Eureka.

Thank you every one.
As a result of the many inputs on this thread (esp @Dave R)- I now have exactly what I wanted - with very little work! Here's what I did (still some things that I don't understand though):

1. Took the inside of my two lines and offset (the line) it exactly half way.
   (don't understand the benefit of converting it to a Catmull Spline - perhaps Dave R can explain...and when I did it, I noticed some funny loops, so I performed this procedure without that step.)

2. Edited the ruby code of the Stepping Stones.rb, to break the single tile that it creates, into two tiles seperated by the specified gap. While I was tinkering, I put the created tiles in a group.
   Dave R -- when I mentioned that in my last post, I was referring to splitting so I got two stacked tiles. Not the seperation between the tiles.

That's it. Running the script gives me lovely tiles all the way along the coping edge.
My last remaining challenge is rounding the edges using a v-ray bump map (edgetex), rather than using fredo6 rounded corners, which will create a lot of unneeded geometry. No matter what I try - it doesn't work. I think it may be a v-ray bug.

Pool Coping Edgev2 complete.skp

So much good stuff in each line of your note! See below:

@unknownuser said:

You didn't do what I wrote and adjust the segment length in the curve. As Solo suggested, make the curve the centerline.

I did do that. At least I'm pretty sure I did.

@unknownuser said:

make the curve the centerline

Cool...but color me dumb - how do I create that centerline. Offset gives me "two" lines. Is there a way to force it to one? If adjust its size to exactly half, both lines disappear.

@unknownuser said:

Pilou's suggestion of using Stepping Stones is a good one as it will automatically trim the tiles and leave you with a grout line between tiles.

Awesome. If I could now figure out a way of cutting those stones with a 1/8" gap on the cut...I'm in business.

@unknownuser said:

replacing your curve with a 10s Catmull Spline.

That's cool too. How did you replace my curve with a 10s Catmull spline?

You solution is clever -- thanks --- but I am still left with these triangle gaps.
The damn coping is so big it will be painful to manually deal with them all!
See pics below.
This time I am attaching the actual skp file too in case you or anyone can get closer...

Pool Copibg Edge.skp

Hi,

Struggling with this one. Hopefully the pictures will explain:

My starting point is two paths, imported from a dwg. These paths are for the edge of pool.

I need to create coping tiles between the two paths.
On the inside curve, the length of the tile should be 8". On the outside curve, it does't matter.
As an added complication, I need to create two rows within the curves.

I've tried to show the desired result, in this manual section below:

With the vast array of plugins available, I had thought there would be some way of not having to manually create each tile (which also has a bevelled edge).

But I am bashing my head against the wall.

Seems like the steps should be:

1. Close the curves
2. Create middle "morphed line" between outer edges (dunno how to do this!).
3. Move along inside edge, and every 8" draw a perpendicular line until one hits the outside edge. (dunno how to do this).
4. Take each created face, one by one, and extrude, say an inch. Then apply rounded corner to top face. Move to next face. (Dunno how to do this!).
5. Put all faces into a group.

Must be a solution!

and one more teeny thing for utter coolness is to support an alternating material...for a checkerboard style.
I can think of two ways of (easily??) doing this:

1. If different materials are applied to front and back of face and Current Texture is chosen, alternate material, starting with front then back -OR-
2. If a "special seed value" like -1 is chosen, alternate between the chosen materials in selection via the rand_tex option.

I hope you can tell that I just LOVE your plugin and am using it to figure out how to tile a 15,000 sq.ft house!

I promise to stop now!

Oh gosh - thank you so much that would be awesome!

If it helps, I have attached a simple SU (2013 for max compatibility) file that shows the concept.
The polygon on the left is a simple version of a target shape with the desired tile centerpoint shown as the intersection of two guidelines.
The shape on the right is my current workaround -- which is to force the shape to be equidistant around this target point, and then to go back and trim the excess. This is not too much of a pain on this simple example, but becomes very time consuming when one of the side corridor arms, bends at say 45 degrees! Hopefully it makes more sense to look at than to explain in text!

