How do you make plug-ins for sketchup

Chris Fullmer

Oh, and BTM, in my opinion, as a fairly new Ruby scripter, making any script that interacts with the mouse is a bit challenging, especially at first. It requires making a class tool, and instantiating the tool, and making good use of methods, including pre-defined methods from the API. I'll try to write up a template for creating a new tool. But that is really a tutorial all of its own. (BTW, I said before I was working on a tutorial for beginning ruby, and its been put on hold because the methods for wiritng a tutorial for SketchUcation are currently not working....so I have to wait for the management to fix it.)

If possible, I would avoid the mouse controlling the transform idea.

Chris

Chris Fullmer

To be more specific, I don't understand how to implement the inferencing system of SU. I have a sfew scripts that use inferencing, but I literally copied and pasted portions of those scripts from the query tool example that comes with SU. If you want to being working with inferencing, check out that tool.

Jim

@adamb said:

[Slightly OT]

I've always been very careful to use Object#kind_of? rather than Object#class so that code works with any derived classes too. (Rather than just testing for an explicit class).

Good idea? Bad idea?

Adam

It's good when you explode a Group to reject things are not Drawinglements. Sometimes I get Loops in the exploded collection of entities.


ents = group.explode
ents.reject!{ |e| unless e.is_a? Sketchup;;Drawingelement }

Jim

@chris fullmer said:

(And this gets back to what Adam was bringing up and Jim also talked about in another post. I think instead of testing if each entity is an edge (which is how I still do it), perhaps test each entity if its part of a curve. (I don't know the best code to do that, but its something to think about).)
Chris

Look again at the Selection class, there are a couple methods that can help determine of a selection contains a Curve:

.is_curve? and .single_object?

Chris Fullmer

Here's an amusing illustration of what I mean when I say that I have avoided using the mouse in my scripts because it is complex (for me). Here's my scripts in the order that I've written them:

Loose to groups - no mouse interaction.
Random Painter - no mouse interaction
Greeble 1 and 2 - no mouse interaction
Color by Z - no mouse interaction
Onscreen Display - my first mouse interaction (inferencing) The code is 95% from the query tool. I still don't undesratnd how parts of it work
Select Lines by Length - no mouse interaction
Three Line Tools - mouse interaction (inferencing, still copied from query)
Components onto Faces - no mouse interaction
Perpendicular Face Tools - mouse interaction (inferencing, still copied from query)
Scale and Rotate Multiple - no mouse interaction
Label Open Faces - no mouse interaction
Shape Bender - Mouse interaction written entirely on my own (select different objects with the mouse), but no inferencing

Anyhow, I've written about 12 scripts I've released and all of them avoid mouse input like the plague. The few that do allow for mouse input, the code is largely borrowed from the query tool, and still I don't understand how a few things in the code work

Chris

But don't let my inabilities stop you by any means. If you want to learn it, go for it. It will probably make for lots of great threads about implementing inferencing, which the forum could use I think!

BTM

Where do I find this "query tool"? The closest thing i can find is comptr.h, and 2 sketchyphysics files

Chris Fullmer

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

Chris Fullmer

Oh yea, the quesry tool is kind of hiding. It is in the utilities folder, and inside the utilitiestools.rb file. Starting on line 55.

Inside of SU it is under Tools > Utilities > Query Tool

But it only does point inference. It does not do all the inferencing you will want - like locking to an axis or anything with axex. Only single points. But its helpful for that,

Chris

BTM

It's nowheres to be seen on my mac Checked everywhere, it's just not there.

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.

SketchUcation

3D SketchUp Community for Design and Engineering Professionals.

(www.sketchucation.com)

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/