And coz Im clutter-phobic I only turn "Entity Info" on when I need it

Well, once you've got it reading and returning the info you want I can't imagine its much work to change how the info is presented to you whether a watermark or dialogue box

Doesn't need to add another keystroke, it could just modify the watermark in the top left hand corner of the screen. Normally there would be no watermark but when you are modifying a manifold component the number of components currently being modified would be displayed.

No extra keystrokes required.

Have seen this watermark modification done within sketchyphysics before...

Irrespective of whether the manifold components are hidden or not, it simply needs to notify the user that they're there.....and they're being modified

A simple plugin that does not require activation through the plugins menu. If it is in your plugins folder then it is active.

What it does is "onOpen" of any component, it checks how many components are manifold with the component the user just opened (perhaps using ComponentInstance.manifold?)

It would then give the user a notification saying "you are currently editing {number of manifold components} components".

I know many sketchup users who struggle to keep track of their unique and manifold components in their head and, in a big model, accidentally modify components they didn't intend to.

I wanted to write this as my first ruby project but it seems slightly trickier than a total ruby noob like me can handle.

Anyone got any idea how to make it happen? It would save several people I know a lot of grief.

Quite frankly, I think this should be a part of sketchup.

As is often the case with geometry errors in SP I exploded every bit of geometry within a certain radius of the problem joint (including geometry it was not attached to) and re-grouped it all. It took some time but the problem is solved...

Thanks for the attempt to help Chri

Note to anyone else with these kinds of problems - explode EVERYTHING to base level and regroup.

Ash

Servo is an actuator (like in a radio controlled plane) but in this instance it is a virtual servo used in the physics plugin "sketchyphysics"

I'm placing a servo in a model and no matter what I do it only works along one axis....regardless of where I set the servo's axis.

I have rebuilt all geometry around the servo and placed the servo on every angle imaginable and it still operates on an axis perpendicular to the one I want it to.

Has anyone encountered this before?

Ash

May or may not be relevant but simfonia animation tools does CSV input which I think is severely underutilized in other sketchup plugins

Ash

and I was so enjoying the ever ascending numeration, Sketchup 21 would have been due in 2050 (thought-based modeling plugin comes standard with install package).

I'm jumping out of my lopsided desk chair to see the potential of SP's next iteration, even if its only bug fixes it will be awesome.

I know little about coding but is it worth putting SP on Github and try to get a community of coders around to help Chris out?

Ok, a new release will influence the way SP runs?

Anything I can do to help with this Chris? - Testing etc?

Ash

Sorry, if you want the turbo-boost monitoring software from intel you can download it here:
[url]
http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&ProdId=3052&DwnldID=19105&lang=eng[/url]

Still having a bit of an issue with this - thought I would put it up in case anyone else has the same problem. I got a bit of software off intel's site that tells me when the i7 is using turbo-boost. I can't seem to get turbo boost going while I am manipulating geometry in SU but as soon as I turn on a ray tracer turbo boost immediately comes on.

However, SU keeps stalling out when I move between scenes in a complex model but if I watch the clock speed on intel's software it shows the CPU is hardly working so the stalling is definately caused by the GPU or at least the bottleneck between CPU and GPU. I have Nvidia's software turned up to "performance" and using the max power GPU setting globally but am still having these slow-downs that I didn't get on my old computer....

Any GPU experts can shed some light?

Ash

You guessed right. "righty" refers to the up and down arrows and "rightx" refers to left and right arrows. If you plug in a joystick it will act in the same way.

"lefty" refers to the keys "w" and "s" and "leftx" refers to "a" and "d"

pretty cool huh? read the sketchy physics wiki and you will get your head around all of this in no time: http://sketchyphysics.wikia.com/wiki/SketchyPhysicsWiki

@mptak said:

AshCott, can you describe a little more your experience with joytokey. Looks intriguing.

Well, SP allows you to refer to a single joystick for control by default. This is also the arrow keys which represent the various axes of the joystick.
However, one joystick is not enough so I used joytokey to assign keyboard commands that can be defined in SP to a second joystick.

So when I pull back on my second joystick, joytokey tells the system that "s" is being pressed. This way I can put a whole new set of functions into SP with the second joystick.

The limitation is that, with the primary joystick in SP, your input is along a scale. For example; if you have a motor set up to respond when you tilt the primary joystick right, the motor will speed up the harder you push the primary joystick to the right. With joytokey, the system is interpretting the secondary joystick as simply a set of buttons so, although it gives the illusion of a real world operator situation, the functions on the secondary joystick are either 'off' or 'on'....not variable like the primary joystick. It still does the trick though.

Hope that makes sense - there is probably a better way to do what I am doing but joytokey is my initial, hacky, solution

Really excited to see you back.

My ruby knowledge is limited but I love SP and think the potential is huge - let me know if there is anything I can do to help in terms of testing etc.

Have spent time playing with SP in conjunction with a tool called joytokey to allow me to run dual logitech joysticks and simulate prototype heavy machinery (similar to an excavator operator's configuration).

People are blown away when I can let them virtually 'drive' a prototype machine, make a quick geometric modification to it and let them 'drive' it again with the new modification.

Be very encouraged Chris - your work is brilliant

Yes but I found outer shell a little glitchy (probably using it wrong) - the plugin mentioned above worked with no hassles.

Here is a hacky kinda workaround:
1)install this plugin (removes inner faces): http://forums.sketchucation.com/download/file.php?id=14434
2)save the sketchup file you want to work on under a different name
3)explode all the groups out of the model
4)select all geometry in the model (Ctrl + A)
5)go plugins > remove inner faces
6)select all geometry again
7)context click > area > selection

Its not perfect but it has done the trick in my situation which had dozens of rolled hollow section beams intersecting each other.

@thomthom said:

Right click the material in the Material Browser and choose Area. Gives you the area of all the faces with that material.

Yeah that works well in a properly setup model. However, I have inherited these models from someone else. There was a plugin from SYCODE a while back that threw a mesh over a model for exporting the general shape to another CAD format - it didn't work that well but the idea of throwing a mesh over the model always struck me as a good way to do paint (surface area) calculations without accidentally including internal faces and faces that can't be reached for painting - they are out of sight or out of reach.