[quote="MALAISE"]Nice, couldn't you modelize bottle of wine and glass too ? :lol:

The teacup (primitive) is quickly a wine glass, so now if you can make the Champagne bottle we can 'CHEERS' thomthom appropriately.

Great concept, well executed,

as a thought, can this be modified to be a 'make_ primitive .rb' with all the whistles and bells for all those incredibly repetitive, but slightly different components I keep making?

cheers

john

Hi bjanzen,
hope it contributes to a long term fix, it seems to me that intel (not JUST apple) are pushing the switch to BIOS EFI boots at the expense of quite recent (2-3yr old) hardware.

Today I found Apple have released a patch for the current MacBook Pro suffering from many of my symptoms in Snow Leopard, http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3498, yet they seem totally surprised that I'm saying I don't think I need a £600 CPU or a new MacBook if it still works in SafeMode and used to work prior to the new EFI introduced with 10.5.

Luckily I only use the MacBook for making components while waiting drawings on my iMac to complete, it's no where near as buggy in SU, but does cause log reporting to spin out of control every now and again.

@unknownuser said:

If you're into these things

not really but if it can save me upgrading I guess I'll have to learn,
unless you could throw together a SU Safe boot package with internet but no QuartzExtreme...

john

According to Apple Support (Ireland) and the 'Genius' at the apple store my MacBook's ATI Radeon X1600 is dead and needs replacing.

Problems started while using SU7 with OSX 10.5.7 and only got worse with SU7.1 and 10.5.8.

As well as most the symptoms described in these posts, I started having lots of bugsplats, freezes and crashes.

Problems also showed up in other software and Safari 4 and then Finder.

Thinking it was something I had added (alfa/beta software, rubies, etc.) I did a cull on my system, rebuilt permissions did a clean instal eventually ending up with a striped down 10.4 and a virginal SU7.1 and xTools as my only content.

I mean NO documents, NO images, nothing except the problem, which may confirm Apples opinion.

However, everything works in 'Safe Mode' and has done all the way thru, which is why I think it's something to do with quartz extreme drivers.

These are turned off in 'Safe Mode' and my glitches and crashes go away.

Anyone else on a Mac want to try 'safe mode' and let me know if it stops your problems?

P.S. I have also been using also QuartzDebug (in xTools) to turn on/off Quartz extreme for SU but it doesn't completely eliminate problems.

haven't sorted screen casting out yet, but I found screw1.5.rb is the most stable on my mac.

it appears to be the same as described in the PDF tutorial for screw2 (http://www.crai.archi.fr/RubyLibraryDepot/Ruby/screw2_1_tutorial.pdf)

Offset is determined by the distance your profile is drawn from the blue axis so construct at origin, in free space.

Use a new page/layer/or hide/move whatever is there already and make it a group or component for further use.

john

My pleasure,

I've only been teaching myself SU for the last 3-4 weeks (have dabbled in the past) so as to make animated model of a device I'm designing.

It involves lots of moving springs and threads so I been trying all sorts of rubies out to try and get a good look with as low a poly count as I can,

heres a thead I did with arc tool, skin.rb and xformcllone.rb

and there's one using simpleloft.rb at that subject

away working for a few days, will have a tidy of my screen cast when I get back, my lack of speed and basic skills makes me cringe when I watch, but the workflows are pretty good.

john

hi,

here some simple screw_1.5.rb springs I just made, I'll put up a tutorial if anyone wants..

springs just have a different profile and spacing, and a bigger poly count than treads, but this is a nice easy to use ruby.

Work from center of origin...

animated springs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMUwcTCpSZQ

cheers Chris and thanks for the comments August,

it works, exploded the curves and it's a one click job, fantastic

@august said:

I wish I could point you to the non-twisting Follow-Me plugins

I've been searching, but the advantages of this is I have a lot of control over the bezier profile and path (thanks to Fredo) and a simple rig made with xformclone.rb, so skinning between only distorts the additional sections I add at both ends, which trim square with an intersect with a plane, then it's just 'movecopy' X times...

A good tool is a good tool regardless of it's original perceived use...

thanks again chris

john

ADDED: it did this in one go, not just for drapes.... took 10 mins but no crash, this time.

Added More: Spoke to soon, this is in the components window, it seems to have locked while writing the thumbs, having completed the drawing, I'm in and out at moment so will give it time and see if it recovers, out of curiosity..

hi Chris,

it's blitzing the mac, was ok for three or four hours, giving some extremely curious versions of what I'm trying to achieve.

basically it's an accurate thread-form (basic ring), something I've never found a SU solution for

on one attempt it did a lovely job set on 2, but the decided to try 6 instead of the 4 bezier splines to add extra detail and improve the stack ability and end finishing.....

so I deleted that one, built a new spline jig and loft started crashing out SU, I checked everything else, and it's fine now loft is removed so I used skin in 6 separate goes to show what I'm trying to do and attach the skp with the spline set, the spline jig, and the skinned version if any one want's to see if it works on there set-up (a mac maybe...)

the over lap gap is very close, so it's best to select splines well clear of them...

UPDATE.. I found I had save the Setting 2 loft in another drawing, but it locks out any new or old drawing I try to open it in, so a screen shot has it buried in a tube...

the reason I'm trying to do this is the follow me tool twists the thread shape even on a single quadrant.

machine threads, springs and candi-stripes are are good test if of accuracy of lathe type tools..

I do like your stuff, keep up the good work.... please

john

if some-one can test???

Hi,

May not be related, but I've found (although I can't find) a hidden section cut artifact in one drawing that always appears if I try to zoom in to edit, either component (which are on separate layers) and sometimes from particular point of view editing or not.

