I am impressed.

Curious about one thing, the vids were too fast to grasp something you did very efficiently that I do very often, but nowhere near as quick.

When you drew a 1/2 section then flip-copied it to form a whole piece, how exactly did you do that?

I see a dialog box flash on the screen then poof, there is a flip-copy welded to the original.

Is that part of native SU or a plugin?

I just took a quick romp through this post, and all I can say is they are all FAKES. Photographs, pure and simple.

SU cannot be that goodfor such a simple to use app.

And if there was ever to be a "Photo" contest, there would have to be a few dozen First Prizes.

@unknownuser said:

do any apps actually support this and/or does anyone/industry use that? if i understand correctly, you want to see 27' - 3 5/8" written as 27' 3.625"?

I don't know about other apps, I only use SU. I used to use ACAD, but so long ago, I don't recall what formats it used. I "grew up" in the aerospace industry, first as a field mechanic, then manufacturing inspection, then into aerospace project management. Then onto other fields, including programming, s/w development and s/w project management. That's over a 40+ year career in 3 separate fields.

Airplane parts were always measured in inch and decimal inch, even the big parts. (Now they are metric, but I don't think in metric, even in Canada) Very long parts such as wing spars were measured in feet - inch - dec.inch. So yes, I want to see 27 feet 3 5/8 inches as 27' 3.625. That is the way I type it into the VCB, but it always displays in Entity Info or Dimensions in the fractions format. And in most cases it shows as ~1/32 rather than 0.030 as I defined the dimension in the VCB.
In my mind it is not so big a deal for SU to show that format, so I cannot see why John and others before him are resisting so much, unless the NIH is a factor. (Not Invented Here)

John,
You said "Not sure what you're hoping to achieve here, but I am trying to answer your questions. I think I'm going to stop for a bit and show your post to some other folks to see if they can help me understand what you're trying to do. It isn't at all clear to me what work you're doing with SketchUp."

That is EXACTLY what I'm trying to achieve here. Instead of trying to explain away why some idea isn't being considered, without thinking it through, please get the "grunts" to mull it over and say that it is feasible, or, is not for a specific reason. You are not dealing with the general unwashed in these forums. In my experience, I've had managers attempt to "explain" why something could not be done, when, with my technical background I knew different. And any of the folks who have at least a few months working with SU can say the same.
The best answers I ever heard were "I'm not sure, but I will get back to you" and this is what you finally said. I will await your report.

As for what I'm doing with SU? Well I have had ideas in many fields formulate in my head over the years. Now in retirement I have the time to put them into 3D. I have a mountain of pencil on paper sketches of many things, based on my past experiences. I used ACAD for years but only in 2D, so I could never realize some ideas fully.
SU changed all that in incredible time and ease of use. I never touched ACAD from a week after I discovered SU-V6. As a result, I now have a patent in the mill, and 4 more in preparation. And because of those proprietary models, I cannot show them to the SU community.
However I have posted (a few years ago) an early rendition of my big freighter on the previous (now defunct) forum, and if anybody wants, I'll repost it here again.

John
Thanks for explaining away just about everything.

Yes, I probably could make use of Solidworks, but I do not draw stuff to make shop drawings of small stuff. I design conceptual stuff, like a huge cargo airlifter (320 ft wingspan), and a hangar to house it. Then there is 2.5million sq ft manufacturing facility to make it using a proprietary manufacturing process. My normal lower precision limit is .1 inch, and rarely gets to .001 only when I draw some smaller components in separate drawings.

Precision is not the problem, and scaling up is not the solution for the GAP problem. I get most of the gaps in triangle formation on flat surfaces. I get the gaps because SU snaps my lines just a tad off where I want them when there are more than 1 endpoint very close by and I cannot toggle OFF the snap. Then the triangular face fails to form. V6 said there was a gap but not where, and V8 says nothing about why it won't form. I'm not asking you to fix the gap, just indicate where it is. I can zoom in to fix it myself.

