A ruby for a text list of materials for OSX users wanted

frv · 20 Nov 2009, 11:49

I thought a sorted list with names was already in SU on PC's ?

Anyhow, Your plugins are great as I use them already, hope you can sort it out for us all
TX in advance

Francois

thomthom · 20 Nov 2009, 12:05

@frv said:

I thought a sorted list with names was already in SU on PC's ?

Anyhow, Your plugins are great as I use them already, hope you can sort it out for us all
TX in advance

Francois

Yes - but only in pure text. A little colour indication next to the name would help greatly to locate the right name in a long list.

frv · 20 Nov 2009, 12:09

Is thee any way to get into contact with the people who nowadays "maintain" Google Sketchup. I don't think much development is still going on but I assume there are still a few guys sort of keeping Sketchup going for OS's pdates . If I knew how to reach the Google Sketchup maintance guy or girl I would let her or him texture my models for a week under OSX.

thomthom · 20 Nov 2009, 12:29

@frv said:

Is thee any way to get into contact with the people who nowadays "maintain" Google Sketchup. I don't think much development is still going on but I assume there are still a few guys sort of keeping Sketchup going for OS's pdates .

You have noticed SU 7.0 nad 7.1, right? They did a great deal of work to make it work faster. It is in very much active development.

The Bugs and Feature section of this forum is often read by the developers and support team. You will see their replies in there to some of it.

frv · 20 Nov 2009, 15:10

I will post a link to the bug section as well to this thread.

I have looked at MXMreporter again and it does actually almost gets the job done. For exporting to Maxwell you really need this rb. With MXM reporter Maxwel v2 works rather well.

A great ruby as MXMreporter is it would need a little fashion makeover to work well with SU for most users. The window is too big and could be slimmed down in a more SU style.

bjanzen · 20 Nov 2009, 17:38

I posted at http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=23769&p=202493#p202493 because I don't normally read this forum much. Workaround uses "defaults write com.google.sketchuppro7 NSInitialToolTipDelay" and some number, but please read the whole post. I'll read some of this and see if I like any of the solutions listed.

b

bjanzen · 20 Nov 2009, 17:46

frv - we still work on SketchUp, but we (a) consider ourselves the illiterati, and can't read or write well, (b) have no interest in texturizing your models for you because we're sure we'd do it in some fashion that would not make you happy, and (c) are totally lacking in any sense of humor or any understanding of sarcasm, which leads people to think we're suffering from Alzheimer's (see http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gs7pisYOVSybMpOXqK3CaW7KoXgA).

b

jeff hammond · 20 Nov 2009, 17:48

haha

jeff hammond · 20 Nov 2009, 18:13

@unknownuser said:

...now, for some reason, sketchup is actually denying access to one of the standard options (Color Palettes) which is where the list view is possible.. in it's place is 'SketchUpColorPicker' which uses the brick icon.. google could definitely make their picker as it's own thing but then it would be system wide and work in every app.. maybe they don't want that but jeez, can't they replace a different choice like 'image palette' because we could still sample colors off an image opened in preview if needed..

so i see one problem google might be up against here.. they actually have to make sure their ColorPicker won't work system wide because of all the .skm files which will crash everything except sketchup..
whatever though, this stuff is so easy and fast to fix (well, at least from the perspective of a non-programmer such as myself )

bjanzen · 20 Nov 2009, 19:26

Yea, that's the issue. We're using something that's close, but not quite, and so we have to worry about how we do this. I don't think it's easy, and you have to worry about fitting in on the platform - most of Apple's palettes don't have text, either. So how does speeding up the tool tips work for you as a workaround for now?

jeff hammond · 20 Nov 2009, 20:00

well, the tool tip speed up works OK but it then makes all the toolbar tooltips pop up faster.
(and actually, if the material browser does get changed eventually, i foresee myself using the terminal method you described to actually slow down the toolbar tips.. i use SU a lot so i learn the new icons rather quickly. the only time i rely on tooltips anymore is if i install a new ruby with a toolbar)

do you know of a way to make the standard 'Color Palettes' option still appear while using sketchup? I wouldn't necessarily suggest making that happen with a fresh install of sketchup because it will probably lead to some confusion (two separate list drop down choices etc.)..

actually, stop that train of thought -- i guess even then, it would only work with straight up colors and imported jpg textures or .skm textures wouldn't work in the 'color palettes' window?

then, the idea of just making the SketchUpColorPicker function exactly like the Color Palettes version seems great to me but if i think about the 'Brick & Cladding' list, it will have 80 rows of materials with their names listed beside them whereas right now in SU, the 'brick&cladding' list appears relatively compact at only 11rows x 7 columns (if i stretch the window to max size)..

personally, that would be awesome to me but if i try to think about all users, most might say "now wtf did that do that for?!.. i'm scrolling forever to get to that recycled plastic material!!.."

so obviously, i don't have a great idea for a solution that 1) won't break the system wide colorpicker & 2) will work well for all users.. that solution is obtainable i'm sure but i also can imagine the zillion other requests for changes you must come across..

[Edit] actually, having it work as it does now but add the option for a list view would pretty much be perfect.. (ie see all the materials in a compact rows/columns form -or- show them all in one column with the names next to them (and editable)

bjanzen · 20 Nov 2009, 23:36

Yea, I'd agree. I'll file a feature request.

frv · 20 Nov 2009, 23:44

Ha, its good to see the team at Google does pick up sarcasm and humor and even responds to it. No need to worry then..

you have to understand though that some of us work 8 hours a day with SU in a hectic architectural office. Workflow ergonomics are simply very bad with the current material pallete for OSX users and utterly frustrating.

On OSX the material panel is by itself actually not at all free of bugs, materials dissapear from time to time to reappear again after purging unused, materials duplicate by themselves when assigning geometry, did I mention slow responsiveness, no order or changing order in the way materials show up in the panel.

It would be nice to keep us updated when the team has any success to get the material panel a bit more userfriendly. In the meantime I will be using MXMreporter. Since I export to Maxwell mostly this little ruby works surprisingly well as a subsitute to SU's material panel.
Francois
I haven't had the time to test the speedtip. But will of course. Tx.

jeff hammond · 21 Nov 2009, 00:45

@bjanzen said:

Yea, I'd agree. I'll file a feature request.

sweet!
thanks for the consideration b

rombout · 19 Aug 2016, 02:37

Not sure why they still haven't addressed the color picker on mac. Does anyone know a good alternative now.

It's terribly slow for me once i start filling models with textures. DOnt understand what's happening.

rombout · 19 Aug 2016, 02:48

Its been a while since this video, but how did you switched the color picker?