On one occasion I managed to reveal the actual cut plane by drawing a cylinder up from origin and recognised the cut as a transitional view between two scenes in a recent, but completely unrelated drawing. I've been trying to replicate for a screen capture, but can't... yet.

I have established it's only in this drawing, the components are fine if I put them in a new drawing. so I could just delete this one completely
except, if it could be toggled it might be a handy editing tool... maybe

I don't know where else to post this???

john

Still no joy, tried all sort of things from this end, so if you can forward that's great,

I took advantage of selectbylength with xformclone to make a quick, low poly candy-stripe pole and then animate it spinning..link over on that topic..

cheers

john

Hi

I've been trying this out and had two very different results re: output quality (they're both up on youtube, link to one here...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMRfjRsIQ7g&layer_token=9015d6617d71c051

the first was made was made manually from 12 layers containing 12 instances (re-named) at 15º of rotation, made using xformclone.rb (fantastic...)

I tranfered this at (640x480 12 fps jpg >1) into iStopmotion so I could remove the 6-8 dead frames between each layer swop, I also batch cropped, and did a half speed test by dropping more frames, I'm very happy with the results...

the 2nd was a linear motion test with a single incident component (but much hire poly-count), on only one layer. Steps were achieved using mover.rb and tying the object to and the green axis with the rotate tool, scroll wheel clicks were used for spacing... the movement look acceptable on screen but SU frose when transferring at the previous settings... I turned the frame rate up... and then down... crashed SU... I removed xformclone and standard views just in case, sill frose during transfer, I then stripped out the clip, used your default settings and finally got a set out..

Each try did output jpgs, all of equally bad quality, any thoughts?

I tend to think that more organised layering(with sub folders) will always give a better quality result, if you take out the lag or play to it.
I haven't tried out putting with proper_animation.rb yet as I needed to get my head around the basic functionality of using scenes first.

Anyway I was very impressed with output quality on the first one and for any mac user iStopMotion and iMovie make post-production and posting to YouTube a breeze..

cheers
john

Hi Chris,

I've been having real problems trying to download this for hours, do I need special permissions for your stuff?

I can download everything else I've tried today?

cheers
john

This is a very easy to use bit of kit, made the candy-stripe pole and used it for the animation as well.

very,very nice

thanks for posting....

???how do I add embedded youtube???

Hi Chris,

Came down this session on second attempt (using a different download manager)... No idea why...

This site may have Safari issues, Auto Login doesn't always work, and tab browsing seems to have me logged in at one page, but not another.
It's not consistent so I can't quite figure out what's happening...

I'll try these plugins now

cheers

John

Hi Chris

the link appears to be broken, I've downloaded a couple of your others before and after getting "you do not have permission"
html instead of this file, I'll try again next session, but it may need re-posting from your end.

It looks great, and I do like your videos...

john

has any one got this fully running on a mac??

i get this error, functionality of some of the tools

john

PowerBarErrormessage.tiff

I found this post after kindly Jeff had emailed me this solution, and thought I'd add my two pence to the Mac/rudy/SU info pool.

I've put the whole HD sketchup folder in the side bar with addition folders for different classes of rubies which I will into specific task related categories.

The new folder doesn't affect anything else and contents can be copy paste into the real plugins folder as specific set (i.e. engineering drawing; rendering; testmode; etc...) or individually for a session (i.e. rendering; file conversion)

It does mean I need to Send to Trash the 'real' plugin folder and Copy Paste my new set in replacement, but doing all from one Finder window is straight forward enough for now. I'll have a look into running an Automate script for toggling between sets.

The idea is that I sometimes want to use a plugin that doesn't want to play nice with others, so I can isolate it and restart with only it and it's friends loaded. PC derived rubies seem to be the biggest problem.

The other thing I added to the side bar was a smart folder for .rb downloads, to help find what I downloaded it a surfing session, maybe I'm the only one who looses downloads between my different download managers (mail,safari,speeddownload,etc)

heres a screen shot for any-one interested.

thanks again Jeff

john

Hi,

The bug slat/freeze happens during processing, and at first I thought it was due to my not waiting before starting my next step

however, I now think it's a conflict with something else (either Podium or BezSpline)

I'll try a complete fresh instal of SU and add a couple of new folders directly in HD>Lib>AppSuport>SU>(myrubyfolder and parkedrubyfolder)

this make it easy to switch between rubies to see if I can find conflict (if it's still there)

I was also trying to apply this to model , so I'll try it at component level and just smooth the end result...

another thing is I find finding you scripts on this site, can you put up a Fredo6 [plugin]link in your signiture or somewhere?

thanks for reply

john

Hi,

The bug slat/freeze happens during processing, and at first I thought it was due to my not waiting before starting my next step

however, I now think it's a conflict with something else (either Podium or BezSpline)

I'll try a complete fresh instal of SU and add a couple of new folders directly in HD>Lib>AppSuport>SU>(myrubyfolder and parkedrubyfolder)

this make it easy to switch between rubies to see if I can find conflict (if it's still there)

I was also trying to apply this to model , so I'll try it at component level and just smooth the end result...

another thing is I find finding you scripts on this site, can you put up a Fredo6 [plugin]link in your signiture or somewhere?

thanks for reply

john

Hi fredo,

still trying all you great stuff,

have you heard of issues with this on the mac. it's locked up sketchup a couple of times and never worked properly even on simple stuff, still using SU followme. I've uninstalled at the moment because SU itself has started glitching and I even had to re-boot (I think it's called) for the first time in 18mths.

Freescale is working great.

actually should I have it in the BZ_DIR_12 folder with the others or out on its own????

cheers again

john