In SU-8, in previous models, I have this orange line displayed on the ground that points to the north pole. On new models it doesn't appear. Somewhere between a and b I changed styles. For the life of me I cannot remember/find how to turn that on an off. I like it on.

Anyone know?

Or open up the ruby window and type Sketchup.break_edges=false (case sensitive). It'll return "false" but the lines won't intereract and break like they did.

Thank you.

I asked only because the post announcing the update said like "For SU2013", leaving an implication that it was to be used only with SU2013.

What is the compatibility w/ older versions of Sketchup?

Here are a couple of small improvements that could be added to the user interface:

1. The texture menu is over long. For example, if someone clicks on a face they're going to do 1 of a very short list of functions; doing something with the texture is one but there is nothing about textures in the right mouse click list of applicable functions. There should be and what there is should be shorter (get rid of "Done")... so it's more like any other command in SU. It should also have a defined shortcut(s).

2. Occupying a small slice of the 2d cad world is a product named Visual Cadd. It's very good for what it does. It has two drawing functions you should consider: filet and Chamfer. Both operate on the idea the user selects two intersecting lines with left mouse clicks and then w/ a right mouse click selects one of the above functions, each of which asks the user to enter the necessary data to complete the task. I have always been surprised that SU never had these basic operations as part of the command set.

3. Select by material should operate on "No / Default material". It does not do that now and that too is another big surprise to me.

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Hopefully not too difficult: I could make good use of Layer Sets; This set is about material types, that set relates to construction, etc. etc. Allow primitives be assigned multiple layers so long as each is part of a different set.

Last but not least, use a newer version of Ruby please.

It's been some time since this list was updated. Has it fallen of of favor because of SU 2013? I hope not... I usually wait 6-12 months before changing to a major version release and so the plug-in index is still very much appreciated.

That's the trick!

THANK YOU very much!

Prior to SU 8 I had a functioning shortcut for texture/position. It disappeared when I changed over to SU 8 and I've not been able to re-create it.

IMO the default menu for doing anything with applied textures is perhaps the worst aspect of an otherwise fine user interface and I'm dismayed at the prospect of being stuck with it again.

Did google remove something or have I just forgotten how to set it up again? If the later, would somebody remind me of what to do?

If you don't have too much to do and are inclined to use basic techniques rather than plugins then paint one section of your curb, adjust the texture placement as needed, and then use alt-paint to sample the placed texture from one poly. Paint the rest of the row manually. All of the individual polys you paint will replicate the appearance of the poly you sampled. Repeat as needed if the kerb has several rows of polys, top to bottom.

Here's the phrase that caught my eye:

"Non-commercial use means: you may not sell, rent, lease or lend the output of the Software or the Services".

"The output" of the software is not defined but common sense suggests, at a minimum, that it includes the .skp file. A strict interpretation would include images as well as any exported data w/o regard to format. Output is, loosely speaking, everything that the software produces as a result of the end users mousing and keyboarding: the xyz data for the vertices and the UV data for the textures.

I can see from a purely practical perspective that Trimble won't care about each and every situation and is more likely to be upset from a gross violation of the requirements for commercial use... but as I said in my basenote, it reads as if nothing at all can be shared by the free version of the software. and that IF that is correct and if you do want to share the output, then you must use the commercial version. Which seems rather "tight".

@chris fullmer said:

And here's another option. If you want it to reset the component rotation and scale, edit the ruby file in a plain text editor (like notepad for example) and after the line:

if comp.typename == "Group" || comp.typename == "ComponentInstance"

add the two following lines:

t = Geom::Transformation.new comp.transformation = t

Chris

I'm having some difficulty using this plug in on nested components that were created with a copy/paste/scale = -1. I was hoping to try a few of the edits cited in this thread but the ruby is a .rbz; My editor tells me its been locked up and uneditable... is there another way to get to the source?

Out of curiosity I downloaded and installed Sketchup Make. On running it there is a message says I can have 8 hours of usage and that amount decreases while the software is in use.

I'm not sure if that means after using it for 8 hours it stops working entirely... or just some portion of it stops working... or they're just pullin my leg, that I can continue to use it but am constrained by the EULA as to what I can do with it.

Which is it?

