As said in my previous post, I need to check if it's manageable when edges have any orientation (I think it is), and also confirm that it only works for intersection of 2 or 3 edges only, not more.

Note also that the 'true' rounding generate much more faces at the corners.

The initial version was more a trial and is closer to the spirit of a FollowMe. The interest, in my mind, is that it should be capable to handle custom profiles, allowing to decorate edges with profiled shapes. It also helped me to check how Sketchup handles surface intersections (which you can see is not always perfect, due to precision problems).

So, don't worry, I keep the request in my list.

Ibon,

Take your time, Tools on Surface is still a quite long story (and requires many more icons and cursors).

Just to be sure I was clear by 'scale up' is simply to use the maximum space in the button, as in the following sample:

Thanks in advance

Fredo

PS for Daniel S: your icons were not bad too, and actually very much in the style of Sketchup, with the brown color.

@kmead said:

I do have a quibble which may or may not be shared by all:

The intersection of the rounded edges should meet in a semi-spherical intersection when three arcs meet at a corner, versus the hipped or groined intersection that is now occurring.

I think it would be manageable to make a 'polished, round' join for 3 edges, whatever is their orientation. It's probably a geometrical headache, but the method would be mathematically exact, and imply no surface intersection.

This is simply based on the remark that if the 3 edges are mutually orthogonal, as in a cube, you can draw a spherical join. Then, because you can always transform geometrically 3 edges with any orientations into orthogonal axes (via 3 plane shear transformations), you could deform the join as well with these transformations. This would give a junction with no groined intersection. This would work for 2 edges too.

For 4 edges or more, I am not sure there is a geometrical shear transformation, preserving parallels, that could allow to transform them into a regular topology. But maybe I am wrong!

Anyway, this is just for future work, but it's an interesting idea to explore.

Ibon,

Actually, this is not the size in absolute pixels that matters, but the fact that you use the full square area. I guess you could just scale up a little bit the drawings, to use more real-estate in the square. In this way, we can distinguish the circle from the polygon, which otherwise are quite small.

For the question of big vs. small icons, I made provision in the code of Tools On Surface (and Round Edge) for icons to be specified both in 16x16 or 24x24.
The naming convention is that the plugins accepts 3 file names, for instance:

• TOS_icon_Line.png
• TOS_icon_Line_24.png
• TOS_icon_Line_16.png

The script will look first for the most relevant one if it exists, and otherwise try the other filenames.

In the current version, I was lazy and just design icons in 32x32 to go to the small and big toolbar modes (my opensource icon editor does not support 24x24 and 16x16).

Again thanks for your initiative

Fredo

Ibon,

Your icons are great, I like the design.
Could you however make them a little big bigger so that they cover the samll button surface. In Sketchup with 'small' buttons, we do not see enough of the details.
Also, if not too much asking, I would need the cursors (also as png in 32x32) for the cursors, as they are supposed to be inspired from the icons.

With your permission, I think of adopting the icons and package them in a next version.

Thanks very much

Fredo

Remus,

Sorry for this. A last minute problem and I took the wrong version.
I reloaded one on the main message that should work.

Fredo

John,

Could you give me more on the error (for instance on LineOnsurface), so that I can try to find out what's wrong with your set up.

What bothers me however is that LineOnSurface has only 568 lines and you seem to get an error somewhere at line 899 !!!

Thanks

Fredo

[Edit 9 Jul 09] I published a new script, RoundCorner 2.0, which does true rounding at corners (and keep te Sharp mode). You may consider to use this script instead.

Here is the link to the main post of that thread.http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=180&t=20485&hilit=plugin

Here is a script that typically would round the edges and corners of a cube. As I still don't get the subtle differences between Bevel and Chamfer, I simply called it RoundEdge. The picture below gives some idea of what it intends to do.

There's still a lot of work to do, as you can guess that the topological situations are numerous enough that you have to treat many cases. So this is very a first version, with profiles of the rounding shape generated with Beziercurves, to ensure the tangency at the intersection with original faces.

Though I am not totally sure, I anticipate that the tool can be extended to support custom profiles.

Doc is attached in PDF in the subfolder RDE_DIR (only in English for the time being).
It should work in Sketchup v5 and v6, and on PC or Mac (thanks to confirm). As usual, the button coming in the toolbar is my own artistic design (I guess you would notice anyway )

to Extract All in Plugins Folder

John

Could you turn on the Ruby Console and check if anything is shown.
That could help. Thanks

Fredo

@jclements said:

I can not draw on any surface using v1.2. They do seem to work on "white space" (no other geometry under the cursor).

Bizarre! Are you sure you do not draw over a Group? This would not work then, as it the tools on surface implies you draw over the active model opened.

@jclements said:

1- the Line tool has a "generate as curves" option. What is that supposed to do, create a continuous/welded (non-segmented) polyline? I didn't see a definition of this in the PDF file.

The generate curve option is just for convenience, as it makes segments easier to manipulate. But, as you know, Sketchup would break the curves at some intersection of edges or faces. So, the Contour Editor does not use the Curve properties and instead reconstruct the topology of the contour based on looking for connecting edges, regardless how they were generated. This is why you can have in the same contours lines and polygons, or repair a polygon with lines on surface.

@jclements said:

2- How are the number of sides for the Polygon or Circle tool modified?

As Remus said, just type a number followed by an 's' (as in the native Sketchup Polygon / Circle tools by the way). You can enter the radius / diameter and the number of segments in the same command, separated by semi-column. This is described in the doc.

@jclements said:

P.S. Have you noticed how some of Jim's toolbar icons work; if you double-click on them, an options menus appear where you can change parameters. The might be something to consider for your toolbar icons.

