Forgot to mention:

• Yes to Find/Replace. Next version, though...
• Undo is in there. Just make sure the editor window is highlighted when you do Command-Z

Cheers,
Alex

@slbaumgartner said:

More tidbits

Thanks so much for the thorough checks. Some comments:

• The code highlighter is indeed quite space sensitive. That I believe is just how CodeMirror works. I'll look into it, but I don't think I can change that.

• Good catch with the Command key. Wasn't even thinking of that...

• I'll add show_modal on the mac. Makes perfect sense...

• I left the save as feature in there to save me from needing another button and to have a fail-safe. Might be good to add a simple save, though.

• I'll update the snippet. It's actually updated in the code

• The selection explorer buttons need more descriptive icons, I think. I'll look into that.

• The class/method highlighting is indeed a bit brute-force-ish right now. If anyone wants to work with me on making that more reliable, then I'd very much appreciate that. For example, methods should only show up with the respective classes. All of that is implementable in CodeMirror. It just needs tome TLC...

Cheers,
Alex

Have you ever wanted to…

• make sure you never miss a blog post by the Trimble SketchUp folks?
• stay up-do-date with your favorite SketchUp blogs?
• follow what’s going on at SketchUcation?
• keep an eye on Twitter and Facebook?
• make sure you never miss any of my blog posts?
• do all of this while you are working with SketchUp?

Then consider yourself lucky! I just posted a SketchUp News plugin that lets you do all of this – right inside SketchUp.

Even if you don’t usually use SketchUp plugins, this is the one to have!

Get your copy at the link below. Oh, and did I mention it is free?

SketchUp News Extension • [as]

This small extension adds a news browser to the SketchUp Help menu. Now you can follow news and tutorial blog posts but also tweets as well as forum discussions all in one place – without even leaving SketchUp! Clicking a link will get you to the original article (on the source website).

[as] (www.alexschreyer.net)

Enjoy!

Could anyone with a Mac check this, too, please... I did some Mac checks but I develop on Windows.

Cheers,
Alex

@jolran said:

The quit button collapses when minimizing the window horisontal.

I thought I fixed that in v.3.1... Could you re-download and install and see if it still happens?

Cheers,
Alex

Hi All,

Thanks so much for the feedback! It's greatly appreciated. Some comments:

@dacastror said:

I just watch a possible error in the syntax highlighting

I know about that quirk. It goes away if you leave more spaces. Try:

c = Math::PI * periodos / n

instead of

c = Math::PI*periodos/n

@unknownuser said:

can you draw with this or am i just lost on the forums again?

Rich is right... code away!!!

@trogluddite said:

The only thing I think I'd miss is the ability to search the code to find "that" method, where I know that a bug I just noticed is snuggled!
I also get a slight graphical glitch with the output pane at the bottom - intermittent white lines when scrolling the display that don't line up with the text.

Keep working with it and let me know what you think. I have written the Sketchfab plugin on it and I find it now much easier than external editors. The only caveat is that I can't edit this plugin in the editor or things go bonkers...

Search is actually implemented nicely in CodeMirror. I just have to expose that in the UI. Goes on the wishlist.

Yep, I noticed the lines in the results, too. I only get them when I scroll up. Have to figure out what it is.

@sdmitch said:

...and was constantly mistakenly hitting the tab key to indent lines so it will be nice not having to add spaces.

The Tab and Shift-Tab work like a charm. You can even set your preferences to TABs (of varying width) or spaces.

Cheers,
Alex

Hi All,

As you may have seen in the Plugins forum or on my site, I updated my Ruby Code Editor plugin. It now has code completion and a more responsive editor (i.e. I finally updated CodeMirror). Although I have tested it on all of my machines, I would like to have someone else test it, too.

So if you are interested, download it from the link below and let me know if you run into any bugs:

SketchUp Ruby Code Editor • [as]

This code editor extension offers an easy-to-use and visually appealing way to write and modify Ruby scripts directly within SketchUp. These scripts can then be used to create geometry, add functionality or add data within the SketchUp 3D modeling environment. The SketchUp Ruby API provides an extensive set of functions to automatize SketchUp in many ways or create scripted, computational geometry.

[as] (www.alexschreyer.net)

By the way, this project is on GitHub - in case anyone wants to help out with it...

GitHub - alexschreyer/Ruby-Code-Editor-for-SketchUp: A nice-looking code editor for SketchUp. Supports Ruby and various other languages.

A nice-looking code editor for SketchUp. Supports Ruby and various other languages. - alexschreyer/Ruby-Code-Editor-for-SketchUp

GitHub (github.com)

Cheers,
Alex

Congratulations from me, too. This is some great news for all of us...

