edges, but could just do the diagonals if that's better.

Rich O Brien

@John

Thomthom nailed it. I triangulate everything using the QuadFace tools.

It will make for a better exchange of data from on app to another.

driven

@Rich
would this do what you need
just an off axes sphere, with tri's

Rich O Brien

There's something funky with that because none of Thomthom Ring Select/Loop Select are finding the edges.

Even trying to convert it doesn't work.

Thom can help here more than me. I do understand the property needed but generation of that property through code is not my bag....

Unless I am missing the obvious

thomthom

@driven said:

@TT... does this look right, I applied to all edges, but could just do the diagonals if that's better.

No - just the diagonal should have cast_shadow set to false. Cast Shadows set to false is what marks an edge as separating the two triangles of a quad. The border edges should not have this set.

Also, I see that lots of your edges are 1 segment Curve entities. Why is that?

Rich O Brien

D'oh....

missed the edges that parallel

driven

@thomthom said:

No - just the diagonal should have cast_shadow set to false.

I'll exclude the original edges...

@unknownuser said:

Also, I see that lots of your edges are 1 segment Curve entities. Why is that?

It's a rotated arc so before I split them with the diagonals, you can scale using 'move-tool' on the cardinal points.

for uv is it better if I explode the edge first?
john

thomthom

For UVs I won't matter. It was just odd to see a one segment Curve. I noticed it because the Smooth and Sort property was gone in the Entity Info when I selected one of them.