Yes, ruby does have a modulo operator - I said Dynamic Components doesn't provide a modulus function.

You should be using a modulo operation for this. A modulo operation will give the "remainder" of integer division. SketchUp doesn't provide a mod function for DCs, so you'll have to create it as such:

a - (n * FLOOR(a/n))

where a is the index and you want to hide every N.

For example, if you have

HIDDEN=COPY - (3 * FLOOR(COPY/3))==0

, you'll get:

HIDDEN, VISIBLE, VISIBLE, HIDDEN

.

You can change the compared value (in the above example, 0) to be the "offset", but it must be less than n.

For example, if you have

HIDDEN=COPY - (3 * FLOOR(COPY/3))==2

, you'll get:

VISIBLE, VISIBLE, HIDDEN, VISIBLE, ...

.

@tt_su said:

Note that extending Entity instances would not be allowed by EW because the instances are global to everyone using the SketchUp environment. But for other types such as Point3d, Vector3d, String etc that would work.

Here delegators can be useful.

require 'delegate'

module DanielB
  class SampleFace < DelegateClass(Sketchup;;Face)
    def inner_loops
      return loops.find_all { |l| l != outer_loop }
    end
  end

  def self.demo
    face = Sketchup.active_model.selection.find { |e| e.is_a?(Sketchup;;Face) }
    return if face.nil?
    face = SampleFace.new(face)
    puts face.inner_loops
  end
end

If you want to avoid if statements, you can use SMALLEST and LARGEST like so

=SMALLEST(MAX_VALUE, LARGEST(MIN_VALUE, value))

Thomthom wrote a guide for this.

Epic bump, but is there any news on this? Was upgrading the installation ruby put on the backburner? Should we still be expecting this sometime in the future (or a complete library at least)?

To me at least, this seems like a really important feature - plugins and the community around them are a powerful part of sketchup.

@tt_su said:

Just so you're aware, we're looking into new solution for the API docs. I don't know of any time frame, yet though.

That's great! I'll continue working on this in the meantime, though. There's still a lot of community info to round-up and it may even come of use once you guys have whatever it is you're planning sorted.

Here's hoping you deprecate this soon

@rich o brien said:

Is there a means of embedding that on a webpage here?

I doubt there will be any particular mechanism (as there is for gists) because of demand reasons.

Only other one I'm aware of is JimFoltz's, but his doesn't allow the kind of stuff a wiki can.

Hey,

It's no secret that the documentation for the ruby API has its problems. We've asked for problems to be fixed (and we had comments for a while!) but it seems the dev team is too busy with other things to maintain it (which, in-of-itself is a good thing - SketchUp improvements!)

So, I've started working on a community written API documentation. I've mostly decided on a style and layout, but before things are set in stone I'd like to have some input from other people.

The project is hosted on Github and is made of of two parts:

• A Wiki to hold information on all the classes, modules, methods, ... as well as tutorials and guides
• A repository for non-trivial examples and resources (such as images)

I'll be waiting a few days before I start the real effort so I can (hopefully) get some feedback from everyone. I suggest looking at the wiki page for UI, UI::WebDialog and UI::WebDialog#write_image for an example of each main "type" of page (module, class, method).

I know a lot of the information is scattered around already (especially here on these forums), but hopefully we can consolidate it into one, organised location.

@tt_su said:

whut whut?? A bug you say?

Ah! Looks like it is a bug, but only in the documentation. The actual argument order is:

• filepath
• quality (0-100, 100 being best quality)
• top_left_x
• top_left_y
• bottom_right_x
• bottom_right_y

It previously appeared to be poor quality because I was using the origin (0,0) which gave the worst quality, and it gave the wrong size because when the size is invalid (or missing) it just gives the full client area.
PNG's always came out great because they are a lossless format.

Props to Aerilius for guessing right

@aerilius said:

There is no quality or compression argument (?). Or did someone try :compression from view.write_image, maybe it's undocumented?

