I searched this forum and through Google quite a bit, and haven't found any instances of people having trouble running ARMedia in the same way as me.
I've managed to install the ARMedia trial plugin for Sketchup 7 to the Sketchup plugins directory (C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Google SketchUp 7\Plugins), and saw the Ruby console was outputting an error when trying to run it. The error was in arplugin_trial.rb, and was supposedly because *ENV['ARMEDIA_PLUGIN_TRIAL_DIR']*wasn't defined; the error was 'ARplugin not found!'.
After checking, I found out that because *ENV['ARMEDIA_PLUGIN_TRIAL_DIR']*wasn't defined, the plugin couldn't access the .exe for ARMedia to run. So, I manually added it (changing that line of code), and the error stopped being produced.
This kind of thing happened a few more times, each involving an instance of ENV['<some_string_here>'] being undefined. In each case, I ended up replacing the given line with what I presumed it was looking for. Eventually, I came to an error on a line that said:
result = system (full_plugin_name+' '+ ''' + full_model_name + ''')
After some more Googling, I found out that this line was throwing an error because it should've been:
result = Kernel.system(full_plugin_name+' '+ ''' + full_model_name + ''')
That way, it calls the command prompt and (as it seems to have been intended) enters the command:
C:\Program Files (x86)\ARPlugin 1.3 (Trial Version)\arplugin_app.exe 'C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Temp\arplugin.kmz'
Which runs the trial version's .exe and passes in a temporarily made file (arplugin.kmz) to use in it. However, at this point, I'm now getting errors from the arplugin_app.exe saying the .kmz filetype is not supported! This is strange because the plugin exports the Sketchup model, and then says it can't handle that format. It makes me wonder if older versions of Sketchup used to export other formats by default? Would anyone know what these are?
Also, if anyone has ideas for why the ARMedia plugin needed those workarounds I mentioned, please let me know. One of my thought is that the ENV['<some_string_here>'] variables and Kernel module were intended to be loaded in a separate file by the people who made the plugin, and that either a version difference in Sketchup or a poorly created plugin are the cause of the problem.
I'm very keen to get this plugin working, but it's proving pretty difficult. Any help at all would be appreciated