Cheers,
Alex

Thanks for the tip! I should really add it to the RCE.

With regards to loading from web failing: Have you tried adding a random number parameter to the end of the URL, so that it doesn't get cached by IE? As in: http://dl.google.com/sketchup/gsu8/docs/en/SketchUp8RefcardWin.pdf?p=randomnumber

Just updated the plugin to v.1.4.

Cheers,
Alex

Hi All,

This is an exciting week! My book “Architectural Design with SketchUp: Component-Based Modeling, Plugins, Rendering, and Scripting” is now available from all of the online booksellers and should be in stores soon, too.

After a year of writing and a few months of editing and finalizing, it feels really good to see the final product now on store shelves and on Amazon’s website. Wiley did an amazing job putting the book together and I am really happy how it looks.

As you will likely see through increased traffic, a lot of the SketchUcation plugins are mentioned in there! If you want to find out what this book is all about, check out this page on my companion site:

301 Moved Permanently

(sketchupfordesign.com)

or view sample pages on Amazon.com:

http://goo.gl/UJiRa

Kindle and E-Book versions are also available! Hope you like it...

Cheers,
Alex

Okay, it's in the MakerBot now. Here's a better version. Still not perfect but quite okay.

You can also look at the 3D model on Sketchfab: http://skfb.ly/l4hf1c0ba

Cheers,
Alex

First attempt of a combined vase with Curviloft. Not bad, I just have to tweak alignment...

@tig said:

The Queen and Prince Philip had a not dissimilar combo vase made showing both of them - not readily possible with SUp's FollowMe, unless you make two halves and merge their meshes around a half-circle path [CurviLoft, EEby???, Artisan ?] and then merges two mirrored parts... It ends up looking wonky and poorly made until your brain clicks into 'negative mode'...

Wow, great idea! Now if I can get four faces on the four "sides"... Come to think of it: I might try this with a cube.

@dale said:

The only example of when being negative is quite positive.

Haha...

Cheers,
Alex

I wanted to create an unusual family portrait. This one was made using SketchUp (with the Follow-Me tool and was ultimately printed on my new MakerBot. See if you can make out the faces...

The tutorial is posted here:

Turn Yourself into a Vase with SketchUp! (i.e. Making Revolved Portrait Sculptures from Silhouettes for 3D Printing) | SketchUp for Design

You likely have seen the effect before: An image like the one above shows some shapes that look like vases. After a little while, however, you notice that the curved shapes that define the vases are actually faces - or more specific: the negative silhouette of the faces.

SketchUp for Design (sketchupfordesign.com)

Makes for a great personal holiday present...

Cheers,
Alex

@dan rathbun said:

Due to browser security restrictions, most "Ajax" requests are subject to the same origin policy; the request can not successfully retrieve data from a different domain, subdomain, or protocol.

So be sure you create a Javascript Object holding your data, not a simple String or Array.

Yes, I had been trying/fighting with the same origin thing on this and I believe my problem here was that I was requesting data from a different server. This required me to do this as a JSON/JSONP request, which I could only send as a string, hence the resulting GET request for the POST AJAX function in jQuery. Catch-22...

Cheers,
Alex

@dan rathbun said:

Some day all SU users will have a full Ruby install. (fingers crossed)

I am all for that!!!

Cheers and thanks!
Alex

I tried Ajax via jquery before. The problem was that I was moving a lot of data (a base64 encoded model) from Ruby to jQuery and somehow even the Ajax post function in jquery would only send the request as a get request. In any case, I wanted to keep the data on the ruby side and sending it using post_url makes sense for efficiency but unfortunately the function doesn't know what to do with the returned data.

I already filed a FR for this but I thought you guys had an alternative method.

Cheers,
Alex

Is there an easy way to call the Net functions without having full Ruby installed? I thought that was a requirement. Would be best if I could use them, though.

It doesn't seem to make any difference in functionality if I use allow_actions_from_host...

Cheers,
Alex

Hi All,

Does anyone know of a way to capture returned data from a post_url operation? This is something I came across in my Sketchfab uploader plugin and I can't figure out how to get around it. In short:

I send some JSON data to an API via post_url:

dlg.post_url("https://api.sketchfab.com/model","somedata")

This prompts some returned data like the following, which I would like to capture for display:

{"success": false, "error": "bad api call"}

Since post_url doesn't return anything, I get on Windows IE trying to save a download and on the Mac this string replacing my WebDialog's content. Would be so much better if I could assign the post-url result to a variable.

Cheers,
Alex