Oh - as a tiny cosmetic point, if I choose a tight gap width of say 3/16" (vs. 1/4") it works fine, and is seemingly saved to defaults. When I next open the plugin, it shows as 1/4" not 3/16". I'm pretty sure its storing the right number, but the display is formatted to a single digit fraction. Would be great to expand the formatting to two digits.

Thanks again for a truely time saving plugin.

s.

FloorGen test.skp

what.a.great.plugin!
thank you.

I have a quick question for either the patient author or some of you other experts --
I want the grid origin to be at a specific point on the face (which is neither the center nor the corner).
I note in the ruby code, there is this line:
ctr=face.bounds.center;

which looks like the line where it picks the center of the face as the origin...any ideas on how to set this instead, to the point where I clicked on the face?

would make this plugin purffect..

Hi,

When using SU with heavy use of vray proxies, often materials get screwed up and need manual relinking. V-Ray reports which BITMAP it can't load at render time.

I wrote a tiny script to iterate through the materials collection and query each texture to see if it matches the path of the BITMAP reported above.

Unfortunately, many v-ray materials (particuylarly those in "multi materials" do not show up in the sketchup collection (including the SU material library window)...and only show in the v-ray material editor. How can I:

1. Find those materials.
2. Check any texture paths and compare with the BITMAP path collected above.

Any ideas?

Thanks.

Hi,

Odd but hopefully related question:

I have a large SKP file with loads of both v-ray and non-vray materials in it.
I note, when I do a distributed render, that it grabs relevant bitmaps from the Network share that the material was loaded from.
Now, I want to use this file on another network. I (at least I think I) need to:

1. Find those materials within the project that are v-ray materials.
2. Copy these materials to a location in my new Network environment.
3. Replace the impacted materials with those copied in #2.

Obviously #2 is easy...but how do I do #1 and #3? I can write basic ruby if that helps...your plugin obviously could be the engine, but doesn't offer #1 or #3 as far as I can tell!

Thanks.

OK - getting close -- very close -- but stuck on getting the right rotation (and I'm sure there's a cleaner way of doing all this):

The issue is that I'm retrieving the wrong rotation. If I create a rotZ attribute on the entity I'm trying to replace, it shows (for example) 135 degrees. But the instance.transformation array gives me a z-rotation of -45. I'm stumped! I've attached a sample scene. The dynamic door is RED and my targets are, well, not.

door test scene.skp

` model = Sketchup.active_model
entities = Sketchup.active_model.entities
definitions = model.definitions
component = definitions['LDOOR']

model.start_operation("Create Door")
#create a new instance
transformation = Geom::Transformation.new([0,0,0])
componentinstance = entities.add_instance(component, transformation)
puts 'we have added a new instance (GUID:' + componentinstance.guid + ')'
$dc_observers.get_latest_class.redraw(componentinstance)
model.commit_operation

model.start_operation("XForm Door")
sel=model.selection
instance = sel[0]

x= instance.transformation.origin.x
y= instance.transformation.origin.y
z= instance.transformation.origin.z

d= instance.definition.bounds.height
h= instance.definition.bounds.depth
w= instance.definition.bounds.width
r= Math.asin(instance.transformation.to_a[4]).radians.round

componentinstance.transformation = Geom::Transformation.new([x,y,z])

d=2 ;#override depth

#instance.attribute_dictionaries["dynamic_attributes"].each_pair{|k,v|p k;p v;puts}
ad = componentinstance.attribute_dictionary "dynamic_attributes"
ad["_lenx_formula"]=w.inspect
	
ad["_leny_formula"]=d.inspect

ad["_lenz_formula"]=h.inspect

ad["_rotz_formula"]=r.inspect

$dc_observers.get_latest_class.redraw(componentinstance)
entities.erase_entities instance

model.commit_operation
#`