@fredo6 said:

Dave,

I would need to have your model with

• the shape to drill
• the set of faces to be used as a stencil.

That would help me to troubleshoot

Fredo

I just PM'd you...thanks - Dave

Fredo,

Hope you got time for this, because it feels so close...anyway, can you confirm that you're able to make up new stencils and have them work as "punches?" I've found this only works for me if I use your "stock" three sample stencils - the ones you provided as defaults. It lets me pick a new shape that turns yellow and shows all signs of being ready to make a hole, but when I double-click, or try to "orient," etc...no hole results...just a "time elapsed" display.

I also have some Sketchucation plugins-vs-extensions issues/possible confusion. Plugin manager shows current 2/4 version. Later, after finding I was still having problems, I noticed the SUcation Extensions manager still showed the old version (now disabled). I keep thinking there's a need to delete/uninstall old versions, not just disable. Apparently one can disable a plugin and still find that it shows up as the old version, active, but in the SUcation extensions manager. Confusing, to me, anyway.

Mahalo - Dave

Thanks, Fredo...I look forward to punching with surgical precision.

@skogen75 said:

Just found this...awesome indeed. Any tips on how to position the drill on guide points or lines? The stencil seems to disappear when I hover over a guide cross or guideline that intersects a face. I would love to know how to accurately place the drill. Very cool. I'm using SU15.

+1.

I think this is what <pilou » Sat Sep 27, 2014 10:55 am> was describing (along with a workaround?) and if so, I don't get his results, or just don't understand exactly what he was suggesting to do the workaround.

I can NOT get it to punch through any semblance of guidelines, pencil-lines, etc. The stencil disappears as soon as it infers an intersection point - though yes, arrow-keys seem to bring it back as per previous post, but...still...there's no punching going on. Yes, I can punch to my heart's content if I just "get random" with it, but I'm trying to hit precise measurements, not do an art piece where measurements don't matter.

Fantastic capabilities, but for me...entirely hamstrung by this flaw. Help!

Downloaded today with Sketchucation plugin store - Downloads: 3037 [ Version Updated: 2014/10/19 ]

Just got back here, having assumed that when I post on the forum, I'll receive reply notifications by default...(nope?) Thanks, guys.

Clearly I need to commission sdmitch to come up with a full-service version of that stirrup-bender...or I need to tell my boss that I'll be learning Ruby for a while, and not to bother me with any of his silly moneymaking schemes, while I become Ruby-proficient...

sdmitch, as you probably knew, rebar shapes can be almost anything, so it's probably not possible to standardize the bulk of bread-and-butter shapes that will be needed in any given project. I would indeed do as pbacot was describing, using a 'kit of parts' approach. That said, stirrups are a staple that lend themselves to a data-entry box like you created, as are spirals. Basic rebar mats (just big grids of rebar that typically have a max bar-spacing and a minimum concrete "cover" at edges of the grid) are another - and those would be great to have a script for, since it's tedious to calculate the required spacing to optimize the use of steel based on those two criteria. I don't do this all the time by a long shot, but that's about all the 'standard' items I can think of, that is, those that wouldn't require custom-for-each-design drawing.

pbacot - thanks for pointing out 2D tools (in particular the capability to fillet) - that's what I needed, though the filleting tool would be all I'd use from that plugin for rebar work, since it's almost always lines in 3-space that need to be filleted. Seems an 8-sided circle is plenty fine; I might go with less.

Seems quite surprising to me that there's not a 'stock' filleting tool included with SU - hasn't all other CAD software included this as a standard-issue item for many years?

I'm seeking simple, efficient method of drawing rebar details for concrete projects, but come up empty-handed afte Googling a bit. It need not be photo-realistic, but geometry should be about right (basic diameters of bars & bend-radii). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=viDbnN-ssHY shows a method that I'd use, but I think the plugins he relied on are now defunct ("fillet," anyway, seems not to exist).

The follow-me tool would seem an obvious choice, but will it result in a bulky file that's slow to manipulate, once I've got a few hundred rebar shapes placed in my drawing?

Also, how can rebar bend-radii be created easily from square joints, starting from straight line-segments in three planes? (Rebar isn't bent with a sharp 90-degree bend.)

Thanks for suggestions - Dave

@sdmitch said:

The file you downloaded, I assume from the Plugin Store, should have been a .rbz file ...

b-b-b-but... I got it from your first post, which lists it as an .rb :
ATTACHMENTS
Bolt MakerXII.rb
Bolt Maker XII - The final edition
(22.16 KiB) Downloaded 1165 times

I'm an infrequent user of SU so maybe that's why I never even though to go to the store this time - found your plugin by googling "sketchup bolt plugin" - which of course doesn't necessarily take one to the store, and in my case, brought me to this thread.

ANYWAY - Since I last posted, I downloaded a trial SU2015, copied over most extensions (err...that is, once I found the new plugins folder), including the aforementioned .rb, and indeed, it works...at least once, that is. Thanks for the prods and nudges.

--Dave

Thanks for the encouragement and handholding - I don't know what else to try.

I just now deleted the .rb from my plugins folder, then redownloaded it (version VII). The only unusual/annoying issue in the process of reinstalling it seemed familiar from previous plugin installations: I wasn't allowed to directly download it to my plugins folder, so I put it in "downloads" first, then moved it to plugins (and had to "request" administrator permission to get it to move, but that's an every-time annoyance that I expect.)

As before, the bolt parameters can be entered, but on moving the cursor to a test-slab, I get only the standard arrow-cursor, no ability to create guide lines or pick points. I'm suspecting my Sketchup installation is somehow corrupted and maybe it's time to bite the bullet and get whatever the latest version is...one other old plugin (that I often had trouble with before) also doesn't work, though ("hole on solid") and that might be more evidence of corruption.

Are plugins capable of bad interaction/incompatibility?

@box said:

Works for me, are you using it correctly?

ummm...no...thanks for the GIF covering centering, etc - it's illustrative but still leaves me guessing. Maybe I do still have a problem. (I also watched the video on developer's blog - suggests to me that something basic about my tape-measure guidelines is running in another mode or just wonky - I never get a red-crosshairs/Z-axis guideline inferred from the X/Y guidelines I can create, as it appears is... normal behavior...?)

Other than that, since the GIF runs endlessly and we can't see which tools are selected, it's maybe less than clear what's being clicked at some times, other than the obvious plugin tool selections, and where each of the two modes starts (offset vs pick-points). I assume the sequence is something like this:
select the plugin
select bolt parameters
click OK
(somehow - how?) delineate the offset in X and Y
(somehow - how?) red crosshairs appear (doesn't do that for me)

I guess either you've selected the tape-measure tool to create those guidelines and we can't see that happen, or the plugin has a built-in pick-point/guideline creating routine - and mine isn't working. So I tried to create guidelines and a pick-point using the tape-measure tool, since I see no other option. But no luck with that, either. As mentioned above, the GIF shows the Z-axis guideline appearing with one click in a magical way that I've not seen, letting the pick-point be selected with just two clicks...or so it appears. I get no red-crosshairs cursor-change under any circumstances. Hints?

Does this plugin still work, eg with Sketchup Pro 2013? I get no signs of life, though it's installed and appears to let me enter bolt basic data per samples in original post.