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    muchado

    @muchado

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    Latest posts made by muchado

    • RE: Creating Hole Patterns

      @muchado said:

      Can one do this in a dynamic component? I wanted to created a "troughed slab" (also known as a "ribbed slab") by repeating a depression across a cuboid, but SU does not make the cut in the surface for the copies.

      Sorry, it appears that this has been answered before:
      http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=289&t=23096
      http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=289&t=21449
      http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=289&t=18651
      http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=289&t=17054

      The problem appears to be that SU does not do this. However there appear to be at least one work-around that involves creating the positive volumes and then hiding the lines of the joins. I had thought about joining pieces together, but thought that I would be stuck with the edges, but using the trick of "hiding" the edges solves the problem.

      posted in Newbie Forum
      M
      muchado
    • RE: Creating Hole Patterns

      @dedmin said:

      @ameliab said:

      Does SU have any hole pattern functions? I can't seem to find one. I have a line of 120 holes on 1" centers, and I don't want to have to make 120 copies of the circle. This is a simple function in Solidworks, so I assume SU must have something similar.
      amelia

      Must have??? Free software against 10 000$ Gorilla! And it is simple to apply but under the hood is a lot more! You can select the hole and copy it just like any other object in SU - as was mentioned above. And using rotate while holding CTRL You can make radial array

      Can one do this in a dynamic component? I wanted to created a "troughed slab" (also known as a "ribbed slab") by repeating a depression across a cuboid, but SU does not make the cut in the surface for the copies.

      Using SU DC's to model repeated depressions in a slab

      posted in Newbie Forum
      M
      muchado
    • RE: Win32ole.so procedure/load issue

      @thomthom said:

      @cjthompson said:

      Sketchup only uses 1.8.

      1.8.0 to be exact.

      Thanks very much - that would certainly make sense!

      posted in Developers' Forum
      M
      muchado
    • RE: Win32ole.so procedure/load issue

      OK - I still don't know what I was doing wrong last time, but it seems that there was a problem with the win32ole file that I was using.

      I tried out the example called "excel_tests.zip" at http://www.crai.archi.fr/RubylibraryDepot/Ruby/em_fil_page.htm and this worked. The zip file contains a "win32ole.so" file which I have placed in the Plug-ins directory in place of the one I had before. [For those using Macs, there is an example for Macs, which (of course) does not require win32ole.]

      As an aside... I found that I needed to place the win32ole.so file in the Plug-ins directory. I didn't appear to be able to "require" it from a sub-directory (but that might just be my own problem).

      require 'subfolder/win32ole'
      

      Having placed the new win32ole.so file in the Plug-ins directory, I was then able to load it and I could then check out the loaded modules (using p $") which now included win32ole.so. In case anyone else is looking for help, I also found the following "methods" useful for listing the methods that the win32ole makes available to you:

      GsaObj = WIN32OLE.new("Gsa.comAuto")
      #<WIN32OLE;0xd883e30>
      GsaObj.methods
      ...
      GsaObj.ole_methods
      ...
      GsaObj.ole_get_methods
      ...
      
      

      By way of explanation - I was creating a new GSA object (for structural analysis) by way of the COM commands that come with the program (from Oasys software). If you are creating an excel object, then it would look like this:

      excel = WIN32OLE.new("excel.application")
      excel.methods
      excel.ole_methods
      excel.ole_get_methods
      
      
      posted in Developers' Forum
      M
      muchado
    • RE: Win32ole.so procedure/load issue

      Sorry about resurrecting this thread (or trying to, anyway).

      I am also having problems in loading (or using) the win32ole module (on a WinXP PC). For those using Macs as I also do, I doubt there is any point in using win32ole. Presumably one would have to find some way of using the Automator or some other form of scripting.

      On starting SketchUp, I opened the Ruby Console and listed the extensions (I have used prompt> to indicate the lines that I typed):

      prompt> p $"
      ["examples.rb", "sketchup.rb", "langhandler.rb", "extensions.rb", "LangHandler.rb", "ocean_extension.rb", "utilities.rb", "C;/Program Files/Google/Google SketchUp 7/Plugins/Utilities/utilitiesTools.rb", "dynamiccomponents.rb", "C;/Program Files/Google/Google SketchUp 7/Tools/DynamicComponents/ruby/dcloader.rb", "make_pano_pm.rb", "sandboxtools.rb", "C;/Program Files/Google/Google SketchUp 7/Tools/Sandbox/SandboxMenus.rb", "webtextures.rb", "C;/Program Files/Google/Google SketchUp 7/Tools/WebTextures/webtextures_loader.rb"]
      nil
      
