[Plugin] Universal Importer - v1.2.6 - 30 July 2024

TIG · 13 May 2020, 17:34

So do you need to explain to MAC users to open the Terminal first, and then try your tool...
And any error-messages might appear in that Terminal window ?

samuel_t · 13 May 2020, 17:42

@tig said:

So do you need to explain to MAC users to open the Terminal first, and then try your tool...
And any error-messages might appear in that Terminal window ?

No, command line needs to be pasted in Mac's Terminal after that Universal Importer plugin crashes.

edwinfolk · 14 May 2020, 23:58

Hello Samuel,

Thanks for doing this. This looks like a really great plugin that can help with rendering and setting up reference models for a lot of Maxwell users. Attached is a screen shot of the terminal window. Hope you can make sense of it.

McGordon · 15 May 2020, 08:11

@edwinfolk said:

This looks like a really great plugin that can help with rendering and setting up reference models for a lot of Maxwell users. Attached is a screen shot of the terminal window. Hope you can make sense of it.

The permission denied means you don't have executable permissions on that assimp file. Can you paste this into Terminal and press return:

ls -l ~/Library/Application\ Support/SketchUp\ 2018/SketchUp/Plugins/universal_importer/Assimp/Mac

Then show us the results, which should look something like this:

total 25448
-rwxr-xr-x@ 1 gordon  staff      3791 24 Sep  2019 LICENSE.txt
-rwxr-xr-x@ 1 gordon  staff    149772  6 Jan 16;05 assimp
-rwxr-xr-x@ 1 gordon  staff  12810620  6 Jan 16;05 libassimp.dylib
-rwxr-xr-x@ 1 gordon  staff     58316 24 Sep  2019 x.dyl

I haven't installed this yet, I'm just trying to help as samuel_t doesn't have a Mac. The first 'x' in '-rwxr-xr-x@' for assimp means I could run that file as a program. That's the bit I'm looking for when you run that command which just lists what's in that directory.

edwinfolk · 15 May 2020, 10:51

Hello McGordon,
I attached a screen shot of the command sent through terminal. Not sure what that means - sorry I am not a coder or Ruby specialist. Anyway if you can make sense of this and help Samuel thereby helping us MacOS users, awesome. Thanks for the help and stay safe.

Edwin

TIG · 15 May 2020, 12:14

In the first part of the 'report' the "rw" means "read/write".
If you see the earlier McGordon example you see "rwx" which means "read/write/execute".
So yours is failing because it doesn't have permission to execute the necessary files...

You could try selecting the subfolder [.../Plugins/universal_importer] and changing it to have "full" permissions - for all users and all of its contents...

McGordon · 15 May 2020, 12:25

As I suspected, you don't have permission to run that file. You could fix it with another terminal command:

chmod u+x ~/Library/Application\ Support/SketchUp\ 2018/SketchUp/Plugins/universal_importer/Assimp/Mac/assimp

Be more careful copying and pasting this time. The 'CODE: SELECT ALL' link doesn't work for me, it just scrolls to the top of the page.
That command just changes the execute (run) permissions of that one file.

They are perfectly readable, but you don't have to screenshot the terminal, just copy the text as if it was any text document in a word processor or text editor.

edwinfolk · 15 May 2020, 18:31

Hi Guys,

Thanks again for looking at this. I review both your responses. I think I had previously made a mistake entering the cut and paste into terminal and received the wrong information which I sent to you. I went back a step and copy/pasted into terminal the correct line of code and the terminal spit this out.

-rw-rw-rw- 1 edfolk staff 3791 Sep 24 2019 LICENSE.txt
-rwxrw-rw- 1 edfolk staff 149772 Jan 6 17:05 assimp
-rw-rw-rw- 1 edfolk staff 12810620 Jan 6 17:05 libassimp.dylib
-rw-rw-rw- 1 edfolk staff 58316 Sep 24 2019 x.dyl

I did try to paste into the line McGordon sent but the plugin did not complete the import. I attached a series of 3 screenshots to show you. As you can imagine I am not the computer guy. Decent enough designer but shit when it comes to this sort of thing.

Thanks again you guys are really great.

