sorry rick, didn't mean to make people steal your or anybody's work. but thanks to all authors leaving their script 'readable' for everyone else to learn or get inspired from. this is the important part of smustards EULA @unknownuser said: You may not alter, publish, market, distribute, give, transfer, sell or sublicense the Scripts or any part of the Scripts.

Mmmm, I must check that asap...

There's another option. Scale has lots of subtle 3D control. If only an edge is selected, tugging on the top/bottom, dead-center handle will only raise/lower an end. Tugging at one of the selected edge corner handles would lengthen/shorten the edge along its vector, etc... Selecting a face would be similar. Face and edge combinations can be scaled. Works swell while in hidden geometry. For the greatest control, orbit around the model so the cursor tugging on the handle is in front of some geometry. The closer the geometry is located the better. That's one way to harness inference - using neighboring geometry to finesse/steer the handles. Otherwise scale may seems to go wacko. Smoove and Smoove+Shift work, and an offset can be set for controlled, incremental bumping. But I don't use it much. Fine-tuning shapes often means tweaking as little as one edge at a time. And of course tools like nudge.rb, nudge bits and pieces. That's real handy. Using scale to move vertices like this means some initial 3D movement of geometry first to get a 3D bounding box. [image: kitty.jpg]

An example. http://www.sketchucation.com/forums/scf/sas/Ruby/userdefinedaxis.skp

Thank you John. A very useful link. [digby dart]

There might be a file size limit.

I believe so. I believe it can be opened with a standard editor. If I can get a sample file of data points, I will post it here. I'll have to wait until person who creates specific KMLs returns from vacation in 2 weeks.

The Tools observer has some problems - "toolname" is truncated on the Mac, making it hard (or impossible) to get the active tool based on name. However, the toolid works fine. class MyToolsObserver < Sketchup;;ToolsObserver def onActiveToolChanged(tools,toolname,toolid) #do stuff here puts "Selected tool; #{toolid} ;; #{toolname}" end end Sketchup.active_model.tools.add_observer(MyToolsObserver.new) That said, to constrain drawing to a 2D plane will probably require recreating all the tools with the constraints built in.

Here's a txt version of the "Introductory SketchUp Notes" I provide my students - these are the "default" shortcuts - you can easily change them to be whatever you want - there's also some additional information listed here as well - maybe this will help (& I hope I'm not infringing on any copyright laws by posting this): start To change units to decimal: Window --> Model Info --> Units --> Format --> Decimal --> (close the dialog box) To show toolbars: View --> Toolbars --> Getting Started View --> Toolbars --> Large Tool Set View --> Toolbars --> Views Note: Status Bar – the long gray rectangular area at the bottom of the drawing area Value Control Box – located on the right side of the status bar Must press Enter to have a value accepted Default Shortcuts: T = Tools --> Tape measure Space bar = Tools --> Select S = Tools --> Scale Q = Tools --> Rotate P = Tools --> Push/Pull B = Tools --> Paint Bucket F = Tools --> Offset M = Tools --> Move E = Tools --> Eraser CTRL + Z = Edit --> Undo CTRL + T = Edit --> Select None CTRL + A = Edit --> Select All CTRL + Y = Edit --> Redo CTRL + V = Edit --> Paste G = Edit --> Make Component Delete key = Edit --> Delete CTRL + X = Edit --> Cut CTRL + C = Edit --> Copy R = Draw --> Rectangle L = Draw --> Line C = Draw --> Circle A = Draw --> Arc Z = Camera --> Zoom H = Camera --> Pan O = Camera --> Orbit end

Thanks, I think I see how it works now.

If the programmers would writing real extensions, you could see name etc. under Windows > Preferences. Would be possible to do this with variables, BUT: The programmers must write classes, not only simple methods including the following module in the way the class MyExtension does: module DescribedExtension @@author = '' @@version = '' # ... end class MyExtension > Sketchup;;Extension include DescribedExtension def initialize @@author = 'azuby' if @@author.empty? @@version = '1.0' if @@version.empty? end # YOUR METHODS HERE end So you can ask the extension for info: if MyExtension.include? DescribedExtension puts MyExtension.author puts MyExtension.version end A much better way would be a kind of manger, which is could from extensions which include DescribedExtension. Than you only have to ask the manager for all described extensions. This is done in my approach to write an extension manager. But unfortunately the Sketchup Ruby API does not provide the required methods to finish my work. But you can go into the sources and look how it is done. azuby