Hmm. As always, thanks for the detailed thoughts.

I think I'll attack this from the angle of putting a screen note on each scene. I think this will be the cleanest approach for my application, as I have not been using transition times or scene delays. This will, I think, eliminate the issue of needing to retrieve the next scenes shadow info during the rendering process.

I do like the little snippet we've developed here. And, if I may say so, I think it's a cleaner approach than the [TBD] Time plugin on smustard (no offense to the author; I've appreciated and studied the plugin). The reason I like this approach more is that is updates instantaneously instead of at one second intervals. It also doesn't update until there is actually a change in the shadow info. If I add a on/off switch, and a few options to choose the format of the note, it will be a fully functioning utility.

I am running into a problem with this script, though. When I start SketchUp from scratch, in the first model I work on, the script works great. However, if I open an existing model, or create a new model while SketchUp is running, the script does not work in either case. Is there any obvious reason why this would be the case?

Thanks, Chris and rclub24. That makes sense.

Thanks, Jim and Chris.

Would using Text.set_text be more efficient for this use.

I may have to rethink the structure of this plugin anyway, as it doesn't do what I was hoping.

The function I describe above works great: when run, this plugin creates a dynamic screen note that always displays the current shadow date and time.

What I do next, is create a large number of scenes with a different shadow position. I then export these scenes to an animation. Whether I export to jpg or an avi, the screen note for each scene is the same note that is displayed when I execute the animation export. The screen note remains unchanged for the duration of the animation.

Chris, you mentioned in another thread (http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=323&t=28307) that setting an animation up like this would require the creation of a screen note for each scene, which is only visible for that scene. Is this the only way to accomplish what I'm trying to do?

This has to be an obvious question, but I can't seem to figure it out.

What does the "use sun for shading" option in the shadow settings box do?

Thanks, Gaieus. These look great.

Hello -

I'm trying to write a plugin that will always display the current shadow time as a screen note.

I have the [TBD] Time plugin from Smustard, and it doesn't quite do what I need. (Because [TBD] Time updates at its smallest interval of 1 second, frames that are exported for use in an animation do not display the correct time).

I'm also aware of the reported bug of the incorrect shadow time being returned from the console. (Assume that doesn't matter here.)

So, here's my stab at the script that will do what I want. (This is really bits of code from other SU users that I've cobbled together here)

What this script currently does, is it places a screen note with the current shadow time any time any shadow attribute is changed. After a few changes, the notes become unreadable because each note is placed on top of the one placed before. What I would like to add, is that whenever the shadow attribute is changed, the previous note is deleted, and the current shadow time is placed as a new screen note.

Any suggestions?

class SO < Sketchup;;ShadowInfoObserver
def onShadowInfoChanged(info, type)
model = Sketchup.active_model
stime = model.shadow_info["ShadowTime"].gmtime
model.add_note stime.to_s, 0.8, 0.9
end
end
ShadowInfoWatcher = SO.new
Sketchup.active_model.shadow_info.add_observer(ShadowInfoWatcher)

Cool!

This doesn't appear to work in LayOut...

If you have the same experience I've had, you'll be frustrated trying to paste a table from word.

The alignment will be off, especially if you have cells with wrapped text in it.

I have had luck pasting very simple tables directly from excel. Here are a few points that seem to contribute to a "clean" paste into LayOut:

1. Make the cells equal sizes, in both dimensions.
2. Give the table a simple outline around all the cells
3. Format all aspects of the text prior to pasting (typeface, font size, etc..)
4. Don't try to edit the table after it's been pasted into LayOut

Good luck! Please share if you come up with a better way to do tables.

Support for tables in LayOut is not that great, in my experience.

What I've done when I need a table is create a text box, give it a stroke and/or fill, and then copy it and align all the copies to look like a table.

It's limited in what you can do (think filling out a digital form rather than having a table in a MS word environment).

Has anyone come up with a good way to save a few different workspaces for sketchup?

I do most of my work on two screens, where I use almost all of the windows available for SU. Sometimes, I use a laptop screen only, and then I use almost none of the supplementary sketchup windows. It's been cumbersome to close all the windows on my laptop, and then reopen and orient them when I get back to my desk.

I'm on Windows XP with SU Pro 7.1

Chris and I talked about something similar here:
http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=323&t=28307

Hi leedeetee -

I also present tabular data in LayOut. Here are my notes:

1. The slow way, obviously, is to create a grid manually using the line tool, and then fill it in with one text box per cell. Cumbersome, but it can go quickly with the snap tools. A slight variant would be to give each text box a stroke and fill value, and just arrange them so they line up like a table.

2. I have had limited success creating a table in an .RTF file and linking to it. The formatting goes all wacky on me every time. I understand on the Mac version you can similarly link to text in a PDF, but I haven't had experience with that yet. Has anyone tried to link to a table in a PDF file on the Mac version of LayOut? PDF's have a hard time copying tables to the clipboard anyway, so I'd be surprised if this is any better.

3. The most success I've had it with creating simple tables in Excel. I add a simple stroke to the table in Excel, then copy and paste into LayOut. As long as the table is simple, it displays correctly in LayOut. It is not linked to LayOut (linking to specific ranges or cells in XLS files from LO is probably one of my top 3 on the want list), but it does get a table into LayOut quickly.

Hmmm.

Ok, at least I know that I'm not the only one.

Luckily, almost all of my models have geometry in them.

Thanks, Chris.

Thanks, Tom.

I'm I the only one who has finicky problems with screen text(notes)?

For example, the text doesn't show up at all (it's there, and I can select it), until I draw at least one line.

Other times, the text isn't visible until I have the text tool selected, even if I have many drawn lines and faces.

Is it possible to use the .add_text method to create screen text that is not tied to a specific 3d point?

If you use the leader text tool, but don't click on any line or face when creating the text, the text appears where you click, but then as you navigate away or rotate the view, the text appears in the same place on the view window (kind of like a watermark).

Another approach may be to try the following:

Create a LayOut template, with the desired number of pages, with one raster image linked on each page. Have a different raster file per page, and put all the images in the same folder.

Create a new LayOut document using the template, and then overwrite the linked raster images with your batch of images for the document.

This would be more work than creating the document manually, but may save time if this is a process you plan to do many times over.

I'm not complaining, but I'm not sure I understand the business model.

Buy my book, or download it for free?

Hmm.

Thanks for the tips on the script, and the thoughts on the time stamp. I'm off to read the SketchUp Ruby API.

Best,
Dan

Ok, so turning the camera location off in the first script worked fine.

When I tried to insert the extra line into the one time stamp per day version, this is what happened:

(eval):9:in ‘initialize’: undefined method ‘use_camera=’ for #Sketchup::Pages:0x16f5d910

Here's how I put the status line into the code:

model = Sketchup.active_model
si = model.shadow_info
ps = model.pages
si["DisplayShadows"]= true
t = Time.gm(2010,"jan",1,12,0,0).to_i

365.times { |day| si["ShadowTime_time_t"]=t
ps.add
status = ps.use_camera = false
t= t+(60 * 60 * 24);}

Perfect.

Thank you, TIG.