Model.raytest and Entity visibillity

thomthom

I've been using model.raytest on SU 7.1 pro. It has not seen hidden entities (which I like!)

Sounds like in SU 8, things are all messed up. Maybe a new raytest method could be developed where you can specify whether the ray is allowed to return something hidden or not?

In SU7 and older model.raytest stopped on hidden layers, but not on hidden entities.
In SU8 it stops on hidden layers and entities, but there is a bug where some rays fail.

kwalkerman

Weird. Are they homing in on anything consistent?

--
Karen

thomthom

@kwalkerman said:

Weird. Are they homing in on anything consistent?

Seems that they made it stop on any entity regardless of visibility - which mean we need to check that our selves and recast the ray.
But also managed to introduce a new nasty bug.

tomasz

@thomthom said:

Seems that they made it stop on any entity regardless of visibility - which mean we need to check that our selves and recast the ray.

EDIT: In my experience it was always the case.

@thomthom said:

But also managed to introduce a new nasty bug.

Al Hart

OOf...

Glad to find this thread. Several of our placement tools have started failing in SU 8.

We were using raytest to try to find a specific object behind the cursor, and then hiding anything we did not want to locate.

In this example, we are placing a component, and want raytest to ignore the component we are placing (We make it visible so the user can see it). This is from our "spray paint" tool which is trying to place trees randomly on the ground, but not on other trees which we just placed.


            item = model.raytest ray

            #Ignore any elements of the same type we are placing
            hidden_ents = Array.new
            while(item != nil && item[1].at(0).kind_of?(Sketchup;;ComponentInstance) && item[1].at(0).definition == definition)
                hidden_ents.push(item[1][0])
                item[1][0].hidden = true
                item = model.raytest ray
            end
            hidden_ents.each {
                |ent|
                ent.hidden = false
            }

However, in SU 8, hiding the component instance, when it is under the cursor - does not leave it out of the ray test. (We also discovered a nasty bug where we were looping forever if we are over the component being placed)

Can anyone think of a way to place components at the end of a ray, but ignore certain elements. Apparently .hidden will not work, and not even placing them on a temporary hidden layer. I haven't tried deleting them, (and then aborting the delete operation), yet. But it seems pretty painful.

Al Hart

@unknownuser said:

@thomthom said:

Seems that they made it stop on any entity regardless of visibility - which mean we need to check that our selves and recast the ray.

EDIT: In my experience it was always the case.

@thomthom said:

But also managed to introduce a new nasty bug.

In reference to my previous post. Can I just move the ray itself past the point returned and "recast" it. Still, while trying to ignore an entire tree, or other component, this could be painful.

thomthom

@al hart said:

In reference to my previous post. Can I just move the ray itself past the point returned and "recast" it. Still, while trying to ignore an entire tree, or other component, this could be painful.

It's what I do in my wrapper method that ensures the ray doesn't stop on hidden entities.

Al Hart

@thomthom said:

@al hart said:

It's what I do in my wrapper method that ensures the ray doesn't stop on hidden entities.

[EDIT: I see some code in a previous post. I will try it out]

Thanks,

Is there some code here in this thread already, or can you show me what you are doing to skip hidden geometry?

Al Hart

Thanks tons, ThomThom, by tool is working again!

thomthom

@al hart said:

@thomthom said:

@al hart said:

It's what I do in my wrapper method that ensures the ray doesn't stop on hidden entities.

[EDIT: I see some code in a previous post. I will try it out]

Thanks,

Is there some code here in this thread already, or can you show me what you are doing to skip hidden geometry?

Bottom of first post:
http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=180&t=28059#p243311

Chris Fullmer

I've used a little recursive method to check what I am hitting. If I do not like what I hit, I recall the method supply the Point3d of the last thing I hit. It remakes the ray and casts it again until I hit what I'm after.

It has worked perfectly so far. But I'm concerned about the rays that don't work if they are shot through the groundplane? Is that still an issue in 8?

thomthom

@chris fullmer said:

It has worked perfectly so far. But I'm concerned about the rays that don't work if they are shot through the groundplane? Is that still an issue in 8?

"Still an issue in 8"? Has it been an issue before?
At it turned out - it's not only when the ray passes through the axis planes - but also at random times. model.raytest is fubar in SU8 - not reliable.

kwalkerman

Ok, so here's an issue with the new way raytest works (ie it sees all entities, visible and hidden).

There are times when a ray will hit multiple entities at the same point. In SU 7, model.raytest will return only one of those entities. It's easy to find all entities by hiding any entities that are hidden, but under the new version of SU, only one of the entities will be found. Another thing, which is interesting, is that if there are multiple entities in the same location, SU will return the same entity first, regardless of the direction of the ray.

Try this code:


model = Sketchup.active_model
p1 = Geom;;Point3d.new(0,0,0)
p2 = Geom;;Point3d.new(20,20,0)
p3 = Geom;;Point3d.new(0,20,0)
f = model.entities.add_face(p1,p2,p3)
model.entities.add_group([f])
model.entities.add_face(p1,p2,p3)
p4 = Geom;;Point3d.new(5,10,-5)
p5 = Geom;;Point3d.new(5,10,5)
ray1 = [p4, Geom;;Vector3d.new(0,0,1)]
item1 = model.raytest ray1
ray2 = [p5, Geom;;Vector3d.new(0,0,-1)]
item2 = model.raytest ray2
item1 == item2

#==> returns TRUE!

I can't currently think of a ruby workaround for this. The new version of raytest will limit the ability to get all objects at a certain location.

As I suggested before, I think it makes the most sense to extend the native raytest so that you can specify whether or not you want the ray to be allowed to show hidden objects.

--
Karen

Al Hart

@kwalkerman said:

I can't currently think of a ruby workaround for this. The new version of raytest will limit the ability to get all objects at a certain location.

--
Karen

It would be fairly painful, but you could start an undo operation, delete each item as it is found (rather than changing the starting point of the ray, ot just hiding the object) and continue until all objects are found (saving their object IDs), then abort the operation to restore everything to the database.

tomasz

@kwalkerman said:

As I suggested before, I think it makes the most sense to extend the native raytest so that you can specify whether or not you want the ray to be allowed to show hidden objects.

I have proposed it TWO years ago.... G Team isn't responsive.

Chris Fullmer

Hmm, nevermind. I retract this post, I was confused

thomthom

Right, so the raytest should have an argument to ignore hidden.

Al Hart

@thomthom said:

Right, so the raytest should have an argument to ignore hidden.

And, hopefully, they will make it an optional argument, so they don't break all the existing ruby files once again.