Making groups of loose geometry

Chris Fullmer

(EDIT: The question is how do I put existing geometry into a group. The rest is background info)

Hi, I am writing a script that takes all loose geometry and turns everything into groups. It should work by turning all connected into a group, then moving on to the next portion of connected loose geometry and then turning that into a group and so on and so on until all loose geometries have been turned into groups.

I thought I would be able to select all geometry, then start selecting the first entity and select all connected and then pass those entities off to an array named ents. So once I have my ents array setup, how do I tell SU to make a new group and move the entities in ents into that group? Does it work like that? Do I have to redraw everything inside of that group instead of just sort of moving the existing geometry there? I was hoping that the line below would do what I wanted, but it doesnt

group = ents.add_group

It just breaks the code. So instead I tried to make a group of all gemoetry which is why I used the line below

group = entities.add_group

And I've found that it just creats an empty group. It doesn't actually add "entities" to the group.

So what is the way to put existing geometry into a group? Here's all of my code so far.

model = Sketchup.active_model
entities = model.active_entities
entity = entities[0]
ents = entity.all_connected

if (ents)
  group = entities.add_group
  ents.clear

  if (group)
    UI.messagebox group
  else
    UI.messagebox "No Group"
  end

else
  UI.messagebox "Failure"
end

Sorry its so long for something so basic,

Chris

thomthom

new_group = entities.add_group(array_of_entities)

thomthom

Btw, what's your main source for API references? The reference documentation (http://code.google.com/apis/sketchup/docs/developers_guide/index.html) or the wiki style documentation?

The wiki styled ref usually have more info. http://groups.google.com/group/SketchUp-Plugins-Dev/web/google-sketchup-ruby-api

As you see in the wiki's description of add_group, it contains more info of it's usage: http://groups.google.com/group/SketchUp-Plugins-Dev/web/Ruby-Entities.html#add_group

Chris Fullmer

See, its just that easy. You know I can't find that documented in the API. It only says that add_group is used to make an empty array.

Thanks Thom!

Chris

thomthom

Yea, I dunno why there's two separate sources for this. None of which is complete...

I usually try the wiki, then the other source, then I ask here for help if I still can't work it out.

Another way to find out info is to use the Ruby console and type .methods for the various objects. For instance, I wanted to get the scaling of a group/component. So I look up the Transformation class. In the wiki docs it lists .scaling and .rotation as available methods. (The other resource got nothing on that topic) However, .scaling and .rotation returns error to me.

But if I select a component and type this into the console:

Sketchup.active_model.selection[0].transformation.methods

I get this:

["rotx", "instance_variable_get", "to_s", "send", "identity?", "clone", "nil?", "roty", "instance_variable_set", "set!", "inspect", "instance_eval", "xscale", "invert!", "dup", "equal?", "rotz", "inverse", "methods", "yscale", "taint", "eql?", "origin", "hash", "singleton_methods", "zscale", "instance_of?", "extend", "xaxis", "id", "protected_methods", "tainted?", "kind_of?", "untaint", "yaxis", "__id__", "*", "private_methods", "is_a?", "freeze", "display", "zaxis", "object_id", "public_methods", "==", "===", "respond_to?", "type", "instance_variables", "=~", "method", "frozen?", "__send__", "to_a", "class"]

Note how different that is. And note the methods: rotx, roty, rotz, xscale, yscale and zscale... sigh

Chris Fullmer

Ahh, the wiki! I had forgotten that the wiki was there. i was not looking in that.

And thanks for the heads up on methods. I had seen someone else mention it earlier, so I use it once in a while. But I'm normally not great at just being able to see the available methods and choosing the one I need and figuring it out on my own. I generally need a bit of an example with syntax.....oh syntax.

I'm getting there though, little by little. When this script is done, I'll post it and I'm pretty sure it will be a #1 seller

Thanks Thom,

Chris