Coding with Ruby

rfresa · 13 Dec 2009, 20:04

Hi, I am new to SketchyPhysics. I have seen several topics on this board that have bits of ruby code in them. I was wondering, is there a tutorial for using code in SketchyPhysics somewhere? I have taken a few programming classes, and am pretty good at figuring things out, but none of the examples I've seen make sense to me yet. Thanks!

Swindel · 14 Dec 2009, 17:45

I don't know anything about ruby but maybe you're looking for this; press Window then Ruby Console.

Wacov · 14 Dec 2009, 19:36

Open the SP UI, select a group in your model. The ontick and ontouch fields appear at the bottom, under 'Properties' (you must have SketchyPhysics 3 X installed). ontouch code is called when the object collides with another, ontick every rate frame. Leave rate at 0 to run every frame. $curEvalGroup is always the group the code is written in, and there are a few other commands which are on various topics in the forums. The SketchUp ruby API may or may not be relevant to what you want to do, remember that almost any API code will work (some commands might crash the sim by attempting to end it). Hope this helps

rfresa · 15 Dec 2009, 10:42

Thanks! That should be enough to get me started. Is there a "master list" somewhere in my file I could look at to check if my variables, joint names, etc. are being recorded correctly. I have had some trouble with UI sliders not showing up when they should, joints misbehaving, and so forth.

Wacov · 15 Dec 2009, 15:29

If you set global variables (start with a $), you can check them out from the Ruby Console by typing them in. This'll work during the sim, and global variables will also stay behind afterwards. Btw, forgot to say the normal joint controller field also takes ruby code (Any blue field will). You can use a ';' to mark line breaks where there's only a single line to type in.