@unknownuser said:

Seems you can make that in 2 pass no ?

Yes indeed you can. In fact, thats how I did this mock-up. But imagine you just needed two clicks...

And if you have two or more different key-frame groups in more than one direction... then it gets really tricky...

Hi Kirill,
absolutely magnificent plugin!
Are you still working on it? It is already tremendously powerful. But there are still so many cool possibilities

Like the smooth transition you already mentioned (in addition to the linear one as is the case today).

Or another one: right now if I understand it correctly, you can define up to three axes for the array (does make sense in a 3D-environment ).

However, I would very much like to see what one could to with several "key-frame"-groups along one axis (see image below). That would add a great deal of control to the tool (and unquestionably a great deal of work for you... a challenge!)

Anyway: Thank you very much for this great plugin. Its a lot of fun to play with!!!

thanks for the nice comments. It was an aweful lot of work and many night shifts. But the SketchUp work was always a lot of fun!

Hello Everyone,

with our university we are currently participating in the Solar Decathlon Europe competition. Its a great architectural event, where 20 universities from around the world design, build and showcase their vision of a sustaniable house of the future. If you happen to be in Madrid the next few weeks, you can see the houses life (in Casa de Campo).

Anyway, for our ECOLAR Home we had to do a video and decided to wrap it in a little story about a guy and his life with the ECOLAR Home. All the models in the film were done in SketchUp and rendered with Thearender. For the technical animations I used line-export from SketchUp too (as dxf and then further refined with Adobe Illustrator).

I hope you like it!

[flash=750,422:3g6qeali]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLSYleNYog0[/flash:3g6qeali]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLSYleNYog0

Best wishes,
Jakob

@cordless101 said:

I just noticed that when orbiting with the wheel, if you hold down the left button it turns to pan. I really like that, don't have to use the keyboard to pan.

Wow, I really have to try that!

oh, that is sad. I am truly sorry for you!
Well, maybe its still on its way, depending on the route the stagecoach took...

Just something I need to share...

I came home yesterday, after a long day at Konstanz University of Applied Sciences in Germany, only to find a parcel from Colorado, USA.

And when I opened it, I found a beautiful, blue shirt with
Google SketchUp 8 written on its chest. It is one of the shirts beta-testers got for participating in the SketchUp 8 Test Program.
Early this year, when all the american beta-testers were proudly wearing their shirts I thought "too bad that I live in Europe. No shirt for me..."

And now, nine months later, I got my very own one!!!
(Date stamp says it was posted on January 9th 2011).

Thank you so much, Google!

Cheers,
Jakob

PS: Havent been active on the forum of late. Just too little time to do anything but work. But I am using SketchUp every day...

Thanks Luca and Csaba,
yes indeed. Its a bit like handing your soul over to the devil. But on the other hand: does it matter wether all your personal data is being missused by Facebook or by Google? (at least Googles credo is "Dont be evil" ).

I definitely think giving Google+ a try might not hurt (of course responsibly sharing information...).

By the way. Didnt work, Csaba. Havent received any invite. They really seem to have hit their limit.

Hello everyone,

Anyone having a Google+ account already? Because right now the only way to get in is to get invited by someone from the inside... And I would very much like to get in

So if anyone is already taking part in the project and would be kind enough to invite me, I would be delighted (please pm me).

Cheers, Jakob

wow, TIG! Did you just write that? thats almost perfect! wonderful! you just made my day!!!

Hello everyone,
have been absent for quite some time now. just too much to do. but now I've got a problem, that might be solved by a nice little ruby script:

Do you know these painters, drawing a painting on the floor in a pedestrian area? Some of these paintings use a fantastic trick, so that if you stand at one specific point you will see a hole in the ground or similar. They do it via perspective distortion.

To create such a painting in SketchUp all I have to do is create the scene, then define one camera point in space. Then I have to draw lines from this camera point to all the visible vertexes and continue these line until they hit the ground floor. And finally all I have to do is connect these new intersection points on the ground.
If I look thorugh the camera now, I will see a 3D object, that is actually painted on a flat floor.
(by the way: there is a new "Film and Stage" plugin for SketchUp 8 )

Unfortunately I need to do that for quite a few scenes. And I figured this might be something that can be done via Ruby (I know there is the Projection ruby. But it doesn't do projections from one single point, only parallel...)
I need to do the project over the weekend. So time is short

Any help would be highly appreciated!

Thomthom, thats really perfect now! you made me a happy man!

@plot-paris said:

...do you think there might be a way to introduce a menu-entry to run your script with the current settings without opening the settings window at all...

actually, with your suggestion to turn off the info windows the workflow can be quite fast, even with the settings window popping up. I just have to hit Enter, and it works

thomthom. thats great! really nice and clean new UI. I like it quite a lot.
one thing though: in a former version there was an option to use cleanup without a settings box. then last version a little info box was introduced, popping up after every cleanup.
and now, with the new version, you always get the settings box.

unfortunately that really conflicts with my workflow. I have a shortcut button dedicated for your plugin (Ctrl + Shift + D. because my shortcut for eraser tool is D). and quite often I run your plugin on a selection (like, every other minute). usually I don't want to mess with the settings then, just clean up unneeded edges.

