3 - Text "scrunches up" because it's properties are set up in pt inside sketchup. In model info/entity info you have an option to set a text/leader/dimensio to be, for instance, Arial 12, but you can also set it as Arial 10cm. Try the second and the text will be frozen in place.

ADVICE: Model all you want in sketchup but label, dimension and write text in layout... You'll have more control like that!

4 - They run separately but you can refresh a sketchup model from within layout.

ADVICE: You should set scenes in sketchup that are exactly what you want to print and then use those scenes in Layout, because they get listed there, in the Model Tray. Never mess with scene properties in Layout besides, background, line width, scale, and vector/raster/hybrid modes, and your scenes should stay linked between SU model and Layout.

Hi Jiminy,

Here's a couple of feature request for when you have the time:

• You have the add layer button wich when you press a button for long gives you the possibility to add a layer hidden on new pages. Usefull but hard to access, would it be very hard to make it faster to access? Like a separate button or a one click drop down (drop up actually) button?

• Could you also create a button for adding a layer only visible on current scene?

Thanks again for this wonderful plugin,

JQL

Violence and beauty, hate and love, are both extreme achievements of human behings and so much intertwined.

Only through a deep emotional experience can we grasp a bit of those extremes and there's no other means of comunication better to express emotion than Art.

It's upon these extremes that History has been written on, so neither one nor the other's available knowledge should be censored. If so then our path to learning is blocked, and we can't decide who we are and if we are to avoid one in favour of the other to write our present, with both freedom and responsability.

1 - Rightclick on any face and choose align view and you're looking at it facing straight at you.
2 - You can make this for Parallel projection or two point perspective and you have what you show in picture.
3 - Make two scenes 1 for perspective and one for parallel projection.
4 - Export model to layout or export both drawings to CAD or whatever program you need them into.
5 - Make the second scene scale to a given factor and juxtapose both scenes in your program, (its perfect in Layout).

If this is not it, then I fail to see what you need to acomplish...

Yup, You have a name for this thread that is different from the plugin name and the the plugin's name isn't either descriptive or compelling.

My suggestion:

• ACHTUNG BABY Plugin!
• DANGER! DANGER!
• This city ain't big enought for both of us components!

Or simply:

• Editing Multiple Components Warning

EXCELLENT!

I know nothing of VRay but that means only one of your processors or threads is working. So turn all threads on someway inside VRay.

Hi Inteloide,

1 - Component manager is now able to save without extension but it's still unable to find a reference that was saved that way.
2 - I understood the concept of versions level but I'm unable to make the plugin save a new version by itself. It ask wether I'd like to save as new version level or not, but never saves a new version either I press yes or no.
3 - Selecting from either list or model is now working perfectly, just like outliner.
4 - There is a feature that is not working as I would expect too. If one refreshes the list by whatever reason it collapses (some commands also refresh it). You loose the context on the list you were on. Of course it's easy now to choose from model so this is just a minor question.

Best regards. I hope this helps,

JQL

It seems super, this week will be a hard one to keep up with you, but I'll try as soon as possible...

I'll check what you asked for right now.

Thanks again,

JQL

Of course! It's been modified on some more experiments, but still has the same structure.

component manager.skp

Thanks,

JQL

Amen to TIG! Follow this rule and you'll save yourself a lot of trouble!

That depends on how fast you learn...

If you are already aware at how to creating scenes with the elevations and sections you need, you will also be fast with Layout dimensioning and leader tagging.

You'll be slow to do it if you're immediately concerned with presentation style, wich will take you some more time to master.

If you immediately understand the following advices, I think you'll be able to do it as this is probably the simplest or more condensed tutorial on how to do it

In Sketchup:
1 - Make a different scene for any 2D drawing you need.
2 - Make a different scene for the corresponding sectioncutfaces of each section above without seeing any part of the model (sectioncutface plugin)
3 - Make sure 1 and 2 are exactly at same camera in SU
4 - Make a style for each scene that corresponds exactly to the way you want them to be printed out
5 - Save the model and export to layout.

If you think you can do this things then you can move on to Layout, if not, I wouldn't advice you to do it right now, but I would urge you to learn how to, as it will probably change the way you look at CAD.

Layout:
1 - Click the viewport automatically created
2 - On "Sketchup Model" tray on the side of the Layout window, select one of the Sketchup saved 2D scenes and give it a scale or use a predefined one.
3 - On "Sketchup Model" tray click in the styles tab and disable background.
4 - Select the viewport and copy paste it like in any other windows program.
5 - You now have 2 similar viewports one in top of each other
6 - Click on empty paper and back in a viewport once
7 - Go to "sketchup model" tray and select the sectioncutface scene corresponding to the 2D scene you chose before
EDIT:
8 - If it happens that your sectioncutface scene viewport is not in the front, then rightclick one of the viewports and set arrange>bring to front (or send to back)

Dimensioning and Tagging:
1 - Click the dimensions tool and start picking points
2 - Click the leader tool and start tagging your model
3 - Write the texts you need

IMPORTANT TIPS:
1 - Create different layers for both juxtaposed viewports (easier dimensioning) and for every kind of drawing elements like leaders
EDIT: Layer on top will be visible above layers on bottom.
2 - Don't create new pages, duplicate them instead
3 - Never change viewport styles or mess inside viewports, use sketchup for that and refresh model instead.

I hope this helps, either it confuses you or not, try it at your own risk.

Best regards,

JQL

If you take the risky road, I'll try to keep up with your experiments so keep posting... I edited the post too so read it again.

LOL Inteloide I gave you a bad time and it seems I'm going to pester you a little longer so I know what you might be thinking of me right now...

