Dan, right on the money. I have been programming for 53 years but I am new to Ruby. I have done JS/CSS work but not a lot. Assembler is my game and that is where I am very comfortable.

Thanks for the info TT. I will start a thread on the 2017 problem. I think it is related to how the various windows are now constructed, especially the materials window. I have a feeling it isn't being really closed when it is hidden. It very much slows down anything to do with materials when it is open. I will bring it up later but right now I am super busy and have an appointment with the professor on Friday so I have work to do before then. I will have a look at SKUI now and see if I can make it do what I need. If necessary I will add whatever code I need in JS or just write my own. I was just looking to save some time.

Now I need to figure out what the heck is going on with Win 10. I may just be forced to downgrade to Win 7 for now since it works just fine. I need something I can take to meetings to show what is happening in this project. Eventually I need to handle 64 colours for 64 channel EEG.

The UI doesn't need to be fancy but I need some decent colour controls using sliders or similar. What I am doing has nothing to do with being an actual CAD plugin but Sketchup is perfect for what I need in many ways, especially the compatibility issues. Since I am an engineer I am already very familiar with Sketchup and that cuts off a lot of time in making what the lab needs. Pretty much everything else in the controls can be nicely handled with a toolbar but not the colour controls. I already have the color system able to switch 20 colors (materials) at over 12,000 times per second so that part is good. I have been playing with computers for just over half a century. Ruby is very interesting, nothing like assembler which is what I am used to. If you can think of a way to make a nice slider control without an HTML interface that would be appreciated.

This reminds me, there is something haywire with version 2017. The code I am using to switch materials runs about 10 time slower in 2017 and there doesn't seem to be any way to speed it up compared to Make 2015. There is another issue too. Getting rather off topic but on Win 10 on my MSI gamer laptop ruby refuses to do more than 16 color changes in the same method. That is with everything else exactly the same, same version of Make 2015 and identical code but when I try to change more than 16 materials in a row Ruby crashes.

I should also mention that at this point in time I am not free to show what I am working on. There are confidentiality issues having to do with medical investigations. Some of it I can describe but I will need to speak with the professor about how far I may go.

Where does this stand at this point in time? I am doing a major project for the local neurology lab disguised as a Sketchup plugin. That way it will be easy to run on Windows and Mac and the project needs a 3D presentation. The University is all Mac but I have been a Windows guy since and before it was invented. I am at the point where the toolbar I created is just not good enough and need something better. I have done plenty of JS and related but if I can keep it all in Ruby I will be a lot happier.

This looks like just what I need. Anything I should watch out for to make it Mac compatible? In particular what will happen with Safari? Any clue?

BTW, TT, you have been a lot of help for me in the past. I have been using Sketchup since it was invented. It is by far my favorite CAD program and your plugins are excellent.

I love steam punk and that is excellent. As for the parts you aren't happy with I have a couple of observations.

When making an insert to be covered with velvet or felt it is cut from a soft wood such as basswood with a scroll saw. The curves that surround the bilinear intensifier rings on the barrel would be much too difficult to cover with the fabric so the well would be cut straight. The velvet needs a little more texture and the colour is a bit too saturated. Velvet reflects quite a bit of specular light and that washes out the colour.

I took the liberty of making those changes in Paint Shop Pro v7 to show how it would look. I left the lid unchanged for comparison.

I can set the global gravity via script at any time but it doesn't take effect until the next simulation run. It shows up as a changed setting in the plugin global parameters setting screen but it has no effect within the simulation when it is running. Any ideas?

The script used to change global gravity is:

Sketchup.active_model.set_attribute( "SPSETTINGS", "gravity", "1.0")

I have upgraded the model significantly including a sound effect, just for fun.

@slimdog said:

Its great to see a project that can be done by one man from start to finish.

Looking forward to some pixs of construction.

Cheers

S

That is a pretty trivial example although without CNC capability it would be very difficult to do on manual equipment. I have far larger projects that have been designed in SketchUp that are either complete or under construction. In particular I have designed a ten inch aperture telescope that is nearly finished. The entire design is done in Sketchup including many CNC machined parts. I will post more on that in another thread in the near future but right now it is nearly impossible to post anything here. Page load times in the last two days are in the range of 10 to 15 minutes. Something is haywire in the network somewhere as my internet connection isn't that slow.

I have a Canon TX1 camera that I really like and use it in my machine shop to take videos. It is a very small camera and a machine shop is an unfriendly environment. I also have grip and fumble problems so I designed a cage that both protects the camera and enhances the handling security. I have CNC equipment I designed and built which makes it possible to design something in SU, export it as a DXF to the CAD/CAM program and then use that design to make the actual parts. This is a simple example of that process.

The design concept in plan view.

The 3D visualization and the actual product:

I have been trying to post this since yesterday but server response has been so slow that it times out every time until now.

This model uses the positive/negative property of the magnetic property in SP 3.2 to greatly accelerate a projectile to a target. All the "coils" are active and the precise values for all the global and individual variables are critical as is the exact placement of the projectile. The model is extremely sensitive to initial conditions.

The sensitivity to initial conditions is because this model takes advantage of a quirk in the programming to achieve the acceleration. When the magnetic object passes through a pair of coils if the timing is precisely right it will get a boost because of the granularity of the velocity calculations. If the attracting force gives the object velocity v at distance d before the crossover point the object will then be placed by the math in the repulsive zone on the next frame. Because of the exponential algorithm used to determine the fall off of the forces if that new position happens to be very close to the repelling coil the succeeding calculation will give the object a new much higher velocity. When the next frame is calculated the distance traveled will be so large that the new higher velocity will place the object far away from the attracting coil so that the forces do not balance. This granularity is a weakness of all numerical methods that are used to calculate motion.

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(sketchup.google.com)