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    SketchUp RUBY API Wishlist [way of coding wishes, please]

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    • K Offline
      kwalkerman
      last edited by

      Seconded on the Layers usability, also, it would be great to be able to do:

      Layers.active_layer
      Layers[layer] = active

      A consistent entityID would be awesome. The entity should maintain the ID if it is deleted, and then undeleted as well.

      Pages:

      In addition to retaining information on which layers are on and off, should also be able to retain the active layer for each page.

      --
      Karen

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      • thomthomT Offline
        thomthom
        last edited by

        hm... never thought of that inconsistency before...
        model.materials.current vs model.active_layer

        Thomas Thomassen β€” SketchUp Monkey & Coding addict
        List of my plugins and link to the CookieWare fund

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        • Dan RathbunD Offline
          Dan Rathbun
          last edited by

          @thomthom said:

          hm... never thought of that inconsistency before...
          model.materials.current vs model.active_layer

          "current and "active" should aliases for each other.

          I'm not here much anymore.

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          • K Offline
            kwalkerman
            last edited by

            Cool. Thanks again.

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            • Dan RathbunD Offline
              Dan Rathbun
              last edited by

              @kwalkerman said:

              Cool. Thanks again.

              No problem.

              (bumping the topic..)

              • Made edits to the Layers code example* Added a second code example for Layer class.See previous post...

              I'm not here much anymore.

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              • J Offline
                Jim
                last edited by

                @kwalkerman said:

                In addition to retaining information on which layers are on and off, should also be able to retain the active layer for each page.

                I like this idea, particularly useful when adding text to Scenes. It seems quite possible using an Observer.

                Hi

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                • J Offline
                  Jim
                  last edited by

                  @dan rathbun said:

                  @thomthom said:

                  hm... never thought of that inconsistency before...
                  model.materials.current vs model.active_layer

                  "current and "active" should aliases for each other.

                  Well, don't leave out Pages.selected_page!

                  Hi

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                  • Dan RathbunD Offline
                    Dan Rathbun
                    last edited by

                    @jim said:

                    @dan rathbun said:

                    @thomthom said:

                    hm... never thought of that inconsistency before...
                    model.materials.current vs model.active_layer

                    "current and "active" should aliases for each other.

                    Well, don't leave out Pages.selected_page!

                    I don't know about that one... Pages are special. Even though you "select" a Page, depending on transition time, Sketchup can be animating somewhere between the previous page and the selected one.
                    A FrameChangeObserver is needed to know when the animation is complete. Only at that point would I 'technically' say that a Page was the "active_page" or "current_page."

                    @Karen. You can get an array of the hidden layers for a Page:
                    mypage.layers
                    so the visible layers would be:
                    my_vis_layers = model.layers.to_a - mypage.layers

                    • why they didn't name the method Page.hidden_layers, I don't know.

                    I'm not here much anymore.

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                    • Dan RathbunD Offline
                      Dan Rathbun
                      last edited by

                      @jim said:

                      @kwalkerman said:

                      ..., should also be able to retain the active layer for each page.

                      I like this idea, particularly useful when adding text to Scenes. It seems quite possible using an Observer.

                      But when you add text to Scenes (Pages,) are you drawing to the model, or drawing to the View ??

                      If it's the View, then the active layer does not matter.

                      The active layer is a property of the model. A Scene (Page,) is a View mechanism, which does not "have" layers; it only 'remembers' which of the model's layers to hide or show. A layer also has "new page behaviour" which it can tell new Scenes (Pages,) how to 'remember' their visibilty.

                      I can see some problems for other scripts, if the active layer was automatically changed when a Scene changed. There would need to be some kind of toggle to turn the "auto" feature on and off.
                      In addition, their would need to be scoping. What if an Observer was to be triggered while this "auto layer" feature was on? Outside the current script (or scope,) the Observer may want to "see" or "use" another layer as the active one.

                      It also occurs to me, that we are supposed to always be drawing primitives on "Layer 0", but still some modelers want to draw on other layers (construction lines especially.)

