Here is the dual of the script posted by Sorgesu (see http://www.sketchucation.com/forums/scf/viewtopic.php?f=153&t=8568)
It just unhide all edges of the model or the active group / components if it is opened.
Menu item is in the Plugin menu

Of course the same script can be derived to soften, unsoften, etc...

UnhideAllEdges.rb

Well! it depends if you want to do it on a plane or a 3D curved surface.

@a4chitect said:

btw: why did you decide to have JPP work only on selected faces and not the way original PP tool works - first activate the tool and then confirm the on-mouse-over face by clicking on it?

It's true that it would be more natural. I may actually do it in a next version.
And this is what I am doing for the Offset on Surface script.

It is indirectly possible with the JPP script.

In fact, because it would always be difficult to agree on what to do with a group or a component, what I did is to publish an API for the 3 kinds of JointPushPull where you specify the faces you want to act upon. It is documented in the tutorial.

def JointPushPull.Api_call (type="J", selection=nil, distance=0, vector=nil, 
                            finishing='K', borders='A', group=true, influence=true,
                            angle=30.0)

So all you need to do is to write a surrounding script that select the groups and the faces within the groups and then execute the JPP API.

For those interested in Windows-style dialog boxes (i.e. not Web dialogs), I had written a library Libtraductor.rbthat supports also language translation in dialog boxes and ease the checking of parameters (min, max, string patterns, ...). It also preserves defaults and previous values.

I use it in Bezierspline and in JointPushPull (and actually in other unpublished scripts).

Attached is the script, as well as a tutorial for programmers in English.

Here is a snippet of the interface

dlg = Traductor;;DialogBox.new title

#Declaring fields, either string, numeric or unit-based numeric, or enumeration list;
dlg.field_string symbol, label, default, validation_pattern
dlg.field_numeric symbol, label, default, value_min, value_max
dlg.field_enum symbol, label, default, enum_hash

#Showing the dialog box;
Hash_results = dlg.show hash_initial_values

to drop in Skecthup Plugins folder

Tutorial for Ruby script programmers

This is possible, but remember that there is always an issue with the last segment, which cannot be made equal to the others mathematically, unless you changed the End point.

Also, if your original curve is a Bezier or Spline curve, there are other ways to 'simplify' the curve, by playing with their Precision parameter.

Attached is a small script BZ__Segmentor.rb, which draws a polyline with a given number of segments. Just drop if in the BZ_DIR folder. I do not provide an icon for it, but the menus should be fine.

to drop in BZ_DIR folder

@laxmarsk said:

I am working on a little script that is moving groups or components based on offset values read from a txt file and saving the files again at the new location.

Script is working but now I want to get things done without having to manually "select all".

What I meant is that you do not need to select entities to perform your 'move' operations. Sketchup.active_model.active_entitiescontains all the entities of the model, and you can then apply your transformation to this list.

For instance, if you want to move all objects of the model by an offset offset_vector (which you'll read from a file), then all you have to write is

all_entities = Sketchup.active_model.active_entities   #all entities of the models
t = Geom;;Transformation.translation offset_vector
all_entities.transform_entities t, all_entities

Now, if your problem is about the selection, Todd's and Didier's code will make it as a Select All.

I guess you need to perform your loop exploration of entities on

Sketchup.model.active_entities

instead of

Sketchup.model.selection

This will be thus independent from the selection

@didier bur said:

Bonjour Fredo,
Le problème ne vient pas d'un fichier. J'ai des noms de matériaux à récupérer dans un modèle SketchUp, pour les re-exporter vers une feuille Excel. Quand tu récupère le nom d'un matériau pour une face f, f.material renvoie par exemple une chaîne s "béton". Quand tu écris cette chaîne dans le fichier Excel, par exemple fichier.puts(s) tu n'obtiens pas "béton", mais "bÃton", parce que les caractères accentués sont codés sur 2 octets au lieu d'un. Et Ruby n'a pas de méthode pour convertir de l'UTF8 en Unicode.

Then, with the explanation from Todd, I understand why I had problem with the dialog boxes, as Windows does support UTF8.

@didier bur said:

Hi all,
When I try to retrieve the name of a material (material.display_name) in a script, I have to translate it first with a LanguageHandler object and the materials.strings local file.
This returns a string, from the prepared $mat_strings I have built with LanguageHandler.
Of course sometimes french materials names have special characters in them: béton, plâtre, etc.
When the script sends such strings to an output file, these characters are NOT converted, for instance the string "Matière 1" is output as "Matière 1".

Didier,

I am unclear of where are the French strings coming from in your exemple. Is it from a file? or from a constant definition?

