[Plugin] JointSU (in drafting)

MarcioAB

This is a draft plugin to handle JOINTS in SketchUP components.

[flash=425,344:3v9k7zws]http://www.youtube.com/v/VQrZSiRBVeY[/flash:3v9k7zws]

Add some "joints" (see below how) in standard components to make then "joint-enabled" and:

Select 1st "joint-enabled" component.
Select 2nd "joint-enabled" component.
Shift-click in one of them. This one will remain fix and the other will align Joint-Joint.

To make any component "joint-enabled", just include one or more joint-components ("JointSU") in it.

Use the menu to create the "JointSU" component or create one by yourself.
Nothing special with this component. Just the name that must be "JointSU". The transformations use the default axis of the component. The proposed geometry has 2 faces to easy positioning.

obs:

1: If the "joint-enabled" component has more than one joint, click the component to select the next joint.
2: After the move, click on any component to rotate the moved component 90 degress in X or Shift-click to rotate it 90 degrees in Z.
3. Menu Plugins/JointSU:
3.1 - Create the JointSU component ("Create JointSU component")
3.2 - Hide/Unhide the joints ("Hide all JointSU" or "Visible all JointSU")

JointSU.zip

Comments and suggestions are welcome.

Regards
Marcio

bianhai

Very good!

yannleo

The ideal of using component as a "joint" to line up objects is promising.
I tried.Amazing! not easy to control the orientation up to now.

MarcioAB

@yannleo said:

not easy to control the orientation up to now.

Yes. That's why the proposed "JointSU" now has the shape below:

With these 3 planes, it's easier to use the tool to position the joints. I also included a panel to define the size of the JointSU.

@yannleo said:

The ideal of using component as a "joint" to line up objects is promising.

Yes. The idea is to create an "hierarchical component browser" to view/handle how components/joints are structured. Working on that ...

Regards
Marcio

yannleo

it's a convincing plugin by any means.i'll try using triangle "joint" like you did. This plugin is a little similar to the alignment tool in 3ds max but more useful.it's good starting.Thanks for your wonderful staff!

DanCharron

Very neat Plugin. I was trying to create my own, but your implementation is better. The only thing I have to do now is learn Portugese to interpret some the Ruby script comments. Please keep us informed if you upgrade it.

MarcioAB

Thank you.

The comments for now are in Portuguese, but I will translate them to bad-English (the most spoken language in the world!) as soon as I have a less draft-code version.
The idea to publish an early-draft was to get some inputs/suggestions on how a Joints-oriented modeling should be (but the draft-code is now so messed up that I can not even upload the improvements made since this early draft).
These JointSU must work 100% in companion with the Model Structure ( or OUTLINER ... strange name for something so important ). Working on that now.
Two things are blocking me to advance these days: (1) my full time job and (2) I can not find a way to OPEN a component. The Sketchup::Model.open method is there but it's private (and not public). Example:

p Sketchup.active_model.open
Error; #<NoMethodError; private method `open' called for #<Sketchup;;Model;0x4a28e70>>

Any help on that will be very welcome.

Regards
Marcio

Ross Macintosh

Thanks Marcio for developing this plugin. Looks to have great potential. I wonder if it might work to have some form of 'dynamic component' joints that could do things like rotate the jointed pieces after the assembly using the little dynamic component 'finger'.

Regards, Ross

azuby

In most of the cases developers declare their methods being private, there is a good reason for that. But you can try for your own whether this method does what you want by using send:

Sketchup.active_model.send ;open

With Sketchup 6 the result is:

Sketchup.active_model.send ;open
Error; #<ArgumentError; (eval);1619;in `initialize'; wrong number of arguments (0 for 1)>
(eval);1619

OK, the methods needs an argument. I tried with a path:

Sketchup.active_model.send ;open, "C;/bla.skp"
#<File;C;/bla.skp>

azuby

Yanman

Wow Very good

thomthom

Virtual LEGO building!

MarcioAB

Finally I have version 1.0

Now it's highly dependent of the product structure (or OUTLINER), but seems to work well ... I will post it in a NEW thread. Enjoy and lets see how to improve this ...

Regards
Marcio