I am not sure, but I think this feature has dependencies on Windows. If I have time, I will try to address this general problem of options and values, most probably via a contextual Web Dialog box with the right click (so that you don't have to go across the all view to change things). Simply, I have found no way to use the right click without showing either the default contextual menu, or my own contextual menu when the right click happens to be on a selectable element.

Thanks to advise on your problem of drawing.

Too bad, as I thought we had a method to provide a utility libraries based on operating system, but portable between PC and Mac.
I guess this is possible, but we just need to package to offer the same interface, even with different code and binaries underneath

Thanks anyway for this contribution. I'll try to have a closer look whenever I have some time left.

Oops, I forgot to include LibTraductor.rb in the package, which indeed will be missing if you never installed previous verssions of ToolOnSurface or JointPushPull or BezierSpline

I have updated the ZIP archive in the main post of this thread
http://www.sketchucation.com/forums/scf/viewtopic.php?f=180&t=10242&p=66968#p66968

Thanks, apx, for advising on this problem

I am running Windows XP on a regular laptop.
I am still running Sketchup 6.0.515, in case this does matter.

I have them all, and in the right place as specified in the Zip file.
I hope you find the issue, so that we can educate the approach.

@plot-paris said:

for example, I copy(move) an object and type in the distance (lets say 50), then hit enter. but if I want to move it only one third of the distance I just type in

50 / 3

and the object is moved one third of 50.
the same could work when drawing geometry like a line.

The only problem with the VCB is that it does not work when you have decimalsin the numbers
For instance, if your unit is Centimeters and you type in the Line tool:

• "50.0/3" will give 3 cm
• "50.0/3.0" will give 50 cm

It's not very complex to supersede this in Ruby, but the trick is that you have to convert numbers to Float first. Otherwise, 50/3 will simply give 16, not 16.67. You can try in the Ruby console. So a straightforward #Eval() won't make it.
I had to do it in my script PlaneShear for entering angles (in degrees, radians or as a tangent value)

Strange!
I get an "unknown" error when loading Getkeys.rb.
Difficult to tell more, as whether by opening Sketchup or loading the file via the Ruby console, the error is desperatly "unknown".

Otherwise, I would suggest that the community of Ruby developers tries to come up with a uniform solution to complement some missing functiosn of the Ruby API. If this DL programs works both on Windows and Mac, then it is really a good base. We could package it as a library, and a few of us in charge of updating it.

Then, we could develop a few other functions that could be useful and probably require to go down to the System:

• Move the mouse cursor to a given position
• Intercept keys before Sketchup (when in a tool, all the short cuts like Space, 'L', etc..., are actually trapped by Sketchup, before they even reach the tool OnKeyDown method
• Access to the main loop in order to be able to interrupt a lengthy process by typing a key
  Fredo

@daniel s said:

Yes, i get the tooltip.
I'm using Windows XP.
I will try with other computer and report back.

Daniel S

My fault. The reason is that you use BIG icons. I had a bug there. It is fixed now and I updated the archive in the main post of this thread. Tell me if it is better.

Then 2 questions

• Do you get the tooltip when you mouseover the empty icons?
• are you running Sketchup on Mac?

Daniel

Strange!
Do you get the cursors?

[Edit - 12 Jul 08] New version 1.3 (more shapes, inference, freehand) available at
http://www.sketchucation.com/forums/scf/viewtopic.php?f=180&t=11212&p=76625#p76625

[Edit - 5 Jun 08 - 16:00 CET] I forgot to include LibTraductor.rbin the package, which can be a problem if it is the first time you install my scripts. There is no change to this file however (still the version of 20 Jan 08). I updated the ZIP Arhive.

[Edit - 5 Jun 08 - 06:00 CET] Fixed bug with Big icons, detected by Daniel S.

[Edit - 5 Jun 08 - 05:00 CET] Release of version 1.2

Here is the next version v1.2 of the Tools On Surface, with 3 new tools:

• Polygon and Circle
• Eraser
• Contour Editor
  
  This version supersedes the previous v1.1 and should be used instead, as it allows all contours generated by the tools to be later edited.

The main feature is about Editing Contour, which I had to introduce as on some surfaces, the calculations do not give expected results. I also rewrote the algorithm to make it more robust (but there's still some remaining issues).

For installation, just open the Zip archive, select all files and Extract them to the Plugins directory of Sketchup. It now creates a subfolder TOS_Dirfor storing icons, cursors and PDF documentation. So you can remove the subfolder OFS_Dir that was used in previous versions.

I updated the documentation, which is now composed of:

• A QuickStart guide in English and French covering all tools
• A tutorial specifically dedicated to the OffsetOnSurface tool, in English

For the next versions, I had in plan to complete:

• Select Contour
• Tape Measure
• Rectangle
• Rail (multiple parallel lines for roads or so)
• Arcs, Ellipse and non-uniform polygons (i.e. requiring 3 points for inputs)

My original plan was however to focus on DrapeOnSurface, as this basically allows drawing anything on a plane with the standard Sketchup tools and then apply it to a surface.

I must say that the contributors of the forum do not help me having rest, and it’s true that, unfortunately, Move and Rotate are feasible (with and without Copy Mode). Text On Surface is also manageable, and I could complement TIG’s script to make the text follow the surface. I am still wondering what could be a FollowMe On Surface however.

Finally, this version still includes my own icons and cursors, although I have already received proposals for getting something much nicer, which I willingly accept. We probably need more tools to come up with the full suite in a next version.

Do an Extract All in 'Plugins' folder - include LibTraductor.rb