[Plugin] Shape Bender Beta
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@chris fullmer said:
Yes, Thanks August.
You're Welcome. Being able to make that kind of difference is a big part of why I got into Technical Writing.@unknownuser said:
I find that this plugin works better the more you understand what it is doing behind the scenes.
I find that's true for a lot of things, and it's part of my personal philosphy about writing instructions and explanations.Chris, have you or anyone else done any more of a tutorial on this than your video at the beginning of this thread? This has become one of those plugins that, for me, has become an indespensible part of what makes Sketchup magical and I'm thinking of puting it on my to-do list.
I had just been using Shape Bender the day before "arjunmax09" asked his question, so how I think about how the tool works was very fresh in my mind. I've attached an image of the logo I used Shape Bender on.
August
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Yeah, Simon le Bon put together a fairly comprehensive (and very dense) thread about how he has used shape bender. I think I jumped in a little helped hammer out some of the technical intricacies and quirks in the code (of which there are plenty).
The thread I am thinking of is in the tutorial section, and he was making a wine jug? or a woven basekt? boy, now I don't recall exactly. Plus there is probably more info towards the start of this thread too.
A fairly simple, yet accurate and comprehensive tutorial on this plugin would be greatly appreciated. So a HUGE thanks in advance if you ever get around to it.
Chris
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@chris fullmer said:
Just go download the newest version of component spray here:
http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=323&t=11746
And install it. Shape bender will still work, and component spray will work too. It is a very good script,
Chris
I downloaded the latest component spray from the above link... and unzipped its ruby script in my plugins folder... but it still interferes with the ShapeBender Tool. If I remove the compo_spray.rb file from my plugins folder the shape bender works fine. What should I do now??
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Hmmm, that is very odd. I have not heard of that before. MAke sure that when you download it and open it, you are not opening an old cached version of the file or something...?
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no i am not downloading any cached version... internet explorer windows pops up "do you want to save this file??>yes>save in my documents>that's it....
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ok, I'll download it and try it and see what I get. I won't be able to do it for probably a few days though.
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@chris fullmer said:
ok, I'll download it and try it and see what I get. I won't be able to do it for probably a few days though.
okay...
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using windows 7, sketchup pro 7
I am trying the plugin but it freezes and does nothing
I get a message in the status bar:
->--------------- 5%. End @ ? (1 of 5) Searching for objects to explode.
What am I doing wrong?
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Component Sporay is interfering. You will need to remove it for now. THere was a component Spray update a while ago that cleared up this issue, but it appears that the update might not be working right anymore. So for now, just remove it if you need to use ANY script that uses the progressbar plugin.
Chris
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Thanks chris... wonder how plugins... lose their foolproof performance in few months!!!!
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ok, I just went back and tested the component spray myself. It is indeed broken again. I'll have to contact Didier about it (I hate bugging him because he's very busy, but his script is breaking the progressbar!).
So you should be seeing that any script that uses progressbar (some of my other scripts, and most notably make_faces from smustard) are all broken because of component spray.
For now there is no simple work around. You just have to remove component spray from your plugins folder if you want to use shape bender or make_faces, or any script that uses progressbar. And then put component spray back if you want to use it and restart sketchup so it loads (or type
load 'compo_spray.rb'into the ruby console after you put it back in the plugins folder if you do not want to restart sketchup). But once its loaded, it will break progressbar until you restart SketchUp.And for the 1 of 5 error, that might actually be something else. That could be that you have complex geometry and it takes a lot of processing to bend it so it is thinking. OR it could also be that you have lots of sub groups in your component and it is trying to find them all (which it is VERY slow at because I did a poor job writing that part of the script). So I woulod recommend trying a very cimple object like a box first. If that bends then you know it is working. And complex objects take a lot of time. I bent a very detailed corvette once into an s-curve. It took a few hours, but it worked (well the mesh had issues, it was not completely clean, but it did bend it pretty well).
Good luck,
Chris
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whoa!!!
first time ever in my life i've heard that plugins can damage other pluginss.... man...now i understand... once my mirror plugin got corrupt... had to reinstall sketchup all over again... contacted other members to fix the problem but no one was able to ... .maybe that time also the mirror plugin got damaged by some other messy plugin.... anyway.. its fixed now.... 
