Taking a model to particular coordinates

TIG

@tig said:

@gaieus said:

And you have all the powers to move any topic belonging there, TIG!

I know but hopefully, this is now 'dead' so moving it now seems a waste of time...

Ah yes, so the topic has grown to 3 pages ever since.

Anyway, looking forward to the "doh" moment (not as if I understood any of the discussion here - maybe except for Rich's gibbering)

The announcement of the demise of the topic was a little premature [to paraphrase Mark Twain [again]]...
There's also the PMing that you don't see

borg.stef

This programm is actually making me crazy. What I am doing is that Matlab gives me a list example like this in a text file.
milling
500 (x axis)
400 (y axis)
0 (rot)
drilling
600
.....etc
and then I use this text file in the program above. However it gives me an error: Failed import. strangely enough when I remove the first name and its coordinates and rotation and moves the second one in its place, it works. Do you think this is a problem about the matlab code or sketchup?

TIG

You give us no real example but expect us to help you...
Can you attach a typical file so we can understand what you are trying to extract from the file...
IF the format is as your post suggests...

milling
500 (x axis)
400 (y axis)
0 (rot)
drilling
600 THEN your code needs to find 'milling' and then after that the next two lines are X, Y & the third line 'rot' give your values '.to_f'; when you meet another 'milling' you stop and start again. If you meet another 'drilling' you stop and take a value '.to_f' from the drilling [whatever that is?] etc...
IF you give us an example of the file you are wanting to read in, and what you hope to get out of it to put into your SKP THEN we might be better placed to help you - rather than this current 'bits & bobs' approach which isn't getting anyone anywhere...

borg.stef

ok sorry so let me explain better. So I did a text file containing the following:
milling
500
400
0
drilling
650
100
90
etc....
then the sketchup plugin opens this text file and read line by line. the first line is the name of a .3ds file and it is imported. 500 and 400 are the x and y coordinates where the model will be taken and 0 is the rotation of the model. then it starts again..imports the file drilling.3ds and takes it at 650, 100 and rotates it by 90 degrees.
Till then it's ok.
Now what i had to do is generate the text file using Mathlab and I managed to do that. However when I load this file (generated by matlab) in sketchup it tells me import failed. Then, if I delete the name of the first model, it's x and y coordinates and the rotation ie as below

drilling
650
100
90
etc

It imports al the models correctly.. I don't know if the error is from matlab's side or sketchup's. I hope i explained myself wel now...

TIG

So...
You have data in a file that always has 4 lines for each 'thing'.
The first line is the file-name.
The second line is the X.
The third line is the Y.
The fourth line is the Rotation.
So you need to read the file in steps of four...

lines=IO.readlines(filepath)
i=0 ### always the first element in array 'lines'
(lines.length/4).times{
  f=lines[i].strip
  ###the '.strip' ### removes '\n'; does it need +'.3ds' ???
  x=lines[i+1].strip.to_f
  y=lines[i+2].strip.to_f
  r=lines[i+3].strip.to_f
  ### now do what you want with file 'f',
  ### placing it at 'x' & 'y' with rotation 'r' etc...

  ###
  i=i+4 ### do next 4 lines etc etc...
}

I suspect that you might not be doing the import successfully ???

borg.stef

and where do i write the name of hte file?

borg.stef

and also i need to save the first line in variable machine

borg.stef

this is how i did it.....

	model = Sketchup.active_model
	a = []
	counter = 0
	file = File.new("trial.txt", "r")
	while (line = file.gets)
		a[counter] = line

		if counter % 4 == 0.0     # lines 0 , 4, 8 etc
			 machine = "#{a[counter].strip}.3ds"
		elsif counter % 4 == 1.0   # lines 1 , 5, 9 etc
			x = a[counter].to_f
		elsif counter % 4 == 2.0     # lines 2 , 6, 10 etc
			y = a[counter].to_f
		elsif counter % 4 == 3.0    # lines 3 , 7, 11 etc
			rot = a[counter].to_i
			
		### processing			
		end
		
		counter = counter + 1
	end

Dan Rathbun

@borg.stef said:

and also i need to save the first line in variable machine

so... modify TIG's example, thus:


SUMMARY = true
model = Sketchup.active_model
dir  = Dir.getwd # save current working dir
path = File.expand_path("absolute path to 3ds import dir")

lines = IO.readlines(filepath)
i=0 ### always the first element in array 'lines'
(lines.length/4).times{
  machine = lines[i].strip + '.3ds'
  ### the '.strip' ### removes '\n'; does it need +'.3ds' ???
  x=lines[i+1].strip.to_f
  y=lines[i+2].strip.to_f
  r=lines[i+3].strip.to_f
  ###
  success = model.import( File.join(path,machine), SUMMARY )
  if success
    ### place it at 'x' & 'y' with rotation 'r' etc...
  else
    puts("Error at line #{i}, importing file; #{machine}\n")
  end
  ###
  i=i+4 ### do next 4 lines etc etc...
}
Dir.chdir = dir # reset working dir

TIG

Thanks Dan.

As explained my example is just an example - you need to tailor it to you needs so 'f' >>> 'machine' with the .3ds added etc...
In you example it much more difficult to read than mine.
Your 'processing' is inside the if...end test when rotation is set, BUT my way will work with less likelihood of massing up - you simply gather the 4 lines of data as I show and use the references you set from them to do your processing for each 'machine'...