Question - a way to select a set of veritces/end points

JClements · 13 Dec 2007, 22:57

This weekend I was playing around with a terrain and some freeform surfaces and needed to move vertices in very small increments. Doing this with the mouse just didn't work out because of inferencing to nearby geometry.

Wondering there is someway via ruby to select mulitiple vertices? If there is, then perhaps existing nudging/moving scripts might be adapted to accomodate vertices as well as edges and surfaces?

todd burch · 13 Dec 2007, 22:58

Hi John. Unfortunately, you can't just select vertices so easily. However, some type of inferencing could be done between the user and a script, so as you could communicate which endpoints of which lines you wanted to affect.

I'm visualizing "handles" of some sort that could be defined, by the script, and placed by you, for you to specify which points you wanted to work with. See attachment. Visualize the red lines as specifiers that those are the vertices you want to lift up or sink down.

Actually, using the existing nudge script, you can do this. Ease of use however, depends on how many vertices you want to deal with. This takes advantage of SketchUp stickiness.

Is this what you mean?

Todd

Pixero · 13 Dec 2007, 22:58

Not sure if it's what you're after but take a look at my jsAlign script.
it gathers the vertices from selected edges or faces and is able to move them one by one.
You can find it at my site: http://www.pixero.com
I'd like to see a script that made it possible to actually select the vertice and move it or what ever you want.

JClements · 13 Dec 2007, 22:59

Yes,Todd, that is sort of what I had in mind. Selecting and moving vertices in unison. This would also be helpful when dealing with symetrical objects and reshaping vertices of the mirrored halves.

todd burch · 13 Dec 2007, 22:59

John, will Nudge work for you? How many points are we talking?

Todd

JClements · 13 Dec 2007, 23:00

Yes, Nudge would work for me, unless you want to create a "Son of Nudge.rb" which would have some specialized features as this any others you've been thinking of implementing.

As many points as we can get away with

At least 10?

todd burch · 13 Dec 2007, 23:00

Even right now, there is no limit on the number of points Nudge can move. The hassle right now, for you, is drawing the handles. I drew one and then move/copied it to the other points. For a dozen, no big deal. To move mass quantities, a better selection method is in order. I could do a "create handles from endpoints and then select them all" script if you wanted to grab all vertices within a selection region.

Todd

gata · 13 Dec 2007, 23:01

There's another option. Scale has lots of subtle 3D control. If only an edge is selected, tugging on the top/bottom, dead-center handle will only raise/lower an end. Tugging at one of the selected edge corner handles would lengthen/shorten the edge along its vector, etc...

Selecting a face would be similar.

Face and edge combinations can be scaled. Works swell while in hidden geometry.

For the greatest control, orbit around the model so the cursor tugging on the handle is in front of some geometry. The closer the geometry is located the better. That's one way to harness inference - using neighboring geometry to finesse/steer the handles. Otherwise scale may seems to go wacko.

Smoove and Smoove+Shift work, and an offset can be set for controlled, incremental bumping. But I don't use it much. Fine-tuning shapes often means tweaking as little as one edge at a time.

And of course tools like nudge.rb, nudge bits and pieces. That's real handy.

Using scale to move vertices like this means some initial 3D movement of geometry first to get a 3D bounding box.