How do you make plug-ins for sketchup

Chris Fullmer

You looked in both your plugins folders? It also might be in the tools folder.

jeff hammond

it's in there BTM

utilitiestools.rb is the file name.. inside a folder called utilites which is in the plugins folder.

when i get some more time, i'll show you a neat little finder trick to search for anything (unless of course you already know this and the file really isn't there)

BTM

Ah, found it. I whent right over the utilities folder, and never noticed it

jeff hammond

a couple examples of using the finder to find things.. it doesn't really fit in this thread but it does show a few things i might use if learning ruby..

first, i try to search for perpendicular_face .. a standard search doesn't show anything but you'll notice i go into my search field and allow for a system search which will look at Macintosh HD... if you check the box then that search field will always remain in the menu (though you still have to use the + then include) .. on top of that, there are all sort of weird things you can search for -- lens aperture, song tempo, used dates etc.. as a side note, system search will also include web history so i can use this to easily find things from web pages i've been to..

after the perpendicular_face example, i do a search for a piece of code (Geom::Vector3d).. you'll notice that it searches inside the files as well and you can select either 'file name' or 'content' .. if i open a file that showed up in the search, i can commandF and the search item is transferred to the apps search field.. makes it easy to find what i'm looking for in the exact location of the file..

after that, i use coverflow on the results (i fit the window to my monitor for this so you can't see everything i'm doing.. just trying to show that i can look at all the rubies full size without actually opening them in an editor)..

mess around with it.. note you can add multiple criteria to narrow the search.. also note you can mix up your searches (for instance, i found the query tool by typing 'query tool sketchup' and utilitestools.rb show up even though that exact wording doesn't appear in the text..
hope this helps.. (and i hope the youtube compression doesn't make this too impossible to understand )

[flash=700,420:2yjy0fg6]http://www.youtube.com/v/iM2qMaAvNpQ&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0&color1=0x006699&color2=0x54abd6&border=1[/flash:2yjy0fg6]

remus

A little script to draw the crudest catenary curve you've ever seen

require "sketchup.rb"

def y (xpos)

sag = 2
x=xpos

(Math.cosh ((x/sag)))*sag

end

def cat_curve

model = Sketchup.active_model
entities = model.entities

pt1 = [10,0,(y (10))]
pt2 = [(20/3),0,(y ((20/3)))]
pt3 = [(10/3),0,(y ((10/3)))]
pt4 = [0,0,(y (0))]
pt5 = [(-10/3),0,(y ((-10/3)))]
pt6 = [(-20/3),0,(y ((-20/3)))]
pt7 = [-10,0,(y (-10))]

points = [pt1,pt2,pt3,pt4,pt5,pt6,pt7]

catcurve = entities.add_curve (points)

end

UI.menu("PlugIns").add_item("Catenary Curve") {
  
  cat_curve
}

TIG

@chris fullmer said:

Jim, I'm a little confused. I thought you would be able to add a curve object to the selection set. But it returns this error:

(eval);6;in ‘add’; wrong argument type (expected Sketchup;;Entity or Array of Sketchup;;Entity)

But the API says that "Curve" is a subclass of the Entity class, just like DrawingElement. Why can't I add a curve object directly to the selection?
Chris

To test if a given edge is part of a curve and then add all of those to the selection use something like

selection.add(e.curve.edges) if e.typename=="Edge" and e.curve

assuming you have pre-defined some of those variables !
To add all of a given curve's edges to a selection use something like

### assuming crv is known to be a 'curve'
selection.add(crv.edges)

edge.curve returns either a Curve or ArcCurve object curve or arc/circle, and edge.curve.edges returns all of the 'curve's' edges... Matt's recent 'real_typename' Ruby adds an extra method to DrawingElement Edge to return Curve, Arc or Circle for those types - otherwise 'normal' typename...
It might be a useful tester ?

Chris Fullmer

Remus, that is in fact the crudest catenary curve I've ever seen! Good job.

@TIG - sure we can test an edge to see if its part of a curve. I'm specifically asking why you can't add a curveobjec to a selection. If you try, it returns that error I posted, stating it is expecting an Entity class object. But a curve is a subclass of Entity. So its error does not seem to be telling the truth or something. Does that mean they have specifically blocked the ability to add curve's and arccurves? OR did they really mean that it is expecting a DrawingElement?

Chris

Chris Fullmer

Anyone have anything new to post about their Ruby scripts?!

I DO!

I made a tutorial for how to begin writing Ruby scripts. Its short and fast, but I tried to explain what software to install, what websites to go to for help, and then I go over a basic script that iterates over all the entities in a model and sorts the edges, faces, componentInstances, and groups into arrays and displays how many of each there are in a model. And of course, I give a few suggestions about what to do with those arrays once you have them.

But hopefully the next tutorial will go over how to actually do things with an array of faces, or edges, etc. But I felt like the first tutorial just needed to explain what to do to get ready to start writing code.

Check it out (though if you've followed this thread from start to finish, there won't be too much new infomration). But its a good, quick, read.

http://www.sketchucation.com/beginning-ruby/

Chris

l.frisken

thanks chris! This will be perfect I imagine!

TANER TAN

@jeff hammond said:

@unknownuser said:

How do you make plug-ins for sketchup

me?
by begging

I do not know, but maybe this can help you:
http://www.alexschreyer.net/projects/sketchup-ruby-code-editor/