                      Anyway.. we'd need to consider this carefully. It could be a disaster.

                      I'm not here much anymore.

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                      • Dan RathbunD Offline
                        Dan Rathbun
                        last edited by

                        @kwalkerman said:

                        Seconded on the Layers usability, also, it would be great to be able to do:

                        Layers.active_layer

                        That can already be done:
                        Sketchup.active_model.active_layer
                        .. as it's a property of the model (Sketchup::Model class.)

                        see API: Model.active_layer

                        @kwalkerman said:

                        Layers[layer] = active

                        Will not work because there is no .= method defined for the Sketchup::Layer class. (You'd just be calling Ruby's internal hardcoded refererence assignment operator, which could set the layer reference on the left of the operator, to any kind of Ruby object. A bad idea, if it doesn't immediately cause an exception.)
                        This why the .new constructor is "hidden" (or made private,) and we create layers thru the collection class' .add method.

                        Sketchup.active_model.active_layer=layers['mylayername']
                        .. again, a property of the model (Sketchup::Model class.)

                        see API: Model.active_layer=


                        You CAN get a SKP DOM object's parent by using the .parent method. The model is the layer collection's parent, in the SKP doucment heirarchy. Where layers is the model's Sketchup::Layers class instance:
                        this_layer = layers.parent.active_layer

                        But, since each model instance, has an instance of a Sketchup::Layers class object, you'd think it (the Layers collection,) should also know which one of it's elements was active.
                        A simple Ruby patch for the Layers class:

                        
                        class Sketchup;;Layers
                          unless method_defined?('active')
                            def active
                              self.parent.active_layer
                            end # def active
                          end
                          unless method_defined?('current')
                            alias_method('current','active')
                          end
                          unless method_defined?('active=')
                            def active=(arg)
                              if arg.class==String || arg.kind_of?Integer
                                self.parent.active_layer=self[arg]
                              elsif arg.class==Sketchup;;Layer
                                self.parent.active_layer=arg
                              else
                                raise(TypeError,'Sketchup;;Layer, String, or Integer expected.')
                              end
                            end # def active=
                          end
                          unless method_defined?('current=')
                            alias_method('current=','active=')
                          end
                        end # class extension
                        
                        

                        %(#4000BF)[**EDIT:

                        • added aliases* fixed method defintion tests**Note: The reason I do not call]Sketchup.active_model.active_layer (in the patch,) is to accomodate multi-model environment on the Mac, where the active model may not be the one a script is working on.

                        ADD: This can be extended to the Sketchup::Layerclass, so that a layer can return (boolean) whether it is the active layer or not.

                        class Sketchup;;Layer
                          unless method_defined?('active?')
                            def active?
                              # .equal? returns true ONLY if receiver and arg have same object_id
                              self.equal?( self.parent.parent.active_layer )
                            end # def active?
                          end
                          unless method_defined?('current?')
                            alias_method('current?','active?')
                          end
                          #
                          unless public_methods(false).include?('eql?')
                            # only override if it hasn't yet been redefined
                            def eql?(arg)
                              if arg.class==Sketchup;;Layer
                                # we shall ignore the name attribute
                                # use the == override to include name in test
                                # use <=> to test only the names (match returns 0)
                                same = true
                                return (same = (self.page_behavior==arg.page_behavior)) if (not same)
                                return (same = (self.visible?==arg.visible?)) if (not same)
                                return same
                              else
                                raise(TypeError,'Sketchup;;Layer expected.')
                              end
                            end # override eql?
                          end
                          #
                        end # class extension
                        
                        

                        I'm not here much anymore.

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                        • TommyKT Offline
                          TommyK
                          last edited by

                          I don't know if this thread is still checked by the Sketchup team, but I have one ruby request:

                          • be able to set selection colour per entity, including bounding box color.

                          It would allow different kinds of entities to be shown as such.

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                          • Rich O BrienR Offline
                            Rich O Brien Moderator
                            last edited by

                            That's a very old feature request.

                            I think it was back at v7 I remember seeing members ask for groups and components to be different colours.