You totally ignored that part. Yeah, I suppose I could set precision to 1 inch, but then stuff won't fit. As for scaling up, SU also has problems with say a 3,200 ft object as well.

Hyper Pan/zoom happens at any scale, precision or distance from the object. I use last view a lot to try and get back, but usually the last view before the hyper-pan is exactly over empty space which caused the problem.

As for the pencil or the pointer tool on startup causing your developers such great consternation, did you ever think of giving us a startup default CHOICE???? There is a whole section on preferences built-in to SU; add that as an item.

So a plugin blows away the toolbar positions. I can accept that. But then what is the function of "Save toolbar locations" and "Restore toolbar locations" in V8? They simply do not work.

Yeah, SU supports Decimal Inch as I always input dimensions to the VCB using feet, inch and decimal inch. SU just does NOT display Feet AND inch AND Decimal-inch. It displays Feet Inch and Fractions of an inch, and others as well, none of which I want to use.

As for complex mice, I gave you the easy solution, button output remap. Give the (any) mouse more buttons (say 10 or 12) and let me define what button I press to do what shortcut I want. That way it matters not to SU what brand of mouse and how many buttons it has.

As for KB control keys, and if I am running out, the answer is a qualified yes. My left hand hovers over the left side and there is only a small number of keys I can easily and quickly hit with thumb PLUS forefinger on the left side. More control keys will help.

As for purging "unused" materials, that is a non-starter if you think about it. The purging only is enabled in the material list, not the Entity Info panel. Then, if I have 2 (or more) objects in my model with say, black, but one was imported from some other SU model, its' black is now a separate and different black. You cannot purge a material in use. I can't even sort the list to put the 2 blacks side by each.

I guess you are right, I have to let the SU community of Ruby Wizards solve the problems SU developers can't seem to grasp, let alone fix.

Thanks guys, and for the PM "solutions" as well. I will look at them later this week, as I have no time just now.

Actually I'm not looking for a solution. I have it in the rightmost copy, and it is good enough for my learning purposes. I will not use that particular duct in any model, as it was not to scale, nor to fit the actual airplane at this time. The "real" one will be shorter and the curves a bit more involved to avoid aircraft structure. It is simply a learning exercise for Curviloft using a shape I had difficulty creating using a mesh and tweaking it.

The essence of my post was that it seems Curviloft tried to follow the original DIRECTION of the flipped copy of a curve in segments causing a twist in the surface, and was for Fredo to analyze. Once I welded the flipped curve segments, my duct formed correctly.

@jbacus said:

@jgb said:

FIX WHAT IS BROKE first.

Please define what broke things you'd like fixed. Do you disagree with the wants and needs of the archviz folks who would like us to prioritize the list of things I itemized above?

john
.

First, I'm not sure what you mean by "archviz folks".

This is the list of SU shortcomings I have complained about since nearly day 1 of my using SU (Aug 2008). Some may say a few are added features, but I say SU should have incorporated them as intrinsic functions I would expect from the design team. I have stated all of them on various SU BBS's, and quite frankly, John, you are the first Senior SU team member to respond to my postings. Kudos for that.

My 3 biggest "bitches" relate to face forming and Pan/Zoom.

Face Forming
In version 6, at least when a face failed to form with "form face" you gave 1 of 2 error messages, either there was a gap, or the entities were non-planar. A small clue, at the very least. Now V8 just says "Can`t do it", far less than useful. If SU is "smart" enought to know it has an error, please tell me what it is and where. When I was a Project Manager I read the riot act to more than 1 coder and SA that gave an all encompassing meaningless error message after an extensive input data check.

1 - Finding a GAP in an entity selection for face forming.
When SU finds a gap, highlight between which 2 entities the gap exists.
If you need a clue how to do this, see TT's Solid Inspector.