Second question, it is pretty obvious that Trimble's EULA requires commercial use to be done w/ the Pro version... having spent real money to buy SU I can understand that they want real money in return whenever they can. My question is about non-commercial use: If I understand them correctly they're saying, essentially, that no vertices and UV coordinates originally placed in SU Make can be made available to anyone else under any circumstances. No export to another format for 3d printing by a service bureau, for freeware game content when played by others, not even a printed page handed to your wife, nothing. Rather constraining. OR, alternatively, are they saying the SU Make user cannot make available to anyone else by any means any .skp file produced by SU Make? Or something in between that can only be guessed at?

Anyone know which interpretation is correct?

Last night I had an automated system update from Microsoft, which installed a security update named KB2807986. This morning I'm seeing SU 8 abort... whereas last night before the MS update it was fine.

I emptied out my plugins and saw that SU would run again. Moving a few back in place I was able to determine that having LIBFREDO6_Dir_47 in my plugin folder was sure to see SU abort, removing it and SU would run again.

I'm able to do my work w/o all the plugins and seeing that those I use most of the time would not cause an abort, I stopped my testing there.

Am posting this to ask if anyone else is also having this problem -- or am I just lucky?

Seems like updating the version of ruby used for Sketchup would he most helpful. Any reason for Trimble to do that as a routine step or is this one of those don't fix it if it ain't broke situations?

I have a number I want to round to 6 decimal places before changing it to a string for output. The code I have in hand is (self*1000000.0).to_i.to_f/1000000.0 which appears to simply truncate instead of doing a true rounding.

As part of the float class, round(n) is a method in the Ruby language but I see no reference to it the Sketchup API. Is there a way to get around the SU API to get to the language methods?

Suggestions?

Yeah... I know, it was a rant.

The board software says turn off AdBlock. I did. Board software continues to say turn off Adblock. Turns out I also needed to turn off Ghostery. I did that too and then downloaded an attachment from a private message.

Constructive feedback: It would be better if the advisory message was simply "Turn off all of your browsers ad blocking features" than to call out an incomplete list of specifics.

I

I hate, hate, hate the current board software. It drives me nuts almost every time I visit.

The login window won't stay presented.

I don't know how many times I've had to reset the passwords.

And now you've got it setup so AdBlock seemingly must be removed before being able to download an attachment to a pm -- not disabled like it says because I've done that already per your request butthe board software doesn't think I have so I cannot download.

It's just crazy. And in case you think this is just an off the wall rant, please understand, I own an online board myself, I do the admin as well. You've got some work to do.

AFAIK there is something called near clip (or some similar name) -- which is a distance value representing the nearest the viewer can get to something. Whatever that value is, there are an additional number of increments that follow (maybe 32k) with each increment representing a further-away distance used as a place to "drop in" other objects that are further away. It's a bit like a queue. How far away the last increment falls is based on how large a distance value you've assigned to the near clip. If you set near clip to see something like tiny, like 0.01mm, you're going to run out of increments before you get very far away because 0.01mm is so very small. That may be a perfect distance for viewing jewelry but not for GIS data. Setting nearclip to something a bit larger, say 1mm, will set the last increment much further away; Setting near clip to something large, like 1m, results in the last increment being very far away indeed.

Clipping occurs when you zoom inside of the near clip value.

I expect SU uses a near clip value that gave them what they felt was the right balance between closeup and furthest distance that can be seen. Obviously some modelers, myself included, occasionally need to get in even closer to see something.

I dunno what the solution for that is... it might be a limit in Open-GL, it might be a limit in a 32bit program, or something else, such as letting the user pick his own near clip value as part of the model attributes. Whatever it is, it isn't a bug, it's a decision that tries to find the right balance of near/far for the largest number of users.

Bump maps would be very, very useful for representing rows of rivets without a hugeamount of geometry being retained. Same could be true for nuts and bolts. For those sorts of things being able to create bump maps would be really helpful.

Would someone be kind enough to help me write what I think will be a very short ruby script?

I have a library of about 5000 SU models and I need to loop thru that list and for each of the materials replace the source file extension of .tga with .bmp. If there is a path to the file I need to edit that too. As you can imagine it would be an impossible task to do by hand.

I've found a script that loops thru a directory of files so I figure I can "borrow" that code but I don't know what to do about editing the materials values.