As Gaieus mentioned, in Ruby, it is careful to put a backslashbefore any character which is not straight ASCII, like many accentuated characters.
So, to define a constant:
Text = "b\éton"
and not
Text = "béton"
Otherwise you may get an error when loading the script (but not always)

This also works from and to the Ruby Console
Now, I don't know what happens when reading and writing from files, as I never tried.
Could you attach your files so that I try

Thanks

Fredo

PS: The only things I noticed concerns the dialog boxes, where you have a different encoding and decoding of the accentuated characters, which makes the == comparison fail. This seems to be due to the fact that Sketchup uses Windows SDK dialog boxes, which have a different encoding method.

Coen

If you scale uniformly a surface, it will never match the original (think of a sphere for instance). However, this is somehow an approximate way to offset its contour, while preserving the overall shape of the surface.

With the first method (only offset the borders), you just use the shape of the outer borders and ignore the ones which are inside. So if you offset by a large distance, you will certainly 'dilute' the shape of the surface.

Both methods have their own benefits and drawbacks, and both can be implemented via a script.

That's what I meant.

Fredo

Oops...!!
Updated with correct code in Ruby repository

Fredo

Urgen,

Very good idea and quite natural in Sketchup.
I updated the files in the script repository (also with non blurry icons).
http://www.sketchucation.com/forums/scf/viewtopic.php?f=153&t=6708&p=42783#p42783

Thanks

Fredo

@jclements said:

"The editor makes full usage of the Sketchup inference mechanism so that you can
visually adjust the distance by reference to a particular point in your model, as in most
Sketchup tools. However, when you drag, you may want to skip some inferences. For
this, just keep the SHIFT key pressed down, while dragging faces."

For me, keeping the SHIFT key depressed doesn't appear to do anything. The black triangle at the cursor seems to be inferencing to other geometry. Perhaps I am misinterpreting its usage?

The black triangle will seem to 'block' on other geometry, but it position will be ignored when you drag the faces. So inference is skipped 'geometrically', but I did not find a way to skip it 'visually'. Hope this answers your question.

On offset tool for curved surfaces:

I am not totally clear on what several of you are targeting. Personally, I see 2 categories of such surface offset tool:

1. Only offsets the external border edges of the surface. This means for instance that all interior faces are left untouched. This does not exist in native Sketchup but can easily be done by a script. Actually the faces are just there to give the overall contour the planes for offsetting and the direction interior / exterior.
   

2. Deform continuously all faces of the model to accommodate the offset of the contour. In such a case, I think it would always change (even slightly) the shape of the overall surface. The best is probably to Scale the surface in all directions, and then move it to the closest position to fit the original surface. This can also easily be automated by a script.
   

Maybe I lack imagination and there are other forms of surface offset someone would think of!?

@unknownuser said:

that's great.. i like the feel much better than the first one.. it's faster and more intuitive for me..

a couple of the tool bar icons are showing up blurry.. any idea why?

I guess you are on Mac.
No idea of what happens with the PNG files, especially because only 2 of them appears in the 'fog'. They all come from the same source (thanks to Daniel S. who designed them). One idea, make sure you got all 5 icons of the latest version (they are all 24 x 24). The two I designed and published in the initial version were 32x32.

@unknownuser said:

Is it possible for this script to explode the curve after it is run? Or at least segment it into parts. It would cut down on a step if you are trying to erase lines for a cleaner face. See image.

I put precisely some code to keep curves on the original surface (to be as less destructive as possible). Note however that the generated corresponding contour is not welded as a curve. Is it the situation you have?

@jim said:

I agree about needing to read or write on the disk in order to accomplish this; however... if you are going to be reading and writing files, why not copy the .skm, load it, and make the adjustments? Either way, it looks as if the best you are going to do is a clunky work-around.

Well, this is to create programmatically a semi-transparent material from an existing material. This is the only way to build a macro that would show part of the model in Xray (as the View mode of Sketchup applies to the whole model). At the moment, I can do it with color of material, but cannot get the textures to be Xray'ed.

See discussion thread in the forum at http://www.sketchucation.com/forums/scf/viewtopic.php?f=57&t=6638
and also in the French section (http://www.sketchucation.com/forums/scf/viewtopic.php?f=51&t=6589&start=0)

@daniel s said:

Totally Amazing!!
How can i set for default for Joint, Vector and Normal Push pull in the finishing options "thickening" instead "erase original faces"?? it´s easy with the TAB or F5 keys... but when i restart SketchUp i have to set my defaults again.

Edit the rb file, line 334, and change @option_finishing = 'D' to @option_finishing = 'K'

@daniel s said:

PS. It´s possible to make the plugin work like the SketchUp push/pull? I mean... now you must select at least one face before running the plugin... and after doing the PP you have to select the icon again to PP another face....

This would only work in single-face push pull (but there would be no difference compared to the Sketchup tool). Because you need to be multi-face, you have to select the faces first. Remember that 2 successive JPP may not be equivalent to a single one on the total set of faces!

@al hart said:

Did you call tw.write(entity, fname)

No. My intention is not to export material or even get the JPG file for the texture, but just clone a material within the model, and then change parameters of this new material.