Ok. For example, assuming already 2 components created and it's axis origin positioned at the center of the cilinders, this is the Workflow as they appear in the video:

Drop 2 JointSU into the model Make each JointSU child of each Component Name both JointSUs Using "Zero" function, position each JointSU at the Components origin. Make Component#2 child of Component#1 (create of a product structure) Using "Set" function, establish the connection of the joints. Using "Panel" function, reverse the direction of the joint (Flip=true). Using "Set Anime" function, make this joint able to be part of the animation. Using "Anime Start", animate the whole model. Using "Anime Stop", stop model animation. Using "Panel", re-align the joint to it's original position.

[flash=425,344:tbflk7u5]http://www.youtube.com/v/xe6SCnkbyjo[/flash:tbflk7u5]

If interested I have the WMV video in much better quality, but it's 1.3 MB. (do not recall if there is a place to upload such files here).

Regards
Marcio

Sorry, if I'm going to debug this, I require a complete, small, failing example. I'm not going to try to reverse engineer your snippets.

😳 Just discovered I can Close components with "Sketchup.active_model.close_active"

Thank you, but even with sleep(5) and bring the window to focus ... no success to trigger "Edit Component" shortcut ("Y").

p Sketchup.active_model.active_path s=WIN32OLE.new("WScript.Shell") p s.AppActivate("SketchUp") sleep(5) p s.SendKeys("y") sleep(5) p Sketchup.active_model.active_path

model.close_active ### will jump you up one 'level' out of the current edit session.

You can only go in the direction of the base model... You can repeat x(model.active_path.length) to close the edit back to the base model 'level'. Alternatively...

model.active_path[model.active_path.length-2] ### to get up 1 level, or use -3 for 2 levels etc...

All of these physically close any current edit sessions... If you just want to do something with the entities found at a particular 'level' then just use...

parent=model.active_path[model.active_path.length-2]

i.e. the container of the current edit session's instance/group

parent_entities=parent.definition.entities if parent.typename=="ComponentInstance"
parent_entities=parent.entities if parent.typename=="Group"

etc... there's no need to close edits etc, just specify the actual entities-set to work on...

That is exactly what I was looking for !

Thank you
Marcio

Obs: A new documentation for SU7 Ruby APIs could be nice. It could be a kind of open Wiki so we all could help improve it, as write documentation is ... boring.

Perfect! Thank you.

Finally I have version 1.0

Now it's highly dependent of the product structure (or OUTLINER), but seems to work well ... I will post it in a NEW thread. Enjoy and lets see how to improve this ...

Regards
Marcio

quick off-the-cuff alternatives you might want to look into, there may be more:

Camera Tools
Curic Spin Camera
Animate Rotation
Camera Circle
Camera Spiral

I think it was intended to avoid having to switch to Pan mode while drawing things.

Yes, the onMButtonDown API when used inside any new tool "is broken". I already included a fix for that on the "WishList" stick.

But now I realized the need of more than that. Something that works above the level of the tools - where onMButtonDown is. Maybe a new API like "Sketchup::onGlobalMButtonDown" that allows to associate my new Orbit tool to this trigger (and so, disassociate the default Orbit tool from that).

I would like to know if there is any workaround (maybe change something on CameraOrbitTool class - where is this class?) before include this "Sketchup::onGlobalMButtonDown" on the WishList.

Thank you.

You can issue OpenGL commands from Ruby. But I don't think they will do what you expect - such as changing the rotation of the current view.

SketchUp's own view/camera interface is probably the bet way to do this.