What R.L. is an object..?

studoc64

Total disclosure upfront: I am an occasional user and as such use Sketchup 8...

If anyone would like to weigh in on this - I am currently working on a house, or parts thereof and would like to be able to select a line or face and query the relative level of same, in the model..

Can this be done..?

cheers,

Stuart.

pbacot

I like TIG's tool https://sketchucation.com/pluginstore?pln=heighttool_datum Yay TIG!

studoc64

Thanks pbacot, that would definitely be useful..

A short time ago I had a look at the trial edition of the latest version of sketchup and in doing so employed a few plugins, but there doesn't seem to be a way in, to install plugins in version 8...

Is there....?

studoc64

Actually... to answer my own question:

I did a bit of reading (while I was supposed to be working on something else) and I get that my version of sketchup in all likelihood does not have maintenance release 2 and therefore no fastrack to plugins.

I have now downloaded and installed SU8 Pro for XP (because I also have such an operating system... ticks me off how we are expected to wear this built in obsolescence.. ) and this gives me the ability to load plugins...

ta..

Box

In sketchup pre SU8 M2 you simply drop the relevant .rb file and folder into the plugins folder on your system.
The changes from SU8 M2 onward were done to simplify the process. But for some it seems to have confused the issue. Arrgh, what do I do with an .RBZ file??? was the cry back then.
An RBZ is a zip file containing the .rb and any other files or folders that are needed to run the plugin all together in one file that the Install Extension button can open and extract to the correct location on your computer. Automation/Progress

So to install an extension in a pre M2 setup you can rename the .rbz to .zip and extract its contents to the plugin folder of SU 8. Assuming the Plugin/Extension is still compatible with SU 8.

As to the built in obsolescence you mention, not sure what aspect you are referring to, the development of new OS's or updating the Application.
The fact that I am able to install and run SU 8 on windows 10 without any problems seems to me to suggest that SU 8 is pretty robust and you are still using XP so that seems to be alive and well. Development doesn't stand still, but then neither does it make things simply cease to function, support gets dropped and things move on and eventually break. SU 8 is nearly 10 years old now, seriously geriatric in this day and age. And lets not forget all the people that scream blue murder if sketchup isn't updated enough each year.

By the way, did you know that the Text tool will give you the coordinates of endpoints.

studoc64

Yes, I'm referring to operating systems...

Look, Mungo is just a pawn in the game of life..

I am a solo engineer, trying to keep all the balls in the air, in order to perpetuate my subsistence engineering endeavours.
I have cobbled together software to enable this and don't have the funds to be updating the various programs every six months, as they subsequently fail to be supported in OS upgrades... Indeed, a lot of my software is now quaintly termed, "legacy". But it works, I understand it and I can get a result. Dirt, wind, timber, concrete, steel don't change...

I like the OSX platform, I run two virtual machines under this: XP and Win10, as software related to engineering tends not to be written on the OSX platform. My hand was eventually forced into getting a copy of Win10... Here I can tell you that for all of windows "progress", If I can run it at all, it runs a lot quicker under XP...

I like the facility of sketchup, but I'm not an architect, I will use it to work out how to proceed on this job, punch out some detail in CAD, then not see it again for two years, at which point I will have to relearn it.. Pity I already have too many hobbies, because it's a fantastic tool..!

As an aside: In my pre M2 version of SU8, I changed the .rbz file to .zip, dropped it into a plugins folder I created in the SU library folder on the Mac, did a reboot, to find no new additions to the menu.. with SU8 pro, height datum was added and functioning straight off the bat.. Good result.

I didn't know the text tool could have provided a solution to my query....

Box

Just for clarity, I said Extract the contents of the .zip file into the plugins folder, not the .zip itself.

studoc64

yeah.. the contents of the zip are in there......