[Plugin] SectionCutFace

SabiaSingh · 29 Jul 2013, 13:16

Hello Mr Tig,
Iam being having trouble installing this and other plugins onto SKUP v8. I am not be connection onto internet via SKUP standalone computer. So I do drop files into plugin folder but it is not visible. Is perhaps not correct metthod or perhaps not correct version for SKUP no.8 or perhaps?
Many thank for advises
SS

TIG · 29 Jul 2013, 15:27

RBZ files are NOT the same as RB files.
You cannot simply put them into your Plugins folder and hope they'll load.

RBZ files are actually a ZIP archive with a different file suffix.
If you have the latest version of SketchUp v8 you should have a button in the Window > Preferences > Extensions dialog named something like 'Install from archive...' [i.e. an RBZ file]
If so then click on that... and then navigate to the RBZ file, choose it, and its contents are automatically extracted, installed and loaded using the main Plugins folder.

If you have a very early version of v8 or even earlier you won't get the button to install the RBZ...
In that case add .ZIP to the end of the file-name.
Then use your own ZIP tool to extract its contents into a temporary folder, and then move the extracted files and subfolders into the Plugins folder.
It is VERY important to keep all files within the same subfolders as they are inside the ZIP/RBZ archive... otherwise the tool won't find its supporting files inside its subfolder, as it expects...

Mukan · 3 Aug 2013, 19:02

Thanks a Lott

gigi500 · 4 Aug 2013, 19:10

Crashes consistently with Sketch Up Pro 2013. worked for Sketch UP 8. Anybody has the same problem?

Dave R · 5 Aug 2013, 01:16

It works fine in SU2013 for me. Perhaps there's a conflict cause by some other plugin. Do you have any of the known problem plugins like Vray installed?

gigi500 · 5 Aug 2013, 17:16

Actually I was using it on superellipsoid plug in...Have to investigate more with other shapes/versions. I was thinking myself that it's a conflict between plug-ins...

TIG · 6 Aug 2013, 08:43

If you have a made a mesh surface with very very tiny facets [either one that's over all very very small or that is overly detailed with thousands of facets]... then like many such operations in SketchUp the SectionCutFce tool will sometimes fail to make full intersections - e.g. when the points at the start/end of an intersected line are so near to one another that SketchUp says they are in fact coincident and does make the tiny edge needed to complete the face and therefore the face will fail to form... It's a tolerance issue when performing operations on very small geometry...
You get this with several tools - try the native FollowMe on a very tight radius path 'elbow' and a very segmented circle profile - some tiny triangular facets in the crook of the elbow will fail to be made...
However, SectionCutFace ought to just 'not make the face' [as its loop is not complete] - it would perhaps leave incomplete edge loops if you have it set to keep ALL edges in options... It should not splat/crash!

Could you post a simple example of what's failing so we can all test it ?

gigi500 · 6 Aug 2013, 19:19

Superellipsoid Plugin

Version: Superellipsoid 1.0
Release Date: July 1, 2010
Requirements: SketchUp 6.0+
I have it as a tool under "draw". The form comes in as a component. When I try to use a section cutface, it crashes the Sketch up. Tried to use sectioncutface with other solid forms and it's fine. It's really not that crucial:)))
Thank you for all your plugins.

TIG · 7 Aug 2013, 08:19

@gigi500 said:

Superellipsoid Plugin

Version: Superellipsoid 1.0
Release Date: July 1, 2010
Requirements: SketchUp 6.0+
I have it as a tool under "draw". The form comes in as a component. When I try to use a section cutface, it crashes the Sketch up. Tried to use sectioncutface with other solid forms and it's fine. It's really not that crucial:)))
Thank you for all your plugins.
I have just been testing SectionCutFace on a Superellipsoid - it worked fine - no splats at all, faces formed properly etc.
I used the default parameters...
What setting do you have that might cause issues ?
Is the 'cut' located outside or inside this component?? [makes no difference in my testing!]
As I said before very tiny facets could cause failure when forming the face - but a splat is unlikely

Have you tried making a simple box component and cutting that ?
If it crashes too you have something watching component-instances and instigating a crash

What other plugins do you have loading? - some rogues are known to cause splats [actually it is they that splats, when a legit tool does an action that they interfere with or react to wrongly, via one of their observer etc, or they interfere with native classes/methods...]
The Vray-beta, various half-baked BIM tools, current SketchyPhysics... and a few others are on this "danger-list"...

