Learning Dynamic Components
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I wanted to post this question here on this forum, because I'm only finding outdated material and videos with any kind of instruction about DC's.
Can anyone please direct me to a good resource for learning the language of how to develop DC's from start to finish?
Appreciate the help folks.
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Well, DC's have not changed at all since they were released. So any material should still be relevant.
When I dug in and started trying to learn, I rememeber being frustrated by the info being scattered and difficult to put together. I still do not know where any comprehensive resource is. I would suggest picking a task and trying to do it. A great example is fence that you can scale and it adds new boards instead of stretching the fence. That is a very common need of DC's.
I think there is a fairly decent tutorial somewhere out there about how to make a picket fence too. Start with that one if you can find it
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I think that the way DCs were implemented is a little more complicated that they should be. Not complicated as in difficult to understand, but rather tedious. To make a window frame that can be stretched, for example, you need to have a minimum of 8 objects with various interconnected parameters (4 corners plus 4 straight edges connecting them). When they were first released I had hoped it would have been implemented similar to (but with improvements) autocad's DCs -- to stretch something you draw a box around what should stretch (just as you would select it yourself) and add a grab tag. Much simpler.
I haven't seen almost any DCs other than VERY basic ones (color change, or on/off, open/closed type of behavior). It's a shame; I had been hoping to see a breakthrough of cool new components.
It IS still worth learning -- because it's very easy -- but I wouldn't expect it to change your work-flow drastically.
If someone has had a different experience with me and knows much betters methods for making (automating the production of) DCs please post.
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There is a whole subforum under the general SU Discussion forum on DC's. Maybe you can find some interesting discussions/examples there (I am moving the topic there by the way if it is not a problem)
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Actually DC are really quite useful in lots of ways but most of all for animation -- if we could export the animations as such it could be a very useful tool.
I'm also a big fan of the randomizeability of DC, which I definitely think could be more explored.
I have some video tutorials coming out soon that cover alot of the DC basics (a couple hours worth) as well as a large section on Layout... but they are not out yet.
Best,
Jason. -
@jason_maranto said:
Actually DC are really quite useful in lots of ways but most of all for animation -- if we could export the animations as such it could be a very useful tool.
I'm also a big fan of the randomizeability of DC, which I definitely think could be more explored.
I have some video tutorials coming out soon that cover alot of the DC basics (a couple hours worth) as well as a large section on Layout... but they are not out yet.
Best,
Jason.Thanks Jason,
I would be interested in seeing what you come up with. Please sent anything you complete, and I would be happy to beta test it for you. erhart.jackb@gmail.com Thanks
And thanks to everyone else that posted their opinion. I was hoping to find out there were others interested in moving the DC concept forward.
Appreciate all your input.
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I made a DC that starts as a single house, then as you scale it larger, it adds homes down the street, effectively making it a quick way to populate a city block. Then each house can change randomly its height, color, trim details, front yard, porch setttings, etc. It was pretty complex. It works ok, I see a few things I could do better if I ever remade it. All in all, I think DC's a pretty cool for their parametric options - I've never really needed the animation because like was mentioned, it can't be exported (at this point, a plugin could make it work).
Anyhow, once I learned DC's I quickly realized I really just wanted to know Ruby, so I dug in and learned ruby. But DC's are a great start into programming based model creation.
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I agree about Ruby being much more powerful -- but what I like about DC vs. Ruby is the self contained nature of it... anybody anywhere who has any newer version of Sketchup (7 and up) can open it and use it without plugins even entering the discussion.
I'm no programmer, I can hand code SVG and HTML and I can read and hack Ruby a bit, but very little of that is needed to make DC work.
Actually there are times I like to use the DC interface as a numerical modeling tool -- for certain transformations it can be the best way to get into tight areas where the normal tools get confused by the inferencing engine... although a proper widget ruby would nix that
Best,
Jason. -
Just in case you missed the support pages.
SketchUp › Help articles › Beyond SketchUp › Dynamic Components
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