2 - Cannot form face due to non-planar entities.
You have 2 choices here; either just highlight the non-planar entities, or, face whatever part of the entity set that is planar, leaving the remainder highlighted.
If you need a clue how to do this, see TT's Solid Inspector.

Pan/Zoom; Commonly refered to as "Hyper Pan" or "Hyper Zoom". When you select the pan or zoom tool, or wheel to zoom, you need to have the cursor on some entity. Then the pan or zoom rate is proportional to the distance between you and the object, which is logical. However if on subsequent sweeps or wheel rotations the cursor "slips off" an object into empty space the pan or zoom rate goes HYPER and you are off "to the moon, Alice". Getting back to where you were is a real pain.
The solution to this is simple. Maintain the last "on object" pan or zoom rate even over empty space. Maintain this rate till either the cursor is over an object, or some other tool is selected.

Startup Tool. Native SU defaults the "Pencil" tool on startup. Many of us have inadvertently marred a model when loading it, then have to delete. "Startup.rb" solved the problem by defaulting to the very much more logical "Select" tool on SU startup.
Almost everybody now uses "Startup.rb" because SU still does not do the logical thing by defaulting to the "select" tool.

Restore Toolbar locations. Version 8 is a good try, no cigar. Not sure avout V7, but V6 every now and then would scramble the toolbar locations for no reason.
V8 has a mmenu item to set and restore the toolbar positions. Great, but IT DOES NOT WORK.
Every time I loaded a new plugin in V8 the toolbar for that plugin would set itself in the left side of screen and blow most of the other toolbars out of position. Restore justs does nothing. Please fix it.

Units. I know SU was initially and today is predominately an architectural tool. And the choice of units follow that standard. However a lot of users develop models for aerospace and other non-arch disciplines. I use it as a poor mans' 3D CAD.
Most of those disciplines use Feet - Inch - DECIMAL inchas the standard units.
SU needs that set of units. And, no, Feet - Decimal Feet is not a valid alternative.

Mouse Buttons. My old Logitech mouse had 12 buttons since way before I started using SU. My current one has 10, all used in most other PC apps.
SU only recognises 5, left/right buttons, wheel down, wheel rotate and wheel left/right.
It would be totally impractical to redefine my mouse keys just for SU, then redefine them as I switch apps while I am using SU. SU needs to be able to recognize those additional buttons regardless of their default function definition.
To solve this, SU needs to "Learn" what each mouse button sends as a function, then redefine that function for SU shortcut purposes. It IS do-able.

Additional Keyboard Control Keys. Right now SU only recognises the Tab, Shift and CTRL as control keys for shortcuts and functions. There are several other keys that can and should be used as well; Function keys, the Windows key and perhaps the TAB key. They have no other SU function.

And finally;
Material/Colors list. The Entity Info and Materials lists have a major deficiency. There is no capability to modify the set of colors, textures and materials. Many models collect (via other components and models brought into the model) all sorts of colors (etc) many of which are duplicated, especially black.
There is no way to consolidate all the blacks (for example) into 1 black, or even sort the list to place the most used colors at the top.
Just recently I discovereda plugin to correct this, but not yet loaded it into my SU. BUT this editing & sorting function SHOULD be an intrinsic SU function.

Thats it for now. There are others but this list is my oldest bitch list and it has taken about 3 hours to write.

What say you, John??

OK, finally got time to show you what happened.

If you open the model, you will see 3 sets of curves. The 2 sets on the right are copies of the first set on the left. Make visible the layers, 1 at a time as I explain what I did and what happened.