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whoa!!!
first time ever in my life i've heard that plugins can damage other pluginss.... man...now i understand... once my mirror plugin got corrupt... had to reinstall sketchup all over again... contacted other members to fix the problem but no one was able to ... .maybe that time also the mirror plugin got damaged by some other messy plugin.... anyway.. its fixed now....@chris fullmer said:
ok, I just went back and tested the component spray myself. And for the 1 of 5 error, that might actually be something else. That could be that you have complex geometry and it takes a lot of processing to bend it so it is thinking. OR it could also be that you have lots of sub groups in your component and it is trying to find them all (which it is VERY slow at because I did a poor job writing that part of the script). So I woulod recommend trying a very cimple object like a box first. If that bends then you know it is working. And complex objects take a lot of time. I bent a very detailed corvette once into an s-curve. It took a few hours, but it worked (well the mesh had issues, it was not completely clean, but it did bend it pretty well).
Chrishey chris... how many hours did it take to bend...any idea..??? can you just paste the pic of the corvette here so maybe we can get a tentative timing idea about the shape that we're tryin' to bend
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Heh, I don't have a picture of it anymore. I should redo it and time it. But it took about 2 hours I think.
And plugins don't really damage other plugins exactly, but they can interefere with other plugins. What happened is that Didier used some code from progressbar in his component Spray plugin. But he did it in such a way that it messes up the original progressbar methods that are loaded inside of SketchUp. So if his plugin is loaded, progressbar does not behave the way Todd wrote it, it behaves the way Didier changed it. But everyone that uses progressbar writes their plugins to wokr the way Todd intended - which fails if component spray is installed.
Didier did some cool stuff, he just implemented it poorly so that it clashes with the original code. BUt it does not actually damage any other file.
Chris
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i see... happy to know... no boxing match
is goin' on 'tween plugins he he 
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where can i download a copy of the shape bender or fredo scale plug ins?
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@chris fullmer said:
Heh, I don't have a picture of it anymore. I should redo it and time it. But it took about 2 hours I think.
And plugins don't really damage other plugins exactly, but they can interefere with other plugins. What happened is that Didier used some code from progressbar in his component Spray plugin. But he did it in such a way that it messes up the original progressbar methods that are loaded inside of SketchUp. So if his plugin is loaded, progressbar does not behave the way Todd wrote it, it behaves the way Didier changed it. But everyone that uses progressbar writes their plugins to wokr the way Todd intended - which fails if component spray is installed.
Didier did some cool stuff, he just implemented it poorly so that it clashes with the original code. BUt it does not actually damage any other file.
Chris
Chris am new here, where can i get a copy of the shapebender plugin?
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Hi Jessi, welcome. The plugin is at the bottom of the very first post in this thread. That is how most plugins work on this forum. So go to the first post anmd download the zip file. Unzip the contents into your sketchup plugins folder. You will also need to install progressbar from http://www.smustard.com
Chris
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@chris fullmer said:
The plugin is at the bottom of the very first post in this thread. That is how most plugins work on this forum.
This takes a little getting used to and is one of the very cool things about the software that SCF uses for the forum -- you can go back and edit a post to update it, correct typos, add that little bit that you remembered just as you clicked "Submit", etc. Every other forum that I spend any time with at all, once it's posted, it's posted, the most you can do is delete and repost.
I hope this helps,
August -
@chris fullmer said:
... plugins don't really damage other plugins exactly, but they can interefere with other plugins. What happened is that Didier used some code from progressbar in his component Spray plugin. But he did it in such a way that it messes up the original progressbar methods that are loaded inside of SketchUp. So if his [Didier's] plugin is loaded, progressbar does not behave the way Todd wrote it, it behaves the way Didier [accidentally] changed it. ...
It might help your understanding to have a little more behind-the-scenes, under-the-hood perspective.
The most likely cause of the problem is a variable name conflict. When someone adapts code for a different purpose, usually they change all the function and variable names to ensure that their new code uses unique names. The most likely cause of the problem is that somewhere in the block of code there was a variable or two that Didier missed and didn't rename, and possibly Todd's code has some presumptions where he uses the same name and is assuming that if that variable already exists, it means that his code created it and therefore is in the middle of what it's doing instead of being at the beginning.
It really could be a very wide range of things. I'm just offering a suggestion to give the flavor of the problem and of how hard it could be to track down, not to point at anything specific.
The point is that when either of the scripts are loaded by themselves, there is no problem, it's only when they are both installed that they trip over each other.
I hope this helps,
August
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