Wrong write_image - I'm talking about dialog.write_image

Edit: Wait, I'm the one misunderstanding!
Yea, as far as I know there is no compression argument for it.

Edit2: It doesn't appear to take a hash-options.
However, the poorer quality only seems to happen for JPEGs. Saving it as a PNG maintains the quality but completely ignores the size arguments.

If you're feeling especially adventurous, you could try using a canvas tag within a web dialog (explorercanvas is your friend) and then use WebDialog#write_image.

Edit: Wow, I actually just had a play with that and the image quality is horrible. Is that just how it is?
Edit2: Not passing any arguments other than file location fixes the quality, but means you have to capture the full client area (including scrollbars, if they are present)

you could store the value/flag on the model instead, then it would also change with the undo steps

model = Sketchup.active_model
model.set_attribute('maricanis', 'dl_materials_changed', true)
#...
model.get_attribute('maricanis', 'dl_materials_changed', false)

Oh, if you're only intending to use the data locally, then any remote data source would be overkill. If you want to just save it to the model, you can just save it as an attribute to the model. Entity#(g|s)et_attribute can store a few different types, including Point3d objects.

model = Sketchup.active_model
# Save array of points to the model
model.set_attribute('my-points', 'some-key', [ORIGIN, Geom;;Point3d.new(1, 2, 3)])
# Get the points from the model, or an empty list if none are present
my_points = model.get_attribute('my-points', 'some-key', [])

Off topic but tangent: Setting that up is going to be hell (version support, requirements, ...), and it's going about it the "wrong" way anyway. You should look at making a web service and query information using that, not using sql directly. This will be easier in the long term and easier to manage auth/security. What's more, you'll be able to deal with the information using net/http and then whatever data serialization method you use.

If you're really determined to get a direct connection to work, you're missing the header files for ODBC. You'll need to go get a distro/version compatible that's with your compiler and sketchups ruby. There's a version by Microsoft available somewhere and I'd guess that it would be a good choice, but I've never researched/tried.

I do recommend the web-service approach, though.

@driven said:

for a mac you can create a symbolic link the will show the skps in the 'Components Browser'

lnk_skps = %x(ln -s "#{Sketchup.find_support_file("Plugins") << "/your_folder/your_skps"}" "#{Sketchup.find_support_file('Components')}" 2>&1)

is there not a windows equivalent?
john

For Vista and higher:

mklink /D LinkName TargetPath

XP "supports" a similar feature called junction points, but I don't think it's available by default.

For XP:

links LinkName TargetPath

For Vista and higher:

mklink \J LinkName TargetPath

@driven said:

I'm under the impression Windows will see it as a space and error out
Error: #<NoMethodError: undefined methodwindows' for #Object:0x56b89ec>`

Depends what encoding you save it in.

Western (Windows 1252) gives this:

Error; #<SyntaxError; (eval);5231;in `load'; path/to/nbsp.rb;1; Invalid char `\240' in expression>

UTF-8, however, will load and work fine

windows use = "o.~"
puts "Success #{windows use.inspect}"

# ->

load 'path/to/nbsp.rb'
Success "o.~"
true

Note: Browsers will replace the character in question (160, "non-breaking space") with a regular space (32, "space"), but I did correct for this for this test.

Possibly related: This animation behavior.

Click any except the first to see they animate individually, but when the first is clicked it will animate all copies.

Animation on copies

@driven said:

having 'only works on mac' should be enough, but never is.

I'm just wanting to avoid the 'this isn't working' posts from 'PC' users.

Beside anything else, it would be trivial for SU to pre-screen for files marked as os dependant.

john

Note the if is_mac? at the end of PluginModule. That will prevent the plugin from "loading" anything more. Same if you just don't register the SketchupExtension. You could also write a setting to prevent it re-showing the message using Sketchup.write_default / Sketchup.read_default

Edit: Demo

module MyModule
    puts "This section will never be executed!"
end if false # because of this!

puts "But this will!"

puts defined?(MyModule)

Gives

But this will!
nil