@martinrinehart said:

so you should avoid classes unless there is some compelling reason to have them.

Well, Mr. Martin Rinehart... it seems that a lesson about "right way of coding" is necessary. I just don't know who will provide one. When should we use classes and when we can stick just on modules. This is what made me undertand modules: http://www.rubyfleebie.com/an-introduction-to-modules-part-1/

Uh, looks a little strange for me what you've done there, Jim.
If I don't ask to much, would you explain in detail, for dummies like myself ?

@david. said:

A very simplified, imperfect, example.

Let's say you have 2 nice, big, powerful Ford F250 pickup trucks. One is bright red. The other is blue.

Class var for all trucks: maxGrossWeight = 3.5 (tons)
Instance var for truck #1: color = red
Instance var for truck #2: color = blue

Well, this is a very simplified explanation about variables, but it doesn't answer my question. For example if I want to make a webdialog interface and I include all my webdialog code inside a class.

class myWebdlg

def initialize
@my_app_name = 'Test window'
@myDlg = UI;;WebDialog.new(@my_app_name, false,"",200, 400, 600, 350, true)
@myDlg.set_file( "Example/my_html.html" )
end

def showDialog
@myDlg.show{}
@myDlg.bring_to_front
end

...#lot of code... (or cod, if it's about fishes)

end #class

In this example, it is OK to have instance variables? And if it is OK, why is? Or, if I'd better make them CLASS variables, why should I do that?

I want to clear something out for me:
When is justified using CLASS variables and when INSTANCE variables? And I don't discuss about evident situations.
I know the difference between this two types... but in some cases it's not so evident which one is more adequate. In more cases, a instance variable, apparently will offer same results like a class variable.
So, my question is what I should take into consideration when I decide the variable scope?
If somebody can offer a clear answer, maybe this will be moved on a Ruby Tutorials section.

And please don't laugh on this .
Thanks.

if you want to render the image, just use a normal map (or bump map) with blurred black stripes on white background for your material. If you want more detalied effect, and your rendering engine allows it, you can use a displacement map.
If you don't want to render the image, you can just make a texture with desired visuals... Trying to model that, will result in lots of polygons and SU might just not be able to handle.

here is how you do it using TBD's bridge sollution http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=169&t=6903#p137855

My dear jessejames, I don't really understand your attitude about RUBY... I'm not a programmer and all my last attempts to learn a programming language failed ... Until I became interested in making my work easier. I started learning SketchUp and then RUBY to make SketchUp a more usefull tool for me. And surprise: I've been able to write my own "Hello world" and short time after I wrote some simple plugs for my work (I'm a furniture designer).
What I want to say with this? Well... just that RUBY is not so bad as you say if a non-talent in programming as me was able to fully understand it and enjoy ruby-ing. It fits for me and it fits for others...

@jim said:

And also there is the repair broken lines plugin:

http://www.crai.archi.fr/RubyLibraryDepot/Ruby/repair_broken_lines.rb

Should be a standard on everyone's system.

What exactly this plugin does? What is broken to a line?

@gaieus said:

Cutout 2D Face-me's with transparent png's count?

Gaieus, make it 2,5D ! like trees... I think in that manner it will count

@richard said:

@frv said:

The plugin is slow as much that exporting goes from second or a minute to hours . Not even with really a lot of textures. I am exporting now with the old plugin and render from studio.

I have not seen any response on the Maxwell forums or from NL.

I fear that the SU plugin development is dead! I'm not sure there are enough SU users using maxwell to warrant developing it further!

There is Twilight and soon will be THEA... I'm not worried. If Next Limit thinks that, it's just their problem.

The SketchUp plugin for maxwell has been improved since 1.7 or is the same?

Is there a way to avoid multiple WebDialog instances to open? I'm making some tests/learning how to handle JS and webdialogs and I observed that each time I load my webdialog.rb file, it opens a new window without affecting previous ones.
I'd like to force somehow just one window, or to close the old one when the new one is created.
Thanks.

I'm using

Sketchup.active_model.active_entities.add_instance(my_component, t)

# my_component is component name and
# t is applied transformation

Sketchup appends #+number to component's name, for each instance. I want to be able to replace # in name with other character ('/'). Is there a way to do this?

@edenux said:

I'm using windows 7 with dual core processor and geoforce 8600GT NVidia graphic card. When i puting textures or turning on shodowing it's starting to lag. What I sould do to fix this? I have updated my drivers and it's also laging. Sorry for my english, I'm just student.

Try updating to Sketchup 7... as I see in your infos, you're still using SU6

@unknownuser said:

try >

in html, body properties

<body scroll="no" (l add here other property "color" etc ...)>

Thanks elcorto, the option is working.

Maybe someone can explain why element.selected = true; doesn't work properly in native SU installation, but after updating IE from 6 to 7 on Windows machine, it is fixed. Is there some JS update? can it be applied without updating IE?

How can I hide scrollbars in webdialog?
I tried with CSS overflow:auto; , but this works just if I don't use !DOCTYPE, but I need !DOCTYPE (Transitional) to enable :focus css pseudoelement.
The vertical scrollbar is there, grayed-oud and taking my pixels abusive. I need that little space

One more thing: JS statement element.selected = true; did not worked on my native SU instalation. After I updated my Internet Explorer from 6 to 7, it did worked... how is this possible, because in SU I still have IE4 ?

@alan fraser said:

Actually, it's not fake...the camera presumably autofocused when the squirrel popped up to investigate the whirring noise. Just Google squirrel banff.

As I know, photo cameras don't focus prior shooting when timer is active, instead the the person who place camera in position and trigger the timer makes the focus when pushing the button. So, that squirrel was there before the timer was started, or after the photo was taken (via Photoshop)

@tig said:

To save 'global' values, so they are the same [for each user on that PC/Mac] whatever Model you open and so they are remembered as the very last settings you OK'd, you need to write values to the registry/ini and then read them back from there - use http://code.google.com/apis/sketchup/docs/ourdoc/sketchup.html#read_default and http://code.google.com/apis/sketchup/docs/ourdoc/sketchup.html#write_default
as Section/Variable/Value - very much like an attribute for Sketchup itself rather than a Model or Component etc...

"...of a .INI file or registry (within the Software > @Last Software > SketchUp section)." This is what I read in documentation. I don't understand really where that .INI file has to be. Or can I set a path?

I want to make a "set defaults menu" using UI.inputbox and I want the selected option to be saved for next time the script is used. First idea was a "settings" .txt file, where to write the values, and each time I load the script, it reads the values from there. A second idea was to write inside the .rb file itself, but I don't really know how to get to my variable and then update the value.

I hope there is a more simple and direct solution for this.

Thanks in advance.

why the Yellow Submarine doesn't move along with the ripples?