Copy along road?

Ecuadorian

Thank you, Pilou. You're the MacGyver of the SCF, always finding workarounds.

However, I'm more interested in actually copying things at regular intervals. If you checked my "Great Wall of China" model, you might have noticed that the cuts of the battlements are vertical, when, in most parts of the Great Wall (not all), they actually follow the slope. They were made with a "patchopied" component and a couple BoolTools commands.

Another possible use for such a script:

For those into character modeling, you could also place dragon-like "fins" on the back of your reptile characters, following the direction of the skin.

xrok1

i think adding more control to component spray would make more sense, and would be more useful.

bagatelo

Try Spacing Tools in 3dsMax (Shift I), look my recent work:
http://cg-alex.blogspot.com/2009/02/trabalho-conclusao-curso-carol.html
I export model to 3dsMax, make the Work, and reimport to Sketchup. Render by Vray4Sketchup.
The work that I made in 3dsMax was the guard body, deck wooden, them pillars of sustentation of dock, and the poles of illumination, by spacing tools.

Daniel S

For making the "Great Wall of China" example.. the best will be something like "Flowing objects along a surface" (FlowOnSurface.rb?)

[flash=800,450:3qtcgx6p]http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=3111916&server=vimeo.com&show_title=0&show_byline=0&show_portrait=0&color=00adef&fullscreen=1[/flash:3qtcgx6p]

A plugin like this would be amazing.

Daniel S

xrok1

WHAAT! where are you?

solo

Very cool, I would love this tool in SU, even if it's only the rigid version.

xrok1

component spray:

thomthom

Component Spray! Yes! I forgot it did that!

pilou

What are your regulates for the Spray?
Keep Vertical = No is the trick!

xrok1

i had to use spray shape>point and do them individually.

but, if we could get the component spray author to add the option to make 1 copy per face, at the face center, we'd be laughing.

xrok1

of course there's smart drop at intersection TOO

Daniel S

Yes! with smartdrop will be easy to make it.
Just move up the cars and drop them to the road.

Daniel S

solo

got a link to that script?

Chris Fullmer

http://www.sketchucation.com/forums/scf/viewtopic.php?f=180&t=3474

Found via the great Extensions search/database here on the SCF:
http://www.sketchucation.com/?page_id=1297

Chris

xrok1

Daniel, what did you use to make your GIF?

solo

Thanks, and i bet camtasia.

xrok1

thanks chris, i was useing ver.1. ididn't know there was a new one. thats the problem with places like ruby depot, there not up to date.

solo, i'll try that out.

xrok1

do you have ver.1.4 its seems to work a lot better.

Ecuadorian

Lemme see...

@unknownuser said:

SmartDrop 1.0

Modified by : a4chitect

Modif. notes : is very limited in functionality (only works when groups/components aren't rotated in relation to the main axis

I'll try version 1.4 as you recommended, and tell pushpullbar's Takeshi to update his link in the visual index of rubies.

EDIT: Works like a charm! The result is a little offset, but since it is a consistent offset, it's easy to correct it.

Thank you, everyone, you're the guardians of the "Ruby Holocron"!

Ecuadorian

I did try smart drop when I was doing the Great Wall, but results for this case are too inconsistent to be useful. One car stuck to the road, another one was floating above, etc.

Apparently, it works best when you haven't rotated your components relative to the origin in the first place... The script itself says so in the comments.