a fairly new one:
before thomthom's Solid Inspector came along, I never knew, whether an object was solid or not.

I just discovered, that in the Entity Info window SketchUp puts a "solid" in front of the group's name to indicate, when an object is indeed solid... thats cool, isn't it?

alright, I got to playing with the plugin for a bit. first of all, let me say that it worked brilliantly, never making a wrong decision (admittedly on rather simple test components with no more than a few dozen edges). I was also impressed with it's speed. even the comparisson of a selection of almost 4.000 copies of 6 equal but unique components took less than a third of a second.

I found out some odd behaviors though...

Once there are nested components in a model, there are two bugs I repeatedly encounter:

When nothing is selected (therefore the plugin is supposed to inspect all entities) the plugin only changes the components within other components (nested ones). Single components are being ignored.
If you do select them however, components will be replaced, no matter if they are single entities or nested within other components (even in 2nd or 3rd level). Note however, that it is always only the innermost components that are being inspected.

The report message, stating how many definitions have been replaced and how long that took, isn’t showing up.
As soon as I delete the nested components, single components are being changed again, as expected, even while not being selected. Also does the report message show up again.

I also observed, that components, containing other grouped objects (whether groups or components), will not be changed, even if the objects they contain are equal. This might be a goal for future versions of this plugin, don't you think?

all in all, Thomthom, this is a great start for a plugin that many people (especially those who import objects, e.g. trees) have been waiting for - one that will enable us to save huge ammounts of time and produce far cleaner models. well done, mate!

brilliant, Thomthom!
I will try it out as soon as possible. have been waiting for a long time for this.
eventually an option to even take the scaling of components into account would be perfect.
and the next step might even enable group comparisson...

thanks Robert. unfortunately I am not sure of the settings... didn't change much though, appart from the density... both creatures sprout more than 50.000 hairs...

thats really a great plugin. so much fun to work with...

such a tool would be of tremendous help! especially when importing models with excessively recurring objects (like trees with thousands of leaves).
taking the example of a tree again it is important for the script not only to identify the orientation of similar groups, but to evaluate the scaling as well (defining the scale of the source component as 1).

and to make everything perfect this plugin should be able to work on components as well as on groups (because some importers make every object a component, leaving you with a mess and an unaccessible component browser).

big task ahead there, thomthom...

@jgb said:

English teacher remarks to young Johnny that his spelling and punctuation has improved considerably.
Johnny say "I had too. My older sister caught a major screaming session with Mom & Dad when she missed a period."

I find that to be an interesting idea, darospa.
especially if you could access this information via scene tabs. so in one scene you only highlight one layer (by it's colour). in the next scene you highlight another... would be a great tool for presentations

wow, nice render and logo!
how did you do it? looks awefully detailed for SketchUp. reminds me a lot of Vue renders...

uh, I really like the fourth image, the line drawing with dimesions.
how did you get these dimensions in there? is it a texture? or 3D text?

Jason, did you make sure to do everything in exactly the right order?

for the array function to work you have to select the first component, then right click > 'play it again'. then type in something like 5x (make sure to type in an axtual 'x' and not a *). and then click the second component...

I think this behavior could be optimized to better fit into the native SketchUp workflow, as I already explained in the third post of this page...
I still hope, that at some point someone will hear my pleading and will perfect the script

ah, I see. makes sense

the last time I gave up on bonzai it crashed every three minutes... was still beta then though.
might give it a shot again.

I am not sure if that makes too much sense.
for material it doesn't work, for you never draw in a certain colour. all newly created geometry is painted with the default.
in regards of smooth/hidden. most of the time it makes more sense to apply these attributes later on, for you seldom hide/smooth all geometry, but only parts of it.
for layers it is not advisable, because it is better practice to leave raw geometry on layer0 and only move groups/components to different layers.

so these different properties, while in CAD applied to the same element, are applied to different objects in SketchUp.
therefore, in my opinion, such a 'match properties' tool wouldn't be useful in SketchUp

@tig said:

Looks set to knock my EEbyRails into a [proverbial] cocked hat

your tool has already saved countless lives, TIG! helped me out of some tight corners already...

well, I would still love to see Google developing the first Hybrid Modeller, combining the benefits of polygon/surface modeling with the ones of nurbs (or T-splines for that matter)...
(as discussed in an old post over here)

oh yes, that looks really promising! looking forward to the first script!

I've got a little widget in my windows toolbar that notifies me once I've got a new wave. its faster than e-mail, quite convenient.
I chat with my girlfriend quite regularly on wave. its pretty cool, because she can just write me a wave during the day. when I come home, I reply to it - and if she happens to be online, it turns into an instant messaging conversation...

of course the true potential becomes obvious, once you use it with several people at a time. then its better than mailing, because everyone can contribute to the same document. and it is superior to chatting (e.g. Skype) because you can have one main document with all the gathered information and countless sub-conversations where you discuss the different points..
of course it needs some getting used to, to find your way through several parallel conversations.
but I think the technology is highly promising.

I do have a question about the workings of this plugin.

is the deformation a gradual process? (each change I make with the matrix adds another deformation to the geometry, therefore the order is important)

or is it only dependent on the matrix's final state? (no matter if i do 10 changes or a hundred, the final position of control vertexes is important)

because if the latter is the case (which I hope), you could - in theory at least - write a mighty modifier plugin not too much unlike 3Ds Max's deformers, where you can assign various preset-deformations to an object.
these modifiers are attached to the group, can be switched on/off or their attributes can be adjusted.
also you can add several modifiers (like a 'twist', a 'bend', and a 'squeeze' modifier). then the order is important (whether you twist or bend first), which of course can be changed later too...

I don't want to know how difficult/impossible it is to write such a script. but just imagine the capabilities! you would add a whole new level of non-destructive controls to SketchUp

hey Glenn,

marvellous! now it works like a charm. a new matrix is always reliably adjusted to the group's dimensions and - for me even more important - undoing an operation effects geometry and control vertexes at the same time!

thank you very much for improving the script, Glenn