But here it goes: you know this select feature request that made you fight with a bug for hours, in what seemed to be a battle of epic proportions? There is a thing that I suspect isn't behaving as it should!

If you have a component in model that is inside a group, in a model with several nested groups and you select it, if it's inside the first group in the list, everything is ok and it is shown in the list. However if the component's parent is not in the first branch of the list, the component is only selected if the whole list is expanded.

Take a look at picture for better understanding of the question.

Other thing I noticed is that when I save a component I have to be careful to always write the extension. Save as "Yellow" isn't enough, as the path gets saved as "c:\blablabla\Yellow" and your plugin only accepts "c:\blablabla\Yellow.skp".

Another thing that works is if I use context menu and use "save as", as the path gets correctly saved.

Final question for now is how is the version level management working? I think it's indeed an excellent idea. It's beautiful for backup or version comparison... Very well thought! However, I can't get it to auto name versions when saving...

EDIT: I changed options but didn't restart Sketchup. Is it needed? I'll try again.

This is getting an incredible plugin! Congratulations!

JQL

Ahh then that's why I kept having to close ruby console... Going to keep testing this!

Thanks!

JQL

No problem,

With those kind of features it's really going to be one of the most essential plugins in my workflow.

I think you're right, freezing the first window is bad has there might be things you need to copy as references for editing in the other window. I think the other plugin I mentioned would close the 2nd window when saving the model, wich is also bad as you might want to save progress, but not yet update original model with xref.

I think the best procedure would be only to automate opening a new window and not any other process as you can simply save and reload.

What might happen is that when you open second window, a dialog could show on the first window asking:

You're editing file ".../component.skp" Do you want to reload it now?

then you could have 3 buttons on the dialog:
1 - OK - reloads when you press it.
2 - Cancel - the window goes away and you can keep working in both SU sessions reloading whenever you wish or simply overwriting file again at any time.
3 - Not now! - This might pop up a reminder from time to time, telling you that you have a component being edited in another window. This is useful for when you edit the window but forget to reload it in the main model.

This reminder could be the same as above that would show up from time to time if you keep pressing Not now! button. You could be able to configure options for the time that would take for this popup to show or if it would be turned off, as it may interfere in some users workflow.

I'm sorry, for so much requests, but as you keep implementing ideas, I keep having them... so it's a nonstop procedure.

Thanks again,

JQL

I can help you with Portuguese translation:

Here is the file: I also took the chance to checke the English translation and made some changes that you should only consider as suggestions for a more intuitive aproach to your plugin if you think they're worse, please disregard them. (I think I didn't mess with code or the spaces you had).

The main suggestion on translation are as follows:

1 - I believe most sketchup users have no idea of what are definitions but (almost) everyone knows about components so I replaced "definitions" with "components" on all strings.
2 - I simplified some strings to make them similar to usual english strings in most software. The less words the best people understand them immediately.

I hope this helps and thanks for all your hard work.

JQL

EDIT: Sorry forgot the file, here it is saved as UTF-8 without BOM:

Localization.rb

I have some little feature requests for you to consider:

1 - Would it be possible to find a component in the list by clicking it in the model? Just like outliner...
2 - Would it be possible to change component's names directly on the list?
3 - Would it be hard to double click or click an icon on the list and the file/component that is selected would open in a new Sketchup session for editing and then reload when saved, like editing a texture in external image editor? (there's a plugin that does this already but breaks file path association. It's called Component Edit Window.)
4 - Would it be possible to creat filters on the list that would only show updated components or outdated or components that were associated with a file or whatever other options you have. Tick on a box and you only see green icons, tick other box and you only see blue, click on both and you see both icons on the list.

I hope you find this interesting, thanks and best regards,

JQL

@inteloide said:

Change wouldn't be so long, actually the plugins always upload file, even if the definition is update to date, so just by check before that file date = definition date, then issue is solved.

I don't really understand what you mean by this...

Also, when you refer to upload you mean saving to file (on sketchup it's called "save as" on the context menu) or getting the definition updated from file into model (wich is called "reload" in component context menu).

In the previous context "upload" looks like "save as" but in this next context "upload" seems to be "reload".

@inteloide said:

Also, I was thinking that plugin is also purging all definitions each time it upload a definition : this cost a lot of time too. I will also change this to purge only and updating end.

@inteloide said:

• Add a model/component history text input, to allow writing your model improvments and components improvments.

If it is very simple to add those notes and simple to read them, it could be useful.

@inteloide said:

The idea would be to have an host window which can accept different sub-windows from different plugins. Each plugin could be loaded separately but when you have installed the host window (host plugin), every other plugins (made by me, of course) will fit in the same window (you would be able to change from one to the other by clicking an icon). Then it keep clear your workspace !
So additionnal function like "model/component history" still stay in the same window.
Good idea, no ?

Yes it's a good idea if all plugins share related objectives, otherwise, it might be confusing to have a window that has two completely different uses. It's not very Sketchup like.

@inteloide said:

Just update version 1.8.0, with following improvments :
Added : Revision level management option added !
Added : Option to start or not automatically the manager (default=no)
Added : Option to refresh or not the list when start automatically the manager (default=yes)
Optimized : The return of the update progress in Sketchup state bar !
Optimized : In all definitions reload, component definition are reloaded, from file, only if different from model definition.
Optimized : Simplify refreshing date display script

I'll try to implement this for version 1.8.0

Seems to be a nice update... Thanks!

JQL

No its not right. If you select the surface with one click (or double click to be sure)inside one of those "drape zones" and then you just group it, the group will be created and the commong edges will be kept, so they don't destroy other surfaces.

It's pretty easy... just test it once and you'll see.

JQL