      

      I then tried to load the win32ole module ("win32ole.so"), which I had extracted from the zip file "ruby-1.9.1-p376-i386-mswin32.zip" and had placed in the plugins directory. Note that I did not "install" ruby or do anything other than extract this file.

      prompt> require 'win32ole'
      Error; #<LoadError; C;/Program Files/Google/Google SketchUp 7/Plugins/win32ole.so; 126; The specified module could not be found.   - C;/Program Files/Google/Google SketchUp 7/Plugins/win32ole.so>
      (eval);894
      
      

      It seemed to me that I had therefore failed. I therefore tried a different format (not being sure of the difference between single and double quotes)

      prompt> require "win32ole"
      false
      
      

      Now this was strange.. why was I getting a "false" response. Did this mean that win32ole was already loaded...?

      prompt> p $"
      ["examples.rb", "sketchup.rb", "langhandler.rb", "extensions.rb", "LangHandler.rb", "ocean_extension.rb", "utilities.rb", "C;/Program Files/Google/Google SketchUp 7/Plugins/Utilities/utilitiesTools.rb", "dynamiccomponents.rb", "C;/Program Files/Google/Google SketchUp 7/Tools/DynamicComponents/ruby/dcloader.rb", "make_pano_pm.rb", "sandboxtools.rb", "C;/Program Files/Google/Google SketchUp 7/Tools/Sandbox/SandboxMenus.rb", "webtextures.rb", "C;/Program Files/Google/Google SketchUp 7/Tools/WebTextures/webtextures_loader.rb", "win32ole.so"]
      nil
      prompt> require 'win32ole'
      false
      
      

      Hmmm... it seems that win32ole is loaded, but I never got a message to say that it was being loaded. Can I use it...

      prompt> excel = WIN32OLE;;new('excel.Application')
      excel = WIN32OLE;;new('excel.Application')
      Error; #<NameError; (eval);894; uninitialized constant WIN32OLE>
      (eval);894
      prompt> print( "excel version; " + excel.version.to_s + "\n")
      Error; #<NoMethodError; (eval);894; undefined method `version' for nil;NilClass>
      (eval);894
      

      No... it seems not... so what am I doing wrong? I also tried WIN32OLE.new and win32ole.new and neither of them worked. If anyone can help me, I would appreciate it.

      posted in Developers' Forum
      M
      muchado
    • RE: [Plugin] Shape Bender Beta

      @chris fullmer said:

      Oh good, glad you found that post and were able to get it working.

      I'm amazed at how many zip programs do not correctly unzip these plugins. The winzip I have at work is one of these that just ignores all folder and subfolder organization inside of .zip files, and just extracts everything to the same folder - very frustrating. And wreaks havoc on plugins dependent on folder organization...But glad its working. Of course, now you have to deal with all the bugs and issues involved with the script ๐Ÿ˜„

      Chris

      WinZip has a setting in options where you can choose to extract all files into one folder. I suspect that this is how many people have it set up.

      posted in Plugins
      M
      muchado
    • RE: [Plugin] Finite Element Analysis (FEA) - Spring-mass model

      I am also interested in this. I am a structural engineer and am trying to see how I could use Sketchup to build structural models. Typically, this would involve creating models of 1D and 2D elements, which would be interpreted as beams & columns and walls and floors. I would be interested in hearing if anyone else has added attributes to existing 1D and 2D entities in Sketchup, and how to do it. Specifically I would be looking to add orientation, sectional area and flexural stiffness to 1D entities, and thickness to 2D entities.

      If you are looking for a structural solver, then you may want to look at OpenSees (http://opensees.berkeley.edu), which is open source from the University of California, Berkeley. It is intended for seismic analysis, but would probably do what you want. OpenSees might be best if you are looking to model large displacements of frame structures, as you appear to be wanting to do, but it would take time to get familiar with the program, especially if you are not already familiar with structural FE analysis.

      If you are in academia, you could get free copies of GSA from Oasys (http://www.oasys-software.com). It has a good DXF import/export and also a COM interface. Gmsh has a free solver called GetDP for shell FE analysis which might also fit the bill.

      Other options would implementing solvers yourself, but this could be quite time-consuming, whether by matrix FE analysis (implicit), dynamic relaxation or explicit FE analysis, which seems to be the logical extension of your approach. You would still need to define section properties first, though, and this will require some sort of adding attributes, either to the entities themselves, or by reference to layers - i.e. each entity in a certain layer would be assigned a certain section property.

      posted in Plugins
      M
      muchado