[Plugin][$] Profile Builder 2

TommyK

I do love this plugin. It so nearly feels native to SketchUp. For making geometry, it works great. I have a few suggestions to improve it though in the realms information (the "I" in BIM).

Components over groups, please. Currently, PB creates groups from profiles. Groups are more limited in SU than components. For instance, you can't explore "Component Options" of a group. This would be useful for people who use Classifer.
When using assemblies, it appears that PB deletes everything within the assembly group and redraws. This results in any layers or classifier information that have been assigned to the individual groups within the assembly to be lost whenever the assembly is rebuilt (when changing path, for example). Is there a way to retain each group (if it still exists), but alter the geometry within them?
Profiles and assembly components are skp files, as you say. It would be great if these are imported into SU as components and the profile is made within the component that is imported. What this does is that any information within the component is preserved in the profile member. This includes component description, Classifier information etc etc.

Other little thing:

when clicking to edit the profile of the profile member within a group (in the profile assembly window), it works the first time, but subsequent clicks to edit other profile members shows no change to the profile builder window. Strangely, right-clicking the window and selecting "reload" seems to work.

Thanks for a great plugin! I would use it even more if it could do the information side of things.

utiler

Hi Dale, Happy New Year!

A few queries re: building assemblies and where to use components or not.

See attached images which I've added questions to each. Cheers, look forward to hearing back ASAP.

eselick

Hi Whaat
I'm wondering if you are aware of the problems that I and many others who are on Windows 10 are having when we try to download the Trial version of PB 2.

A few seconds after the download dialog loads Sketchup crashes, usually with no error message or only a Windows, "this program has stopped working ..." message.

All of this is quite fully documented at the Sketchup forum:
http://forums.sketchup.com/t/extension-warehouse-download-attempt-crashes-su/18869/27

Hopefully you can check it out and help get it fixed so that we can have a look at PB2.

Thanks
Elliot

Whaat

@eselick said:

Hi Whaat
I'm wondering if you are aware of the problems that I and many others who are on Windows 10 are having when we try to download the Trial version of PB 2.

A few seconds after the download dialog loads Sketchup crashes, usually with no error message or only a Windows, "this program has stopped working ..." message.

All of this is quite fully documented at the Sketchup forum:
http://forums.sketchup.com/t/extension-warehouse-download-attempt-crashes-su/18869/27

Hopefully you can check it out and help get it fixed so that we can have a look at PB2.

Thanks
Elliot

Yes, thank you for the report. I am aware of the issue and the SketchUp EW team is working to help resolve this. I have made a change to the EW PB2 page. Please try again to see if the issue has been resolved.

Thanks!
Dale

Whaat

@utiler said:

Hi Dale, Happy New Year!

A few queries re: building assemblies and where to use components or not.

See attached images which I've added questions to each. Cheers, look forward to hearing back ASAP.

Hi utiler,

Thanks for the images. I am very aware of the issues you are facing. There is currently no easy way to do what you want. The workaround is to make the fence using two assemblies, one for the posts and another for the fence boards. The one with the fence boards must be created by clicking the center of each post. I am not sure if this makes sense. I hope to make this much easier in a future update.

utiler

Thanks Dale, yes makes sense. I was just hoping to be able to push PB2 a bit that's all.

Cheers.

Pixero

I'd love to be able to manually exchange a component somewhere and still be able to adjust the curve afterwards.

Whaat

@pixero said:

I'd love to be able to manually exchange a component somewhere and still be able to adjust the curve afterwards.

Interesting idea, Pixero! Would you be able to describe a use-case for this feature? Thanks

Pixero

Here is a quick example of one case. There might be ways of doing some thing like this with different start and end components but I think this way would be easier for a lot of cases where you dont know the exact position until after its drawn.

eselick

Hi
I'm just getting started with this amazing and wonderful plugin.

