[Plugin] VisTools

ishboo

Hey Everyone,

I've written a collection of SketchUp visibility utility functions that allow you to:

Hide selected entities (faces, edges, groups, components).
Hide selected layers.
Isolate (aka Show Only) selected entities.
Isolate selected layers.
Freeze selected groups and components (hide & lock).
Unhide all entities (does not unfreeze frozen items).
Unfreeze all groups/components (does not unhide all items).

These tools work in concert to allow you to mimic an AutoCAD like workflow when working with items in your model.

I've desired the ability to "Freeze" items in a model so I can work on other items without affecting them. This can be accomplished by using the Freeze tool to lock and hide items which allows you to modify and hide/show other entities without affecting the frozen items.

[EDIT]
See Dan Rathbun's VisTools v1.3.3 here

thomthom

Hi and welcome to the forum. You make a generous start here.

pibuz

VERY USEFUL! THANK YOU A LOT!
I'm SO gonna try this!

jsteacy

Intriguing plugin, I tend to isolate an object when I'm working on one but occasionally I need to isolate a whole layer. This will do the trick which is great. Thank you. Though now I need to figure out shortcuts for all these tools...

wolfy

Very nice addition. Thank you and welcome!

ishboo

Thanks everyone! Glad you like it!

CAntonis

Very generous indeed!!!
Thank U very much and I'd like to welcome you too to this great forum!

ishboo

Thanks for all the welcomes and props! Glad to help contribute

srx

Thank you! Good tools in Autocad. I missed it in SketchUp.

ishboo

@srx said:

Thank you! Good tools in Autocad. I missed it in SketchUp.

Yeah, we we're in the same boat... really missed freeze.

Jim

Hi Dana,

Thanks for the utils, they are a nice addition to SketchUp.

Just a note - Toolbar image sizes are 24x24 px for the large size and 16x16 px for the small size. SketchUp does a poor job of resizing your 32x32 icons on the toolbar which is why they don't look as nice as they should. Tool cursors are expected 32x32.

mitcorb

Hi, ishboo:
A few questions, perhaps naive:
Does this plugin disable the native hide/ unhide in sketchup, or work with it?.
Do you see a need to have an "unisolate" feature as is available with Autocad? Or did I miss this in your description?
Salute to you!

ishboo

@jim said:

Hi Dana,

Thanks for the utils, they are a nice addition to SketchUp.

Just a note - Toolbar image sizes are 24x24 px for the large size and 16x16 px for the small size. SketchUp does a poor job of resizing your 32x32 icons on the toolbar which is why they don't look as nice as they should. Tool cursors are expected 32x32.

You're right Jim, I'll have to get around to changing them for the next release.

pptoppto

thanks!

3dita

AWESOME utility!!! working just like a 3ds max fundamental tool!!

Must have, congrats

ishboo

@pptoppto said:

thanks!

@3dita said:

AWESOME utility!!! working just like a 3ds max fundamental tool!!

Must have, congrats

You're both welcome! Glad you like it!

Dan Rathbun

@dan rathbun said:

Language translators, and proofreaders needed.

I did the German (de) ..., and they need proofing.

Good news... Aerilius has volunteered to proof / edit the 'de' German files.

UPDATE: Aerilius finshed proofing / editing the German 'de' files... great job!

Dan Rathbun

Thanks go to Tomot, for knocking out a first edition of the basic Polish 'pl' hash file !!

UPDATE: We will need a proofreader, who's first language is polish.

Dan Rathbun

@ishboo said:

@jim said:

Just a note - Toolbar image sizes are 24x24 px for the large size and 16x16 px for the small size. SketchUp does a poor job of resizing your 32x32 icons on the toolbar which is why they don't look as nice as they should. Tool cursors are expected 32x32.

You're right Jim, I'll have to get around to changing them for the next release.

This action item is complete: Here's the corrected images, for those of you who want to use them right away with ver 1.0

Unzip into your "Plugins/SU_Utils" directory (folder) [you can rename the current "images" folder to "images_bak" first if you desire.]

Unzip into your "Plugins/SU_Utils" directory (folder)

Dan Rathbun

Version 2.x is coming .....

Language translators, and proofreaders needed.

I did the German (de) and Spanish (es) files, and they need proofing. (It's been 35 years since I took Spanish in high school, and I only 'dabble' in German when doing genealogy research.)

The files need to be Unix line endings (EOL) and UTF-8 encoded. They are named "basic_utf8_XX.hash" and "debug_utf8_XX.hash", where XX is replaced by the lowercase language code. (ie: 'en', 'es', 'pl', 'fr', etc...)

The plugin will "auto" find these files, or the user can choose a specific lang from those that are present. (In 'en' mode, the hash files are not actually loaded... as the Ruby code knows what the English strings are.)

<----<<<< PM me if you'd like to do a certain Language translation, or proofread/correct the 'de' or 'es' files.

If a debug hash file is not available for a certain language (but the UI strings in a basic hash file are present,) then the UI will be in that local language, and console output will be in English (if the user has turned it ON.)
So... the priority is on the 'basic' hash files, in order to show the UI elements in the local language.

replaceable parameters
%s will be replaced by a number, like: 34
'%s' will be replaced by an entity flag, like: '#<Sketchup::Face:0x624452c>'

The helper file for pasting into Google Translate.. or whatever
NOTE! The above file, and the hash file in the next post, will be used with ver 2.x,... they do NOT work with ver 1.0 (if that's why y'all are downloading, but not volunteering to translate.)
Translator links: Google Translate : MicroSoft Translator