@ittayd said:

And, I wouldn't mind the coordinates changing if contains? would have acted sanely, always returning true to a point that is inside the group

BoundingBoxes are always aligned with the model's axes. This means if you rotate a cuboid instance, it's bounding box will increase.

The second thing you need to realize is that bounding boxes have an untransformed state (ie, the definition's entities bounds,) and each of their instances transformed bounds. The transformed bounds are not just translational, they can also be affected by the rotation and scaling of the instance.

@ittayd said:

I would expect the coordinates to never change no matter what entity is opened.

As a coder, most of time when generating geometry, you are just working in the definition's local coordinates with the IDENTITY transform, (ie, everything is 1:1 and you're specifying geometry oriented in relation to the definition's local origin and axes.)

But when the user double-clicks into an instance, that might be rotated or scaled (transparently they are actually editing the definition,) but perhaps not at the 1:1 scale.
Imagine an instance that has been scaled 2x. The user would be drawing edges that are twice as long on the screen. So their needs to be some transforming back to the definition's scale and coordinates.

Julia wrote a really good explanation of this recently (ie past few months.) Need to find this and give you the link.

Until it's fixed how about a clunky and convoluted workaround ?
If the pa=dim.start[0].parent is a component-definition then you need to see if there is pa.instances[1] if not then the one instance is the answer.
If there are more than one instance you need to iterate those, and assemble a list of their transformation.origin positions [ensuring the transformation steps back to match the dim's parent's and of course takes into account any instance scaling etc...] - let's call that 'pvs'.
The pt=dim.start[0] gives you a point inside the definition.
You have ps=dim.start[1] as the point of the dim in 3d space.
Transform the 'pvs' inversely and compare that point with ps, if they match then you could have a hit.
Of course two or more instances where some are rotated or flipped so that vertex is coincident in 3d returns two or more 'hit' points, so it'd not be possible to determine the attachment that way...

So, it's better if it worked like it should !!!

@ittayd said:

Thanks, I'm asking about ways to interact with the text: getting, setting.

No this is not what you asked!

Such a simple thing (as what method's a class has) can be easily found by looking at the API dictionary.

Link Preview Image Class: Sketchup::DimensionLinear

The DimensionLinear class represents linear dimensions.

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SketchUp Ruby API Documentation (ruby.sketchup.com)

... which is a subclass of (and therefore inherits methods from😞
http://ruby.sketchup.com/Sketchup/Dimension.html

... which is a subclass of (and therefore inherits methods from😞
http://ruby.sketchup.com/Sketchup/Drawingelement.html

... which is a subclass of (and therefore inherits methods from😞
http://ruby.sketchup.com/Sketchup/Entity.html

... which is a subclass of (and therefore inherits methods from😞
http://ruby-doc.org/core-2.2.4/Object.html

You asked about dims nested inside transformed instances.

I am not sure if the .text getter will return transformed lengths or not. Also not sure what happens when the context is open and not. So test.

The means I showed above avoids the conversion of text ( String) into a numeric ( Length) object, and just gets the length.

@ittayd said:

Is there a way to utilize sketchup's own selection tool?

The only way is to attach a SelectionObserver, activate SketchUp's native SelectTool Sketchup.active_model.select_tool(nil), collect the object references, detach the observer, and activate your tool.

But trying to leverage native tools via code has been problematic in the past. So, this is why they finally added (SU2016) the two window pick methods to the PickHelper class.

ThomThom wrote a tutorial and created a graphic helper chart for using this class.

Link Preview Image PickHelper — A Visual Guide

I’ve put together a visual guide to the PickHelper class in SketchUp’s Ruby API. When I first tried to use the PickHelper class I was confused over what the different methods did, and f…

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Procrastinators Revolt! (www.thomthom.net)

Other than that, you best learn by reading the example extension by the SketchUp Team (EW) or others like ThomThom's plugins.

Ah okay, 3 years and two months ago, Fredo was noticing these same issues in the following topic thread:

onKeyDown: getting the charcater value from key

In that thread, post # 9, I noted several other related topic threads, and the one that I just remembered by Jim Foltz, which was back in 2009.
flags on onKeyDown?
(Note that at this time Chris Fullmer was not yet a member of the SketchUp Team, and had not yet learned much programming.)

See other related threads:

My Apple Keyboard VK_KEYS

very difficult key codes!

keycodes intelmac

Jim's KeyTool.rb is also posted in this topic thread, but not sure if it is the latest version ?

