Well for green machine washers: at a farm where I used to live, we had a gas powered wringer machine--but we took the gas motor off, added a starter engine and ran it all on solar collectors. The drying was also solar / wind, on a clothes line. McGyver, I suspect some of the problem with the competitions is not the green element, but the fact that people are trying to invent such things all the time and if it worked, it would soon be on the market. Probably there are examples of some such competitions that actually created a result by proposing new threads of thought--but probably best suited for "appropriate technology" solutions for rural or undeveloped areas.

I'm seeing the same problem, tested on both Mac and PC with SU 7.1.6 this is clearly a bug as the function does not do what it's name represents. although this would be renamed and used to find if 2 bounding boxes are within the same projected space. I recently posted pretty much the same post here: http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=180&t=29156

thanks, I'll give that a try. David update: Chris, thanks! that worked perfectly.

@davidboulder said: This isn't data that will just pop up while something is running. It would be on the screen while the user is working on the model. This rules out view.draw_text as this can be done only inside a custom Tool, and the user would be using other tools (standard and custom.) @davidboulder said: ... but I thought a screen overlay head's up display for some data would be slick. Might be... but some users find overlays annoying, and would want a way to turn them off. @davidboulder said: I guess my third option is just to keep the data as part of a dialog box; Best idea is a Webdialog. The user could have it floating anywhere, resize it to their liking, and close it when they wish. FUTURE: Perhaps someday the API might include a dockable DataBar class (similar to the StatusBar.)

@bitttttor said: I'm wondering if there is any documentation regarding access to [OpenStudio] commands via the SU ruby console ... ANSWERED (by DavidBoulder) - in Developer's Forum: Re: access OpenStudio with Ruby console

Thanks that looks nice. I thought about that at first. I can make a component out of the selection and save out to a file or just keep the component on a layer in the current file. It doesn't quite work for what I want here, because I want these views to be something the user can edit while they are in. Not necessary change geometry, but we have a lot of attributes, and while they are in their search view want them to be able to select an item to change its name, material, etc. If I have them working in a copy it would be problem to get it back into the model, in particular since the selection isn't just object in a single group, but pieces from all over the model hierarchy.

And, John, I think you said you have Macified cgScenes. I wonder if that version also works on PCs. Or do you think it should released as a Mac version? Oh and also you should note that cgScene start button was introduced because Macs run the script before loading the model. However nset doesn't rely on model data at the start but it is something you might like to add to the "no js after window.location" for callbacks I pointed to before.

You can send out progressbar with your code, but tell your clients where you got it and to come to us for support. Todd

Are there any similar uses for the ";" that we may not know?

Hi David - I've noticed that sometimes, if the very first time a formula is assessed, the result is zero, I get an error. I don't know if this could be the issue here. If n=1, does the formula return zero? My work around is to write a formula that never returns zero, and then let the DC evaluate it. Once it has accepted a non-zero value, I can edit the formula to allow a zero value, and it seems to work fine. (An example of when this comes up is a RotX, RotY, or RotZ value that is set by a user input box; I initially get an error if the value in the box is zero, but if I start with a non-zero value in the user input box when I create the formula in the RotY attribute, it works fine, even if I set it back to zero.) I don't know if this is related to what you're doing here, but it may be worth a shot if you have the result of the formula set to zero when n=1.

@jhauswirth said: There's no limit (at least in the code). RAM and HD space would be the limits. Might sound like a silly question. But are you certain of that? I believe there is a buffer overrun somewhere if you have large data attached as attributes somewhere in the handling of it inside Sketchup. LightUp stores Lempel-Ziff compressed hex strings on entities and by trial and error, I came to the conclusion anything larger than 700000 bytes kills Sketchup. So I split up data into <700000 char chunks it works fine.

@unknownuser said: If their axis is not aligned to the parent's axis though, it is also going to require computing x,y,z values. Rotating the parent will change their rotation AND their location. Chris, I missed this as it was just about when I made my last post. I'm not too concerned about the location of the children moving. I am more concerned about keeping the child on the same rotX,rotY,rotZ rotation as the top level model axis; by this I mean rotX,Y,Z all = 0 So I have two big issue with my setup right now. First is that this only works if my parent is a top level component/group. If someone places it inside of a group then I lose my bearings. If I know they need it inside a group I can setup a DC group that itself would pass information. So there would be a grandparent/parent/child setup. But I don't want to have to rely on this. My second problem is that my child can handle rotations on any axis, but it has trouble with more than one. So I'm ok if I change rotX, or rotY, but not rotX & rotY. I have attached a file with two instances of my component. One is top level one is inside of the group. So if you select all and rotate, only one will fix itself. And you have to use the interact tool or right click to REDRAW() for it to update. OK, I take that back. This is where things get odd. I base my calcualtsion off what I think the parents rotX,Y,Z are based on, and the odd things is a "REDRAW" by clicking on the interact while the parent is nested in a grandparent, doesn't give the same results as when I REDERAW when I have gone into the grandparent. rotation problem.skp

Got one already: http://www.smustard.com/script/TextLabelOverride Todd

Yeah, there is lots of functionality that can be built in or left out depending on how the creator does it for sure! Chris

Not quite the explosive excitement of a big bang demolition, but pretty cool none the less.

[image: Q3U7_Centralpointdetermination-1.jpg][image: pNb1_Centralpointdetermination-2.jpg]Dear David, Thousand apologies, my sloppiness and Sketchup's inferences caused the inaccuracies of my initial central point's graphical determination (see corrected drawing). In a second attachment, the superposition of the original photograph (magenta edge), the yellowish cropped image), the greenish reconstructed uncropped photo show the usefulness of the method. Since I am dealing with 1900 photos, LIDAR and other techniques aren't really helpful here... Many thanks for diving in after so many years!