SabiaSingh · 8 Aug 2013, 11:53

Dear Mr Tig
re your kind reply to me on Mon Jul 29, 2013 5:27 pm. i would like to say sincerely thank you
for all your hard works and also for taking time to being reply to my question. I am doing as you say and it is sectioning perfectly. Many Many thanks and god bless. SS

sfto1 · 10 Aug 2013, 17:23

I just installed the latest version of Section Cut Face and the Glue option is not working. I selected yes in the glue option yet when I move the section plane the cut face disappears and it looks like an ordinary section plane view.

What am I doing wrong?

P.S.
SU 8pro
This is on my laptop with limited graphics.
Installed thru plugin store.

TIG · 10 Aug 2013, 17:54

@sfto1

Can you post a simple SKP where it isn't working with three section-planes, one glued, one glued-on-demand and the other not glued at all [there are three options].

We can then test it...

sfto1 · 10 Aug 2013, 21:35

TIG

This is the file I was practicing on. It is nothing special.

Thanks in advance for your interest in helping.

SFTO1

test skip.skp

TIG · 11 Aug 2013, 12:37

Are you sure you have version 3.8 installed ?
Its Extension's description will show it...

Assuming you have it... then it should work.

I ran you test SKP - it worked fine.
There was no section-plane to test, but I added a new one on the end where you have left an 'orphaned' sectioncutface-group [which I deleted].
Because you had deleted the original plane I can't check its attributes etc

I tested the SKP in v8 AND v2013 and it worked fine every time with both Glue and Glue-on-demand.

When you change a model - say by moving the section-plane or some geometry - then the Glued sectioncutface-group is auto-regenerated to suit the new circumstances, but only when you go on to the next tool, so using 'move' on the plane leaves the cut-group behind momentarily until your 'move' tool becomes something else - say 'select'. To recreate the group 'dynamically' for every tool you might use is too much of an overhead on the processing. Also remember that if your cut moves out of the geometry then no cut will be visible, as it's not made...

sfto1 · 11 Aug 2013, 14:04

I do have v3.8 and with your helpful explanation, I now realize that the cut face does not dynamically follow the section cut. It does in fact create the "glued" face when I switch to a different tool. I was not switching to a different tool.

Thanks for such a creative and useful tool.

z3325206 · 14 Oct 2013, 07:40

Hi Tig,

I have successfully load the section cut face .rzb plugin into my sku8 via changed the file extension from .rzb to .zip then unzip it, it works fine with my sku8 pro.

Come to the sketch up vray render stage, i have create a section plane as image 1 shows,
but every time I render it, it still render it as a whole model as image 2 shows. The section cut face disappeared.

Image1

Image2

how can I fix this problem?

Thank you for ur patience to answer my question.

Best regard,
Frank

cotty · 14 Oct 2013, 08:25

I think the renderer must support section cuts and it isn't a problem of the plugin. If so, you can save a copy of your model and use the "Slice Model at Section" option from Zorro2 (?) to delete the rest of the model for the render.

TIG · 14 Oct 2013, 08:55

Unless your renderer supports section-cuts [unlikely for many of them] you must, as Cotty says, work on a copy of your model and slice it at the section-plane using Zorro2, then any section-cut-face you have added will show at that cut. Now it will render as expected.

I believe that the newest version of SUPodium has a tool to do something very much like this for you, automatically saving the model as a copy and then running zorro-like and section-cut-face-like operations on the selected section-plane in the copy...

cotty · 14 Oct 2013, 10:19

Indigo Renderer supports section cuts directly (see here).

z3325206 · 15 Oct 2013, 00:33

@cotty said:

I think the renderer must support section cuts and it isn't a problem of the plugin. If so, you can save a copy of your model and use the "Slice Model at Section" option from Zorro2 (?) to delete the rest of the model for the render.

Thank you Cotty and Tig, It works fine with zorro2 in sku8.