Key sequence in ruby

Now, @Anton_S posted a Windows only method that calls Windows API C functions, in this post:
http://sketchucation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=180%26amp;t=57450%26amp;p=522915%26amp;hilit=keytest#p522915

🤓

@ittayd said:

I want to create a tool that allows to select several entities by either picking them or a selection window. But how do I draw the selection window?

The "Select by Polygon" plugin you can find on my blog is an example of drawing the selection window then selecting the entities within it.

... and new for SketchUp vers 2016 and higher is a rectangular window picking method:
http://ruby.sketchup.com/Sketchup/PickHelper.html#window_pick-instance_method

You should download the SketchUp Team's Examples extension to see how Tools are written.
http://extensions.sketchup.com/en/content/example-ruby-scripts

Mold or Shell ?

I need to do this sort of thing frequently since I'm always making plans for furniture piece. I do use LayOut which makes it much easier but much of what I do you could do with Make.

First, you need to make sure you are using layers appropriately so you can make parts invisible when you don't need to see for a given scene. You can make copies of the components and shift them off to another part of the model space to create other views like 3-views of parts and exploded views. Here's an example from a recent plan.
Screenshot - 4_12_2017 , 4_56_34 PM.png

Between layer management and camera position, I can show exactly what I want to show for each scene. It's much easier to fine tune the view in LayOut but in your case, export the scenes as images. Then import those images into your document. You can control the size of the images during import and you can use an image editor to crop the images if needed.

FWIW, it is totally inappropriate to scale your model to make it look larger. You can zoom the camera to look at a smaller portion of the model if needed but don't use the Scale tool. That invites all sorts of problems including incorrectly displayed dimensions as you mentioned.

BTW, doing this with SketchUp Make and some other document creation software such as MSWord is time consuming. Revisions are especially problematic. If your time has any value at all, you would be wise to spring for SketchUp Pro so you can use LayOut. In the grand scheme of things the cost is relatively minor compared to the time you'd save in making the plans so you can get to the shop and start building.

Here you go. No making components or subcomponents unque. Simply copied and assigned to the correct layers.
Closed
Open
Both layers on

If I use "use high accuracy HLR", dimensions show, but now texture don't...

You can add a table in LayOut.

Leave the section cut faces in place on the model so the model behind the section cut can be seen, too. Make a scene for each section cut view. To show those views, you can easily place the scenes as viewports next to each other in LayOut.

As for something more structured, that part is up to you. You just have to develop a structured work flow.

try this, from the EW: Dynamic Component from two Objects

@box said:

8+ years later there is a paid Extension by Eneroth, I think Visual Merge is the name. Look in the E Warehouse.

Thanks Box,

I'll look into it. I have unsuccessfully searched multiple times for a plugin to do this over the years and now alas 5 minutes after posting I found another possible plugin (I'll test both!).

https://sketchucation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=323&t=61842

It's sort of a GIGO thing.

Hi Ittayd, hi folks.

Can you be more precise. Do you want to correct the non planar endpoint(s) by moving it/them so that the shape becomes planar and thus can be closed or do you want to force close it.

1 - MAKING AN ENDPOINT COPLANAR WITH OTHERS

In the first possibility, you can use the Move tool to actually move the endpoints. Since endpoints cannot be selected, after choosing the Select tool, make sure that nothing is selected. The Select tool has a feature that I call Autohilight. When you pass it on an entity, you get a pop-up inference and a colored dot or an entity that will highlight with your default selection color (blue by default). Some entities will be highlited, like an edge, and can then be selected by a click on them. For an endpoint, only the pop-up message "endpoint" and a green dot will let you know that you are hovering the cursor over it. Click the hiligthed endpoint to grab it and you can then move it wherever you want.

Lets suppose that you have a group of five points where four are on the same plane, lets assume the horizontal plane, and the fifth one is at a different altitude. You want to make the fifth point coplanar with the other four. After grabbing it as describe above, you move it up or down somewhat untill you get a vertical inference shown as a blue dashed line and a message stating "on blue axis". Press and hold the SHIFT key to lock that inference. Now, the endpoint can only be moved up or down while preserving its other two coordinates. While still pressing the SHIFT key, move the cursor over any of the other four points. The grabbed endpoint will snap to the correct altitude. Click to complete the move and then release the SHIFT key. Redraw any of the existing edges to close the face.

2 - CLOSING A NON COPLANAR FACE

The trick here is to triangulate the figure. Since a triangle is a flat surface, any three endpoints will be coplanar. You simply add diagonals to close triangles inside the perimeter delimited by your five endpoints, using the existing edges of the model. With five points you need two added edges to create three triangles. Once these are created, you can smooth theses added inside edges.

Just ideas.