Edwin

McGordon · 15 May 2020, 19:45

It looks like the previous chmod command worked:

@edwinfolk said:


> -rwxrw-rw-  1 edfolk  staff    149772 Jan  6 17;05 assimp
>

I think you've made a bit of progress. You're now getting a different error from another program that probably doesn't have executable permissions either. Here's
one more command to make it run too:

chmod u+x ~/Library/Application\ Support/SketchUp\ 2018/SketchUp/Plugins/universal_importer/MeshLab/Mac/MacOS/meshlabserver

run that then try to do your import again. I think there might be other files on your system with the wrong permissions, but I'm only getting you to change one at a time here.

edwinfolk · 15 May 2020, 20:37

Hello,

Thanks for the help. It seems to work better than before. I attached a jpg so you can see that the file I imported (OBJ) did not completely import successfully. Not sure what the problem is but as you can tell from the image it is not complete. Same thing happened with a Light Wave import although the import image was about 1/100 the expected size. I will try some other imports from other formats and see what happens. If you have any ideas would love to hear them.

I have been able to convert some files from these formats using MODO to make a Collada file and then using the normal import to SKU. Cleaning them up and ignoring UV distortion which gives okay results. However, if I can get the universal importer to work well then I can save a lot of time.

Thanks again. Really appreciate the help.

malditobill · 18 Aug 2020, 12:53

Hi. Do I have to install Assimp library and MeshLab software before Universal Importer? Ive just installed only Universal Importer and in the tool bar only get the reduce poligons icons.

samuel_t · 23 Aug 2020, 18:49

@malditobill said:

Hi. Do I have to install Assimp library and MeshLab software before Universal Importer? Ive just installed only Universal Importer and in the tool bar only get the reduce poligons icons.

Hi. No. Assimp library and MeshLab software are bundled with Universal Importer plugin. SketchUp toolbar only contains shortcut to Poly reducer... In SketchUp menu, use "File > Import with Universal Importer...".

rspierenburg · 20 Oct 2020, 13:49

I'm trying to import an OBJ. I want to keep the existing model scale but the plugin keeps asking for the height of the model. Is there a way to ignore that?

samuel_t · 20 Oct 2020, 18:18

@rspierenburg said:

I'm trying to import an OBJ. I want to keep the existing model scale but the plugin keeps asking for the height of the model. Is there a way to ignore that?

Hello. You can't ignore that.

Lacee · 29 Oct 2020, 13:51

Unable to reduce a 6,000,000 poly SU2020 file / also unable to import OBJ source file for same #2
Posted in GitHub.

Kolarik · 2 Nov 2020, 13:50

Can you explain, how size of imported object is calculated? I am not able to import objects in correct size. See attached example - block 10x20x30mm

It was exported to STL, and imported back by Universal Importer.
Height set to 1 cm

no texture, no reduction.
Result :

I do not know, what I am doing bad....

I am using milimetres as default in Sketchup - if the sizing rules would work, can it be changed into mm instaed of cm?

samuel_t · 2 Nov 2020, 21:18

@lacee said:

Unable to reduce a 6,000,000 poly SU2020 file / also unable to import OBJ source file for same #2
Posted in GitHub.

Hello Lacee. I just answered you at GitHub

Einstein · 3 Nov 2020, 11:54

Hello,
Would it be possible to support importing loose edges from Blender? When a mesh contains faces, it imports properly but if there are only edges, they don't get imported.
It would also be cool if separate Blender objects would be imported to separate SketchUp groups. But I'm aware this can be a lot of work to code.

samuel_t · 3 Nov 2020, 19:54

@kolarik said:

Can you explain, how size of imported object is calculated? I am not able to import objects in correct size. See attached example - block 10x20x30mm [...]

Technically, sizing algorithm is a hack. Since in most cases, by default, imported object is oversized: plugin scales down this object to height set by user. This hack works pretty well with "tall" objects.

@kolarik said:

I am using milimetres as default in Sketchup - if the sizing rules would work, can it be changed into mm instaed of cm?

Maybe if I ask user for a height in mm instead of cm, size of imported model will be more accurate...

samuel_t · 3 Nov 2020, 20:19

@einstein said:

Hello,
Would it be possible to support importing loose edges from Blender? When a mesh contains faces, it imports properly but if there are only edges, they don't get imported.
It would also be cool if separate Blender objects would be imported to separate SketchUp groups. But I'm aware this can be a lot of work to code.

Hello. No. You can see Universal Importer plugin for SketchUp as an Assimp script. This means that, in most cases, if Assimp doesn't support a feature: Universal Importer plugin doesn't support this feature.