Twisted Curve Demo

Layer 1. The main curves of the duct. The intake ellipse transitions up over a wing spar then down to the circular engine intake. It is not to scale.
Layer 2. The duct curve to follow. In 2 parts, forward and aft. The aft curve formed OK when it was separated from the forward part, so I left them as separate pieces.
Layer 2.1 The 4 curves I selected to form the duct. I did not define which was the path, just clicked on "Create loft junction following a given path". Like I said, I am amazed Curviloft could discern the path.
Layer 3. These are the lines I wanted the duct top and bottom to follow. They were never selected for Curviloft and are an approximate shape only. I used them to create the intermediate curve to eliminate the flat underside seen in...
Layer 4. The resultant first workable duct. The transition was way too flat. The duct needs to have a near constant cross section area throughout.
Layer 5. Moving to the middle set, I created a 1/2 D section by making an arc, then exploding it so to adjust the shape by eye. Then I copied the lines, moved them left and flipped them. Next I moved the copy right to meet with the original set. I've done this hundreds of times before.
Layer 6. Selecting the 4 main curves and the new transition curve, produced this twisted duct.
You will see that the lines seem to go from the right side of the ellipse to both the left and right sides of the transition, then back to the right of the over spar curve.
Layer 7. When I welded the transition curve into a true curve....
Layer 8. The duct formed correctly.
Layer 9. The aft duct formed OK.

Note a few things. When creating this demo, I had difficulty reproducing the twisted duct. The version you see here and may not be able to recreate, was from the original trials on the left set.

Also, a correct duct may not be reproducible. I had trouble reproducing it from the copied set of curves.

So that's it for now.

1. Does the SP ballistics algorithm use "Flat Earth" or "Curved Earth" calculations?
   Flat is used for short range such as guns and mortars.
   Curved takes into account the earths curvature for long range and suborbital trajectories.

2. Is there a way to simulate a rope and pulley system?

Me again.

I'm not in any way against the suggestions posted above and elsewhere.
Personally, most of them are not applicable to what I use SU for, but I am sure many out there can make good use of them.

All I said before about making SU better, at this point, is

FIX WHAT IS BROKE first. Please!

I can't tell you how happy I am to see SP upgraded.

I've avoided SP for some time because I simply could not climb the learning curve (that's ME, not SP!) then got too busy with too many other things to get back. Still too busy, but in a few weeks I WILL load SP 3.1 and get back to it.

Now a cupla questions based on ...... what Andy1347 said (in part)

*After rebuilding my plug-ins folder, I have determined the culprit causing the conflict is a ruby called 'singleton' in a folder called 'ruby'. As near as I can tell, it is used with Jim Foltz's 'autocenterpoint'.

With that one file removed, SketchyPhysics seems to load and run just fine.*

Is there any logic to the ORDER in which SU loads RUBY scripts?
Does it matter (and in the case above, it seems too)?
Is there any practical way to control loading order, if required?

Dear John

With all due respect, Good political answer. Run for congress.

If, as you say, you do read our posts, then PLEASE take the time to at least acknowledge and perhaps explain what you think of the post.

No response equates to NOT LISTENING.

In my case, most of my posts relate to SU shortcomings not new bells and whistles.

WHY have you not addressed the "Gapped" triangle problem, easy to fix as I suggested.
Why have you not addressed the "Hyper-zoom / Hyper-pan" problem, also easy to fix, as I suggested.

I can give you a comprehensive list of SU shortcomings and suggested fixes, if you want.
All I ask is a proper response to them.

Don't explain it away simplistically. I was a Software Projects manager way back when, so I do understand how these things work.

As I only have about 1 1/2 hrs to get on my PC in the mornings for the last and next few weeks, I did not have time to fully recreate and document the drawing to post here. Not even time to do a screen print this morning.

Part of the problem was replicating the initial conditions that caused the twist, then the fix. Trying to setup the scenario in process order, sometimes the fix would work, sometimes not, even with copies of the real fix.

So I will get more time on Sat. to get this working. Please bear with me.

Fredo; I have not gone up the learning curve enough to play with twist angles, as well as other niceties in the app. As to the tools used, I created all my curves by hand, not using Splines. As this was a quick and dirty practice model, I just used circles and stretched them to get close to a shape I wanted. In a few, I needed to explode the curve and manually reshape it.

Also, I did not use the built-in selection of curves by number. I found it a bit confusing (No, I did not read your very excellent doc fully, yet), I always try things intuitively, before resorting to reading.

