If you do the heavy lifting in a spreadsheet to get to x,y,z co-ordinates than it's easy with the cloud script.

Bob

I don't often use it for conversion but it's been my default graphics viewer for years and I've been very happy with it.

Bob

That's a good tutorial. I'm glad to see that I was on the right track but there are a few steps that I would never have worked out for myself.

In brief outline: import the models, group them, set the axes (gizmos in KT?), create thumbnails, save the scene as a material library then move to the models folder.

Bob

Thank you, Glad I could help. Bob

Here's a nice video of a keyboard being cleaned.

Bob

That is what the expand toggle does I think??

Bob

Hi,

I don't think that it would be too difficult to clean the script into a form that would be usable by Didier's cloud script - for the short sample I just deleted the lines that weren't xyz co-ordinates. For thousands of lines there are a couple of approaches. Manually I'd probably sort the list (the sequence isn't important), then delete the blocks of junk; import into Excel and parse the lines into three columns, do a couple more sort and deletes and that's it.

If the sequence were important, or this were a frequent task then a tool like TextPipe Pro will chew through it.

Bob

PS If someone can send me the full data file, I'll happily give it a go.

Here's one I made earlier - for a lighthouse model. A simpler slab than used here but the nested components/groups show how it's put together.

Bob

spiral_staircase.skp

It looks to me as though these lines parse into three numbers: so

0.49837422321267177D+040.49869317927816728D+040.67812740300658106D+02

becomes

0.49837422321267177D+04 0.49869317927816728D+04 0.67812740300658106D+02

The data in the elevation file looks like this (from a random point):

4968388, 4982342, 0

add back in the elevation for this point and you get

4968388, 4982342, 68.0

These are like the numbers from the data file so maybe the D+02 is an exponent (a decimal scaling factor). If so then the data file now reads:

4983.7422321267177, 4986.9317927816728 67.812740300658106

Roughly scaling off a building it looks as though these are in units of meters or thereabouts.

I pulled out the valid points (those with three non-zero entries) and parsed them into this format in a text editor. The result is in the attached data file which will import into SketchUp with Didier's cloud script. The result is not exciting - there are eleven almost coplanar points - but looks OK.

Bob

elevations.txt

The shape is a mathematical curve called a trefoil. I created one using using knotplot and shipped it into Sketchup.

In the render I forgot to smooth the skippy so it went a bit jazzy!

Bob

The trefoil skippy

You can do Copy, then Paste in Place and scale the new copy - I think that has the same effect.

Bob

You can save a model in KT. If you then copy it into the Kerkythea/Models folder it will appear in the Insert -> Model menu.

Is this what you are asking?

Bob

Adding to Gaieus' reply, I found I can get all three controls with a wheel mouse. Scroll the wheel to Zoom; click the wheel and hold to Orbit; wheel click and hold, then left click and drag at the same time to Pan.

Takes a little getting used to but with practice you can move around well with just the mouse.

Bob

Looks like it should be linked to here

Ahhhhh . . . thank you. Bob

Fredo, I do think that there is something here that is not consistent with "as if you would also extrude the neighbouring face." See this diagram (plan view of an extruded dodecagon). Notice that the two end extrusions of the five contiguous faces are different. (I did these both on the same dodecagon for simplicity but I get the same result if I do them on separate objects so I don't think there is interference between them.)

Scratching my head here but I don't see an obvious pattern.

Bob

I fiddled around with these for a while, then someone here Gaieus? pointed out that there's a standard sphere component in the Shapes folder.

Bob

Fantastic, enjoyed playing with it. Now I need to find a place to use it.

Thanks, Bob

PS Confirming bellwells image earlier, if you use Joint push-pull on non-contiguous faces of an polygon block then the side of the extrusions have a mix of angles, some are rectilinear (as from the Vector extrusion) some are aligned to the center of the block.

I don't think that you can set an axis of rotation in native Sketchup - there is no equivalent of joints. That said, SketchyPhysics allows you to use joints to fix axes; and Justin Chin has a 'Rigging Hack' that you can see in an amazing (speeded-up) video here and is explained in a post here.

Bob