Name of component

fred2420

Hi i am struggling with what i am sure is something really easy but after hours of search i can't work out how to get the name of the active component as a string. I can set the name in Component attributes.

This is what I've tried
model = Sketchup.active_model
selection = model.selection.name
but its no where near

Cheers in advance

Fred

TIG

model = Sketchup.active_model
name = model.selection[0].name

BUT of course that assumes that the first object in the model's selection has a 'name'. A ComponentInstance or a Group might have a name [BUT it might also be ""], AND many other things like a Face or Edge never will have a name, so you'll then get an error...
If [as I suspect] you want the name of the component-definition of the first item [component-instance] in the current selection... AND you know it is definitely a ComponentInstance then you can use

name = model.selection[0].definition.name

which will return the unique string that is that component-definition's name.
To stop errors you really ought to test for the selection's suitability, 'type' thus...

model = Sketchup.active_model
sel=model.selection
name=nil
if sel and sel[0] and sel[0].is_a?(Sketchup.ComponentInstance)
  name=sel[0].definition.name
end

This way name is either 'nil' or a string, so the next step in your code could be

if name
  ### do something with 'name'
else
  UI.messagebox("Please select a Component Instance to find its Name !")
  return nil
end

fred2420

Nice one that has worked well cheers for the help

fred

thomthom

Note that there is component instance name and component name. Component instance name is the same as a group's name.