But here is how I did the curve selection, discovered by accident. I simply selected all the control curves and the disconnected path, hit the "Create Loft junctions following a given path" and the curve formed. I am simply amazed Curviloft can discern the correct path.

@thomthom said:

@jgb said:

I can't show a picture as my old GPU produces solid black export JPG's with SU-V8 due to SU-V8 needing OpenGL 1.5 and my GPU can only handle OpenGL 1.3, so it has to be words only.

"Print Scrn" ?

Good Idea, good thing I thought of it.

I'll try tomorrow am early. I have a bit of time, and I will attempt to recreate the problem/solution and Print Scrn it.

While playing with Curviloft (CL), drawing a practice non-scaled air duct for one of my airplane models, I noticed something about how CL handles some defining elements.

My model starts with a tilted ellipse, travels straight back then up over a spar forming a "D" shape (flat side of "D" down), then transitions down to a circle at the engine intake.

I can't show a picture as my old GPU produces solid black export JPG's with SU-V8 due to SU-V8 needing OpenGL 1.5 and my GPU can only handle OpenGL 1.3, so it has to be words only.

The shape was formed with an ellipse, then the "D" shape and a circle, with a long curve depicting how the shape will transform, essentially along the centerlines of the 3 defining shapes. My first tries came out pretty good, taking about 5 seconds to plot the surface. Compare that with about a week's work trying to get that shape by manually tweaking a mesh, and never getting it right.

Anyway, the transition from ellipse to "D" was too flat. I played with the transition curve a bit but was not satisfied. So, I needed to add an intermediate shape on the transition to more circularize the duct. That would be a circle with the bottom slightly flattened, somewhat egg shaped.

As usual, I created the shape on its 1/2 side, then copied it, moved left, flipped and rejoined the 1/2 copy to its original to form the symmetrical duct. Keep in mind, neither 1/2 shapes were true curves, but were just joined line segments. This became important!

I put CL to work and 5 seconds later got a twisted mess between the ellipse to the new shape to the "D" shape. The back duct formed properly.

Nothing I could do prevented that. If I took the intermediate (egg) shape out of the CL definition, the duct formed properly. Put it in and it twisted.

Upon close inspection I noticed that most of the twist started from the right side of the ellipse, went to the left side of the "egg" then back to the right side of the "D". But some parts of that duct formed correctly.

So, after some experimentation, I used the WELD.rb on the copied 1/2 side (without facing) and LO the duct formed correctly.

Some more experimenting confirmed this. CL will form a surface on drawn curves even if they are not "proper curves". But if you copy and flip a non-proper curve (set of line segments) CL will twist the shape as if the copied curve retained parts its pre-flip orientation.

So, if you are getting twists in your surfaces, and any parts of your defining shapes are copied and flipped, make sure you WELD the copied shapes to form a full proper curve.

@earthmover said:

Just the other day I was wondering why more woman weren't apart of this forum.... In the US that's called Butter Face. Everything looks good butter face...

AKA "Good from far, but far from good"

1/2 a sec while I climb up on my soapbox.

OK. I made it through to page 4 of this, and after Coens comments (all too true) I have to add my $0.02CDN.

First, 64bit is a red herring. If the hardware, the operating system AND the application s/w are all 64bit compliant, the throughput of the machine MORE than doubles. I have heard the same bitches when we went from 8bit to 16bit, from 16bit to 32bit. And on the mainframes, going on to 128 and 256bits.

Long register adds are sped up by 4 at least because there is little overflow checking required.
GRAPHICS is a long register hog.

Generally speaking when a "64bit" app performs less than expected on a 64bit CPU, it is all the more likely it is not optimized for 64bit throughout and still depends on legacy 32bit functions, which will slow down any 64bit CPU.

As for Google not listening.......

