[Plugin] Toggle Units

RootlessAgrarian

Here is the script.
Toolbar to change drawing units quickly.

Hi -- I may not be understanding what this tool does, or how units work in Sketchup; I am frustrated because I can't do what seems to me a simple thing.

Here is the deal. I am working on a model in non-metric units (feet and inches). But I have paper sketches from a colleague in Norway who has annotated his drawings in decimal meters. I'd like to reproduce his hand drawing directly into my model by copying it exactly, so I'd like to work on a set of components in meters or mm. To my surprise I could find nothing in Preferences for toggling from metric to inch and back. So I thought that Toggle Units plugin might enable me to switch the whole model from inch to mm or cm.

I installed it. But it seems to toggle units only between different representations of inches (the first 4 buttons); the other buttons (mm, cm, mt) are grayed out and inactive. I really want to toggle between metric and inch -- is there no way to do this? it seems such an obvious thing to want to do argh. would rather not have to use a unit converter and manually convert all the dims on my colleague's drawing!

btw I am aware that I can draw in any units I like, i.e. enter dimensions in notation like "3.0m". what I cannot do is use the Ruler tool to verify those dimensions after drawing, because the ruler is apparently hard-wired to inch units. if I could just toggle the Ruler between inch and metric that would be great!

any ideas would be gratefully received as this has got me bogged down right at the start of the project.

RootlessAgrarian

@rootlessagrarian said:

@matt666 said:

Here is the script.
Toolbar to change drawing units quickly.

Hi -- I may not be understanding what this tool does, or how units work in Sketchup; I am frustrated because I can't do what seems to me a simple thing.

I read backwards in this thread and found that others have had some trouble with Leopard (OSX) and this plugin. I grabbed a more recent version edited by Jim Foltz Oct 2009 and installed that.

The Foltz version works except that the icons do not display: this I thought was because the icon paths were all set to CD_ICONS/TWEAK, but I substituted the correct path "toggle_units_icons" and I still get no icons in the toolbar. So I have to memorise the button sequence or wait for the balloon help to pop up but the tool now does exactly what I was hoping for: my ruler can be toggled to work in inches or meters, hooray.

If anyone can tell me why these lines of code

cmd.small_icon = "toggle_units_icons/tudec16.png"
cmd.large_icon = "toggle_units_icons/tudec24.png"

do not correctly association the png files with the button, I'd like to know (I don't speak Ruby obviously). meanwhile I'll happily use the version with anonymous blank buttons -- project no longer stalled!

CadFather

the lines make sense if you have the corresponding folder (toggle_units_icons) in the plugins menu..

CAntonis

Matt this is great!!!
Very nice plugin!

ThankU
CAntonis

RootlessAgrarian

@cadfather said:

the lines make sense if you have the corresponding folder (toggle_units_icons) in the plugins menu..

plugins menu? or plugins directory (folder)?

that subdir does exist in the plugins directory (as do other subdirs of small images used successfully by other Ruby extensions). can't figure out why the images are not getting associated with the buttons. but hey, the unit switching function works and that's what I needed. I can fool around with the icons later.

CadFather

sorry.. i meant plugins folder of course..

if the path is right the icons should show up

RootlessAgrarian

@cadfather said:

sorry.. i meant plugins folder of course..

if the path is right the icons should show up

as I say I do not speak Ruby, but I used to be extremely literate in Tcl/Tk and the syntax is not completely alien. I have tried various things, even using the full pathname. other .rb scripts are correctly finding their icons w/rel pathname starting at 'plugins', but this one for some reason is not. mysterious! I've looked for some initialisation that might set the default path, etc -- no luck so far. must be a very silly coding error that I can't see because I'm so unfamiliar with Ruby apps.

checked the obvious like protection bits on subdir and images, checked that they really are .pngs, checked that they are not empty files, etc. baffled.

oh well. something to fool with when I've nothing more urgent to do

vidy

Have the same problem here also, the function was working perfectly, but the icon are invisible.. need some advice, please...

thanks,

chrisjk

What versions of Mac OSX are you running? I have Snow Leopard and the icons do show up for me. You might need to check View>Tool Palettes>Toggle Units to see them.

vidy

im using xp sp2, and su 7.1, the tool actually already perfectly functional, just the icon not showed up..
already try to change the address on the script, but it still not working.

watkins

Just tried installing Toggle Units into my SU8 plugin folder, and found that the icons won't show up. Is this a known problem for SU8? If so, does anyone have a fix?

Kind regards,
Bob

TIG

When you extracted the contents of the zip file you should have got a file called toggle_units.rb and a folder called toggle_units_icons which contains 24 png files to make the various buttons.
The file and the folder both go into your Plugins folder.
If you have copied the rb file from v7 into v8 you must also copy the whole folder and its files too...

watkins

Dear All,

Okay, Toggle Units is now working in V8, but only after installing the version posted by 'blajnov' (page 6 of this thread, and near the top).

Kind regards,
Bob

davidlouis

Not wanting to discourage the development of great tools such as this, I can't help wonder why, so far down the line in sketchup development, you can't have one preference for modelling units and a different one for the value readout of say... areas, dimensions etc etc... CAD software has been doing this since day one...

At the moment I model in millimeters and require dimensions and areas in meters... I've used this tool since it pretty much came but why don't the skp developers integrate this into the preferences / model info units interface...???

Either way thanks for a great tool!

Dave

vidy

@watkins said:

Dear All,

Okay, Toggle Units is now working in V8, but only after installing the version posted by 'blajnov' (page 6 of this thread, and near the top).

Kind regards,
Bob

dear bob,
do you have the icon showed up on v.8?

watkins

Dear Vidy,

Yes I do, and I have checked all the functions and they work. It would be very useful if someone could update the first posting with the V8 compatible plugin.

Regards,
Bob

TIG

I have updated the first post in the thread http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?p=81391#p81391
Please use the new 'bold' version which is v6/7/8... friendly - I left the old one BUT I don't recommend that version at all...

vidy

thanks bob and tig, now it works perfectly

Dave R

TIG,

I just installed the latest version but I am getting the blank toolbar. In looking through the script I see what looks like the path to the PNGs shown as below. The icon folder is called "toggle_units_icons" but I wonder if it or the script should be modified. Or maybe I'm looking in the wrong place and have a different problem.

cmd = UI;;Command.new(Strings["Decimal"]) { toggle_units(5) }
cmd.small_icon = "CD_ICONS/TWEAK/tudec16.png"
cmd.large_icon = "CD_ICONS/TWEAK/tudec24.png"

TIG

@dave r said:

TIG,

I just installed the latest version but I am getting the blank toolbar. In looking through the script I see what looks like the path to the PNGs shown as below. The icon folder is called "toggle_units_icons" but I wonder if it or the script should be modified. Or maybe I'm looking in the wrong place and have a different problem.

cmd = UI;;Command.new(Strings["Decimal"]) { toggle_units(5) }
> cmd.small_icon = "CD_ICONS/TWEAK/tudec16.png"
> cmd.large_icon = "CD_ICONS/TWEAK/tudec24.png"
> 	    
>

You are right - I copied the files over without looking at then [I didn't use this tool at all]
I've now updated the zip http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?p=81391#p81391 so that it has the correct folder specified for the icons !