PointTool for Mac

Edson

to tell you the truth, i have a small problem with this tool: it does not load at startup. i always have to go to View>Toolbars to open it.

mmyoung

Yes, that is what was happening for me.
When I changed it as shown, it loads. Does this edited version work for you?

mmyoung

Also, check out the construction point tool TIG wrote:
Plugins forum > subject: "Reports coordinates of a cpoint"

You can place a construction point at a specified (RED, GRN, BLU) location,

or if you select a group of construction points (a point cloud, for example, that you might be using for DTM), it will report the location of each according to the model precision set in Window > Model Info.

Very nice. It runs from the Ruby Console.

Edson

@mmyoung said:

Yes, that is what was happening for me.
When I changed it as shown, it loads. Does this edited version work for you?

michael,

i am always wary of making any changes to ruby scripts. i know nothing about it so all the times i tried to make changes to a script i ended up doing something wrong or forgetting some important thing. could you please post the changed script here so that i could try it?

TIG

@edson said:

@mmyoung said:

Yes, that is what was happening for me.
When I changed it as shown, it loads. Does this edited version work for you?

michael,

i am always wary of making any changes to ruby scripts. i know nothing about it so all the times i tried to make changes to a script i ended up doing something wrong or forgetting some important thing. could you please post the changed script here so that i could try it?

Here's a version that might be Mac friendly...
Extract the .rb file and the subfolder+png-file into the Plugins folder...

Edson

sorry, tig. it did not work. thanks.

TIG

I now see the problem... here's a fix for that error ???Extract the .rb file and the subfolder+png-file into the Plugins folder...
Ruby on Mac is less forgiving about parenthesizing arguments - it takes dothis(aaa,bbb) or dothis aaa,bbb, but while on a PC dothis (aaa),bbb will work it kills a Mac ! Then I made it dothis((aaa),bbb) and it works however...

Edson

still not working.

wind-borne

@edson said:

to tell you the truth, i have a small problem with this tool: it does not load at startup. i always have to go to View>Toolbars to open it.

If the original tool itself works why not give it
(a) a keyboard shortcut
or
(b) put it in the customizable toolbar?

Either of these bypass the need for the Point Tool toolbar.

SketchUp Preferences.png

Edson

@wind-borne said:

If the original tool itself works why not give it
(a) a keyboard shortcut
or
(b) put it in the customizable toolbar?

Either of these bypass the need for the Point Tool toolbar.

by all means, why not? thanks.

TIG

Edson

That report is from the old version - the new one does not have those lines of code in it !
Can you check that you don't have a duplicate loading from another Plugins folder ?
Read the path in the error message and ensure that that file is this new one...
I know there has been some Mac folder confusion in the past...

Edson

tig,

you were right. i must have done something wrong before. no error messages this time. however, the problem remains the same: the toolbar is not loaded automatically when i start sketchup, as most do.

TIG

Try this adjusted versionPointTool.rb

Edson

the tool works fine, no error messages, but it does not load when i open sketchup.

TIG

THIS should load the toolbar - IF it were open the last time you closed SUp, if it doesn't open the toolbar then close SUp, reopen SUp and the toolbar should still be active ?PointTool.rb

Edson

IT WORKS!!!

TIG

johnwmcc

Just downloaded PointTool_1.2, using SU 2016 on iMac El Capitan, with autoinstall from the SketchUcation plugin store.

Works fine as installed automatically, but puts Draw Points on the Extensions menu (formerly Plugins). I wanted to put it on the Draw menu, so changed one line in this part (sorry, don't have line numbers in my Text Editor)

` unless file_loaded?(FILE)
file_loaded(FILE)
$submenu ? (organizer = $submenu) : (organizer = UI.menu("Plugins"))
organizer.add_item("Draw points"){ pointtool }

p=Sketchup.find_support_file("Plugins")
cmd = UI::Command.new("Draw points"){ pointtool }
cmd.large_icon = cmd.small_icon = File.join(p, "PointTool", "PointTool.png")
cmd.tooltip = cmd.status_bar_text = "Draw some points"
UI::Toolbar.new("Point Tool").add_item cmd

end`

I changed just part of this line from:

$submenu ? (organizer = $submenu) : (organizer = UI.menu("Plugins"))

to

$submenu ? (organizer = $submenu) : (organizer = UI.menu("Draw"))

but now the plugin errors on loading. And still errors if I change the line back to have "Plugins" as in the original.

Any thoughts on why this is happening, and how I could get it to load in the Draw menu?

Of course I can (and shortly will) add a shortcut (probably Shift P) but I don't understand why this simple change stops the plugin working. I was using the built in Mac TextEdit.app which I assumed did what it says on the tin, like Notepad on Windows - or is it more like WordPad, and adding non-text characters to the file when saved?

John McC

johnwmcc

Ah. It seems that the problem lay in the TextEdit app - when I found and installed Brackets instead, and made the same edit, it does what I expected.

Ah well, it takes a while for a decades-long Windows user to get used to a new iMac...!

John McC

fredo6

It looks like a problem of file encoding due to your editor. This is why it does not work even when restoring the menu to its original value.

The file should encoded UTF8 without BOM.

You could use notepad++ (free and quite powerful editor), whenever you manipulate Ruby.

Fredo