My problem is that when I save my assembly and then reuse it a new model, one of the components, #2 "Corner" in the original, is missing in the saved Assembly.

Here's the original Assembly dialog from the skp where I created it followed by the one that's loaded from the Assembly browser:

There are only 3 instead of 4 components in the second one.
Ideas?

Whaat

@eselick said:

Hi
I'm just getting started with this amazing and wonderful plugin.

My problem is that when I save my assembly and then reuse it a new model, one of the components, #2 "Corner" in the original, is missing in the saved Assembly.

Here's the original Assembly dialog from the skp where I created it followed by the one that's loaded from the Assembly browser:

There are only 3 instead of 4 components in the second one.
Ideas?

Hello eselick,

Thank you for the report. Can you please do the following:

Open the Ruby Console and check for error messages when you save and load the assembly.
Send the assembly SKP file to mindsightstudios AT gmail DOT com for me to test

Thanks!

rv1974

I'm not sure in which topic it should be asked.. Luckily you're the author of both plugins (Profile Builder and Sketch UV.
I applied tube SketchUV's tube mapping to the curb generated with PB.
As you can see the vertical seams are distorted- they are not perpendicular to the 'U' path (I put the desired look above).
Could you advice how to get the desired result with the present tools?
And may be it's a good idea to have 'generate UV's' in the PB v.3?

Whaat

@rv1974 said:

I'm not sure in which topic it should be asked.. Luckily you're the author of both plugins (Profile Builder and Sketch UV.
I applied tube SketchUV's tube mapping to the curb generated with PB.
As you can see the vertical seams are distorted- they are not perpendicular to the 'U' path (I put the desired look above).
Could you advice how to get the desired result with the present tools?
And may be it's a good idea to have 'generate UV's' in the PB v.3?

Hi rv1974,

Before you create the object using PB2, select the desired textured material from the drop-down list in PB2. Then, you should get your desired result automatically. SketchUV applies a different UV mapping scheme than PB2.

rv1974

Damn.. I actually use it but in this case it didn't popped up in my brain.
You should emphasize this amazing feature in you promotions!
Many thanks!

rv1974

Hm.. We've got problem on curved areas though.
PB applies the same texture coordinates on every segment.

rv1974

..Meanwhile I found partial workaround:
1.Select curved areas
2.Apply tube mapping
3.Triangulate to eliminate 100500 materials after export.

Could this issue be addressed in future?

Catalyst

Thanks for this great plugin.
When using the assembler inside a component, the assembler does not respect the component's axes.
I'm using SU Pro 2016

eselick

Hi Whaat

My assemblies are getting complicated and I wonder if there is any way to automatically combine them?

This would make it much easier to get amazing results since they could be created in a modular fashion and debugged and re-used more easily.

If this cannot be done, can you think of any way to get a report on the assembly that would contain a listing of components and the dialog attributes such as elevation etc.?

Thanks again for all the fun.
Elliot

Whaat

@eselick said:

Hi Whaat

My assemblies are getting complicated and I wonder if there is any way to automatically combine them?

This would make it much easier to get amazing results since they could be created in a modular fashion and debugged and re-used more easily.

If this cannot be done, can you think of any way to get a report on the assembly that would contain a listing of components and the dialog attributes such as elevation etc.?

Thanks again for all the fun.
Elliot

Sorry, I am not understanding what you mean by 'combine them'. can you elaborate?

eselick

Hi Whaat

By combining I mean adding two pre-existing assemblies together. These would be assemblies that had been created to be used together.

I just made a combination exterior siding and stud wall. I dumped the siding assembly into a model where the wall assembly was open. I then added profiles and components from the siding assembly in the model to the wall assembly. I used eye dropper tool which did save some time.

But I'm lazy and would have preferred to the use an eyedropper like tool with a "+" symbol that would have just "combined" the second assembly into the first with one click. This would have saved me some quite a bit of work and been guaranteed to be error-free.

Hope that explains it

Elliot