Great! That works excellent.
I wonder why it does not delete everything with the method i suggested.

I think i will need to review some of my code. Is erase the only method that gives this 'problem'?

Thx again Didier

Can someone test this piece of code on the attached model?
For me it does not erase the entities (all text)
Any ideas?

Sketchup.active_model.entities.each{|e| e.erase! if e.layer.name=='_4D_Finish_Text' || e.layer.name=='_4D_Start_Text' }

Untitled.skp

does anyone know if any of the remarks here will be taken into consideration in a new version?

i would like to add to this that the object_id of a Sketchup entity (wether a group, component instance, ...) is not consistent throughout different sketchup sessions.
So you will have to add your own generated id

So, this means that you can easily adress all ruby code from within Sketchup ruby? Eg. to use rexml?
Are there any know limitations on what version of ruby one can use with sketchup and what not?

Besides the filesize and amount of elements limitations i would like to add this one:

It seems to me Sketchup becomes slower in time when doing a time consuming job

Will all these 'investegations' also lead to a directory structure of the ruby lib?
I think there are a lot of interesting tools (like an xml parser) which could be used in plugins, but making it work atm is something i have not been able to.
To much files needed spread over several places.

Hello Martin,

This seems to be very interesting but somehow i don't really understand what it is for.
I suppose en environment in which you can easily code animations in Sketchup?

Thx for helping me out here

(btw the airshow is great)

Does anyone knows if the xml structure of Google Layout document is documented somewhere?

Thx

Hey David,

Is there any additional information available on the XML structure used?

regards

David,

Thx, this seems like a nice path to follow!

Chris,

Great plugin! Do you think it can be used like this:

1. get all camera settings of all scenes
2. create a path from one camera setting to the other
3. execute a rb function (already written) with camera viewpoint of first scene
4. capture the movement along the 1st path (like your script does)
5. upon arriving at the camera viewpoint of the second scene: execute a rb function
6. capture the movement along the 2nd path (like your script does)
7. upon arriving at the camera viewpoint of the third scene: execute a rb function

and so on

In the end: Write all that to images (like your script does)

• combine into movie (i'll check the mencoder to see how to fire this from ruby)

bjanzen,

Thx for the answer but I create the images for a reason. (Being: SU not keeping diff. in materials between Scenes and layout not triggering Scene observer)
So the use of scenes (untill this is solved) is not possible.

danbig,

Thx, i'll see if I can get further with this. The problem is that the amount of images differs each time.
As i understand your approach:
Make a template with 1 image on each page, that image is in a directory
Rename the images that are needed to the template images and put them in the same directory as the template images (thus overwriting them)
Et voila. (untested)

As stated the problem is i do not know the exact amount of images. I'll see if i can find a workarround for that.

@rickw said:

It MIGHT be possible using an observer. I've used Scene observers to trigger animation of objects (very rudimentary animation), so it might be possible to use them to (re)paint objects.

Using scene observers works like a charm to do it. BUT, and for me this is a big BUT, the scene observer has big disadvantages:

• does not fire when creating an animation
• does not fire in Layout
• is gone if you close and reopen a model

So, when i want to create a movie, i'll need to write a complete script which saves images along a path between two camera views and then look for some external library which can create a movie of all these images and using Layout is impossible

Maybe there is some plugin already available with some of this functions available

Ok, but that's duplicating the entities, which i really want to avoid at all costs

Is it possible to add extra elements to be saved for each scene? Eg. entity.material

If not, are there any plugins which export a movie from Sketchup without the use of the Sketchup animation function?

Thx

Is it possible in layout to automatically import a set of raster images and put each of the images in the set on a new page?

Tig,

true, normally i always check if the array has any value or length>0

What would be the best way to check if an array has values? I assume length is the way to go?

test=[]
if test==[] -->TRUE
if test==nil --> FALSE
if test.length<1 -->TRUE

Ok, never mind, i did not get a bug splat or ruby error so i thought all was correct in the code.
When a selection is empty and you execute this script:
selected= Sketchup.active_model.selection
selected.each { |e|
}

This apparantly does not throw an error.

Nvidia GeForce Go 7950 GTX (driver: 6.14.11.7948)

Strange thing is , with the VolumeCalculator 2 (which also creates text, all goes well.