I know you want the menu-entities to be clean and simple. but do you think there might be a way to introduce a menu-entry to run your script with the current settings without opening the settings window at all; and ideally suppressing the info box afterwards? that would be magnificent!

and thanks again for the update it is very quick!

[Edit] oh, and theres always a second little info box called "Validity Check" popping up, stating "Results of Validity Check. No problems found". I don't know what it's for. but for me it doesn't seem ot make too much sense []

@unknownuser said:

Me too, however, if I highlight several DC's that have the same attribute, I would like when I change that attribute that they all change on each highlighted DC, without inheriting all the other attributes...

more than a year late. but yes, please implement this feature!

I know, I am almost two years late for this. But I just had time to play a bit with DCs again. And I think the behavior is not ideally in line with a typical SketchUp workflow.

Firstly I think it is very important not to set the scale factor of a DC back to 1x when rescaling it. Ordinary components (and groups, for that matter. and even DCs without sub-DCs) keep their scaling information, enabling you to replace the component with a different one, therefore applying the custom scale factor to the new component as well. The workaround of introducing another function to replace a DC is a somewhat awkward, unnecessary step, that makes everything more complicated; in some cases it may even destroy the work of several hours (because you can only do it for one component at a time)...
So please keep the scale factor of a DC (or at least keep the information to apply it to another component when being replaced)!
Secondly the behavior of a DC becoming unique, when being rescaled. A DC without subcomponents behaves as an ordinary component does. It doesn't get made unique. Only when a DC contains dynamic sub-components it becomes a unique component when scaled.
In general I would say this behavior of becoming a different component when being scaled is not in line with the typical SketchUp workflow. An ordinary component doesn't become unique after all. So if one has a fassade-panel for example that fits any size nessecary (but is always the same type of panel, just with custom size) you don't want every single component with different scale to be unique.
However, I do see the benefit of it in cases where you want these components of different scales to be different, for example when having windows filling a few different openings (then you would very much like to select all windows with lets say 80cm width).
So there are two scenarios where one of those two behaviors may be preferrable.
Therefore I would suggest to have an option within the DC window to toggle the "make unique at rescale" behavior

I hope these suggestions can still find there way to Google, even if its two years ago that DCs were introduced...

@thomthom said:

Could add the automatic version to CleanUp3.

oh, will that be in the near future?

hey Fletch, really great reference card. if plugin creators were able to add information to the instructor window in SketchUp, it should be this reference card...

Hi GWydouw,

first of all: fantastic plugin! I like it a lot.
playing around with this tool instantly got me dreaming... so I've got some ideas / wishes:

1. Nested Group Support: as mentioned before, the ability to process nested groups is of vital importance for this plugin to become a mighty tool (most models in SketchUp (definitely all of mine) heavily rely on nested grouping)

2. Components Support: components need to work as well (again, i've got lots of them in my models ). ideally one would define one component and your plugin then would apply the section-material to all component-instances in the model.

3. Texture-Linking: another great feature would be to link section-materials to materials used to paint the model. so for example I draw a building with concrete walls and timber floor boards and use textures to paint these object accordingly. now, when creating the realSection, I link section-materials to these textures. as a result all objects textured with a concrete texture will be sectioned with the linked section-material, objects painted with the timber floor boards will get the section-material linked to this texture and so on.
   (I know, this might be quite tricky. but should you decide to give it a try, please remember, that sometimes objects can have several materials applied to them (one material on the raw geometry, another applied to the group itself. and it gets even messier, when you have nested groups). in such a case its probably best to give the innermost material the highest priority (cause thats how SketchUp itself treats materials)).
   interface-wise it would probably be most comfortable to have a dialog window where you have pairs of materials; the texture-material on the left, the associated section-material on the right. you can then choose from a dropdown-list.
   to keep the interface clean, you would only have one pair of textures at first. as soon as you choose your first texture, a new blank set is added. thus keep the size of the window small without limiting the number of textures...

4. Interactive Section-Texturing: first of all you would have to close all groups that haven't been assigned a section-material with a default material. and then you make the texture-selection process interactive. the workflow would be the following: you right-click a group (or it's section-cut face) and define a section-material. when you now hit the OK button, the section gets updated, letting you see the results instantly.

5. Linking Cut-Faces to Section Planes: and finally a really tricky, but clever idea Imagine it was possible to link the layer-visibility to a section plane. so when a certain section plane is active, the layer with the associated section-faces is made visible. when you switch off the section plane, the section-faces layer automatically is made invisible. when you activate another section plane, it's dedicated section-faces layer gets activated and so on...
   so no manual showing / hiding of layers. everything is done automatically. what a wonderful prospect!

Ok, that was quite a lot of ideas. and I have no idea how realistic they are. but anyway, what do you think?

@thomthom said:

Are you still developing it?d

indeed, a4chitect. do you intend to do some further work on this plugin?