LadyBugz (Carolyn) posts only the first post, then NOTHING for 19 pages so far.
Same sort of response the last 4 1/2 years I've been using SU, and posting to the other SU BBS's including Googles "official" forum. A very typical "Post, Promise, Disappear" like they are training to become politicians.

I've said this many times before..... Google SU developers are more interested in adding new bells and whistles than fixing perennial problems. (a few of the many I've complained about follows)

Like "Hyper zoom"
Like Failing to indicate WHERE the problem lies in face forming (gaps and non-planars). If SU can find a problem, TELL ME WHERE IT IS, not a simply useless error message. In fact SU8 is worse than SU6 in saying what the problem is.
Like gaps in intersecting
Like Feet-Inch-Decimal inch units
Like an Icon to toggle snapping
The list goes on...

YES, I am fully aware of the selfless magicians who dedicate countless hours writing Ruby scripts to fix major deficiencies in SU, both bugs and "function not present" but should be.

Like Startup, which defaults the select cursor rather than the pencil
Like ThomThom's TT-Select toys and others
Like Fredo's JPP, Curviloft, and Onsurface
and my pluggin list goes on.

Most of my plugins are FIXES to SU shortcomings, not added functionality.
Most of those plugins SHOULD HAVE BEEN PART OF SU, and some a long time ago.

Yeah, Google listens

@unknownuser said:

It sounds like my best bet is to just adjust how I'm used to working. For example, when I have a window, say, on a 45 degree wall I would sometimes copy it out and turn it 45 degrees so it lined up with the world axis. Then I could go in and edit it based on the world axis and later delete the extra component. -Brodie

Yeah that axis change in SU-V8 really irks me.

I was drawing an ancient (circa 1907) V8 aircraft engine with a very complex cylinder construction, where all the push rods and valve rockers were exposed. It was at about 50 degrees tilt each bank. I created a dummy cylinder component (just a rough sized cylinder) and copied it 7 times in the correct locations and angles. Then I made a copy and set its angle straight in some remote location on its own development layer. All my construction work was done on the development copy, while any interference adjustments were made on any cylinder on the full engine.

Did the same thing on a radial engine. Worked like a charm.

I get the double face on occasion as well. Don't have a clue why, as they seem to form randomly in areas where I have never edited, but seem to occur after I do an intersection to that surface.

BUT, I have discovered 2 ways to find them.

The first applies to surfaces that have some curve in them. It does not work with flat surfaces.
With all lines on the surface both soft and smooth, and hidden lines off, roll and rotate the surface and examine it carefully. You will see some individual faces seem to have a decidedly harder outline and seem somewhat flat. They are double faced. Just delete the "flat" face after you turn on hidden lines.

In the 2nd method, I found that when I made some surfaces (flat or curved) in a semi-transparent material (both front and back faces, not just 1 face) I saw some individual faces had a slightly darker appearance. Those were the double faces.
So, if you suspect double faces, select the whole surface, paint both sides with some throw-away color. Edit that color to be semi-transparent (around 20-50%) and view the surface with with hidden lines off. Delete the darker faces after you turn on hidden lines. Then repaint with desired color.

@unknownuser said:

If she looks like that, we call them "last option"

Scott

That's a "Two-bagger". 2nd bag just in case she breaks the 1st bag on her face.

@watkins said:

It would be useful if when selecting the circle tool the circle pointer icon displayed the currently set number of segments. This small addition would prompt the user to consider 'more or less' segments before drawing the circle.

Regards,
Bob

It Does this now.
When you click on the circle or arc tools, the current number of segments are shown in the VCB (Measurements box). Usually 24 for the circle and 12 for the arc.
Start your circle/arc and that is the segments you draw in, until you select the tool next.

To change the segment value, click on the tool, and then, before any draw operation, type the number of segments you want followed by "S" and <enter>. The tool stays in that segment count till you select the tool again and change it.

You cannot change the segment count after you start to draw. However, you need to select some other tool or the select <spacebar> first, before the circle/arc tool again.