                            I love it to happen. Sorely needed in such a visual program.

                            Download the free D'oh Book for SketchUp πŸ“–

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                            • AdamBA Offline
                              AdamB
                              last edited by

                              Pretty, but whats the use case?

                              Developer of LightUp Click for website

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                              • S Offline
                                slbaumgartner
                                last edited by

                                @pout said:

                                does anyone know if any of the remarks here will be taken into consideration in a new version?

                                The SketchUp development team are famous for marching to their own inscrutable set of priorities, so only they know for sure. But this topic was started by a member of the team, so it is at least as good a place as any for sketchUcation members to post suggestions.

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                                • thomthomT Offline
                                  thomthom
                                  last edited by

                                  We're watching. πŸ˜‰

                                  Since the Trimble acquisition a good number of have been addressed. That despite the fact that we've only had short dev cycles so far. Takes time to shift things around. But we're ramping up.

                                  Thomas Thomassen β€” SketchUp Monkey & Coding addict
                                  List of my plugins and link to the CookieWare fund

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                                  • tt_suT Offline
                                    tt_su
                                    last edited by

                                    I used the wrong - hat... So for the sake of making it right - with my Trimble hat: Yes we are watching. πŸ˜„

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                                    • TommyKT Offline
                                      TommyK
                                      last edited by

                                      @adamb said:

                                      Pretty, but whats the use case?

                                      If people wanted to distinguish some component types from others, for example. Or maybe a plugin could show a graphical overview of all the objects in a model to reflect some attribute, or something?

                                      I have a plugin I want to create that uses 'external components'. To distinguish these from normal components for the user, having a different highlight colour would really help. More info on my thread: http://sketchucation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=323%26amp;t=59961

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                                      • tt_suT Offline
                                        tt_su
                                        last edited by

                                        @tommyk said:

                                        @adamb said:

                                        Pretty, but whats the use case?

                                        If people wanted to distinguish some component types from others, for example. Or maybe a plugin could show a graphical overview of all the objects in a model to reflect some attribute, or something?

                                        You could do this with a custom Ruby Tool with the current API though. That is unless you want to display the graphical overview all time time.

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                                        • TommyKT Offline
                                          TommyK
                                          last edited by

                                          @tt_su said:

                                          @tommyk said:

                                          @adamb said:

                                          Pretty, but whats the use case?

                                          If people wanted to distinguish some component types from others, for example. Or maybe a plugin could show a graphical overview of all the objects in a model to reflect some attribute, or something?

                                          You could do this with a custom Ruby Tool with the current API though. That is unless you want to display the graphical overview all time time.

                                          Yes, with a custom Ruby Tool. I would like to be able to change the highlight colour when the standard selection tool is used, and I believe there is no way to do this. Would you suggest that I script an alternative selection tool to mimic the native tool and add the additional functionality?

                                          Perhaps the Sketchup team would find that the change to the API in this way would be too much of an intrusion to Sketchup's standard tools?

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                                          • tt_suT Offline
                                            tt_su
                                            last edited by

                                            @tommyk said:

                                            Yes, with a custom Ruby Tool. I would like to be able to change the highlight colour when the standard selection tool is used, and I believe there is no way to do this. Would you suggest that I script an alternative selection tool to mimic the native tool and add the additional functionality?

                                            For the immediate solution with the current Ruby API that would be one way to do it. Though implementing the box selection is a challenge via Ruby - at least without performance impact of the tool.

                                            @tommyk said:

                                            Perhaps the Sketchup team would find that the change to the API in this way would be too much of an intrusion to Sketchup's standard tools?

                                            It would be a concern if there was multiple extensions that modified the selection colour of objects. Which extension would get the last say? And how easy would it be for the user to read the selection if the selection color changed?
                                            Having said that, we've had a couple of requests like this. If you would be able to mock up a real use case, a mock screenshot I can add that to a feature request in our bugtracker.
                                            I personally think it would be nice to have some generic way to draw additional graphic to the screen to display meta data etc. Not just changing selection colour.

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