[Plugin] CleanUp

Zacchia

Thomas
Thank you very much for this amazing plugin!!

derei

Suggestion: make the cleaning operation stoppable. I just started the cleaning of a high-poly model and it was a very uninspired action ... it will take a very long time (it shows me something about one hour) and the only way I can stop it is to close Sketchup. And I didn't saved the model before
Also, before starting, it would be nice to make a time estimation and if the process is estimated to take more than...let's say 1 minute, to alert the user something like this: "The cleaning process can take about XX minutes, are you sure you want to proceed? You can cancel the process anytime by pressing ESC" ...or something like that. I think the alert should appear only if the cleaning time takes too long, other it might be annoying.

Thanks for taking this into consideration.

EarthMover

@gaieus said:

Thanks, TT. Whatever "minor fixes" you made, this is one of my most valued and frequently used plugins.

Me as well. I can't thank you enough...so here's another. THANKS!

thomthom

@unknownuser said:

Suggestion: make the cleaning operation stoppable. I just started the cleaning of a high-poly model and it was a very uninspired action ... it will take a very long time (it shows me something about one hour) and the only way I can stop it is to close Sketchup. And I didn't saved the model before
Also, before starting, it would be nice to make a time estimation and if the process is estimated to take more than...let's say 1 minute, to alert the user something like this: "The cleaning process can take about XX minutes, are you sure you want to proceed? You can cancel the process anytime by pressing ESC" ...or something like that. I think the alert should appear only if the cleaning time takes too long, other it might be annoying.

Thanks for taking this into consideration.

Unfortunately this is not an easy thing to do. With the Ruby API it's virtually impossible without using timers to split up the work - which I have run some tests on and it will increase the total processing time any times. So if the process took 10 minutes with no abort feature, it's take 30-40 minutes with an abort feature, which I find much worse.

Mind you, Erase Duplicate Faces is a feature in CleanUp that takes a loooooong time - I've warned so in its tooltip. It's also off by default. If you struggle with long processing times ensure this is off. I've run CleanUp on some very large models, without that feature checked, and it's completed within a few minutes.

derei

@thomthom said:

Erase Duplicate Faces is a feature in CleanUp that takes a loooooong time - I've warned so in its tooltip. It's also off by default. If you struggle with long processing times ensure this is off.

Indeed, I ran with Erase Duplicate Faces, because that was what I needed. What about the duration warning? If the process is better to not be cancelled, at least the user to know what is going to do .
Finally the cleaning didn't last one hour as the progress bar displayed, but about 13-15 minutes. Why this big discrepancy between what it shows and the real time?

thomthom

It's troublesome to calculate this. The more geometry in a context (group/component) the longer SU takes to do any modification. For instance, if you add 1000 edges to a group, the time it takes to add each edge depends on how many there already are. The time is not linear. I suspect it's because SU auto-merges geometry and such.

And for CleanUp, which does many cleaning operations, one operation might make the next one run must faster because it's reduces a lot of the geometry.

The estimated time is a result of how must time it has spend up to the current iteration versus the total - and from there a guestimate is given. But as you notice, some times it's much faster because some iterations do nearly nothing if there is nothing to cleanup.

honoluludesktop

Is there a way to first sort the face designations alphabetically, then check and erase duplicates. Perhaps with the help of a .exe program? Btw, can reordering the data base with another program, make viewing it faster?

Sorry, today is my day to be off the wall.

utiler

Thom,
I love this plugin; like many I am sent DWG/DXF files for me to start modelling from.

Just wondering if this is possible:
We know CAD entities are drawn on layer where as SU promotes elements on Layer0 and groups/ components on particular layers....

Is it possible to import a dwg, group elements on each layer while changing entities to Layer0 and placing groups to a layer of the same name as per the original..?

In essence, we can manipulate visibility of DWG entities by toggling layers but now the way we do it in SU.

Thoughts?

thomthom

Yea - good idea. I can add that to Plan Tools.

utiler

LEGEND!!!!!!

thomthom

One issue though, how to deal with existing groups and components in the file?
Imported DWG blocks comes in as Components...

utiler

just a global explode.

thomthom

@utiler said:

just a global explode.

That ain't a "just"...
It might cause geometry to merge - which you do not want. Plus, Explode can be dreadfully slow...

utiler

True... pardon my flippancy, Thomas. You know now my knowledge of script language is -1

+1

SpookyChick1013

Hi Thom.

For the past month or so, I've been getting a funny error from your Cleanup plugin. I have weeded through my plugins since then and so far haven't been able to find any solutions.

Anyway, here is the content of the error dialog:

undefined method `purge_unused' for [:Array

C:/PROGRA~1/Google/GOOGLE~3/Plugins/tt_cleanup.rb:1074:in remove_materials' C:/PROGRA~1/Google/GOOGLE~3/Plugins/tt_cleanup.rb:1037:in merge_similar_materials'
C:/PROGRA~1/Google/GOOGLE~3/Plugins/tt_cleanup.rb:548:in cleanup!' C:/PROGRA~1/Google/GOOGLE~3/Plugins/tt_cleanup.rb:488:in show_cleanup_ui'
C:/PROGRA~1/Google/GOOGLE~3/Plugins/tt_cleanup.rb:487:in call' C:/PROGRA~1/Google/GOOGLE~3/Plugins/TT_Lib2/inputbox.rb:161:in initialize'
C:/PROGRA~1/Google/GOOGLE~3/Plugins/TT_Lib2/inputbox.rb:156:in call' C:/PROGRA~1/Google/GOOGLE~3/Plugins/TT_Lib2/inputbox.rb:144:in close'
C:/PROGRA~1/Google/GOOGLE~3/Plugins/TT_Lib2/inputbox.rb:144:in initialize' C:/PROGRA~1/Google/GOOGLE~3/Plugins/TT_Lib2/inputbox.rb:132:in call']

I have also checked to make sure I have this installed with the exact footprint you specified, and I do. I'm usually pretty careful about that, but at this point I'm double checking everything.

Thanks,
Cathryn

thomthom

When do you get the error? When loading SketchUp? Opening the window? When starting the CleanUp?
Does it happen in all models? What are the settings you run CleanUp with?

bitslapped

Hi thomthom I noticed you have a new 'merge identical materials' which seems like you had a crack at my request?! Thanks for that.

I have been getting the same errors particularly when I run the cleanup with only 'merge identical materials' checked.
The script still works for older functions.

I'm running sketchup 8 and your latest libraries.

Cheers

thomthom

Got a sample model?

SpookyChick1013

Sorry to take so long getting back here. Was out of town and off grid for a few days.
Anyway, the errors only show up when I am actually running the script, after checking settings and clicking "CleanUp". I am using your latest library, and Sketchhup 7.1, as always. The error has occurred with every model to this point.
The settings that I have observed the problem occurring with. If I UN-check Merge Identical Materials, Cleanup works fine.
Late Edit: Something bitslapped said got me thinking, and so I UNchecked "Merge Identical Materials". When I ran CleanUp with MergeIdenticalMaterials NOT checked, Cleanup ran fine; So I am wondering at this point if the problem is with that part of the plugin.