Looks like it works TIG, thanks.

When I downloaded it the file was called avo%2Biso.rb It appears to work fine thought, just thought I would let you know.

Chris,

In short I was making two observations about the role of technology in work produced and might have muddled them together.

1. There is a lot of "tail wagging dog" going on. That is, programs forcing the designer to do what is easy on the program.
2. To modify the program to your needs is a whole new and largely unanticipated project on top of existing projects. (BTW people that participate on this forum are largely in contradiction to this statement. Way to go guys!)

Hey guys thanks so much.

Chris: I was afraid you would say that. I would have preferred a script that does everything at render time and not messing with geometry. I'm just afraid that one time its going to mess something up or texture mapping might get messed up. Definitely worth a shot though.

TIG: Thanks for making this. I will have to try it out! Getting the vertical to scale properly will be necessary so thanks for the tip.

Hey guys,

I am trying to learn how to code a script that will allow me to view and produce axon drawings similar to what an architect would produce with a 45 degree triangle. The difference between what I would like to produce vs what sketchup can natively create is that the red/green axis would appear to be at a 45 degree angle to the blue versus the 30/60 that sketchup creates now.

As I understand it, Sketchup's Iso view rotates the camera to some angle and due to trig you can get all lines to be scaled in 1:1 proportion to each other.

Because of these same trig rules, I don't think we can rotate the camera and use parallel projection to create a 45/45 axon with all sides being scaled 1:1 relative to each other. But, I believe that we should be able to write a scrip that tells sketchups real time rendering engine to look at the model as if it were plan view with the red and green pointing up and right with the blue coming to you (so that you are looking at what would be a normal plan view), then rotating everything 45degrees along the blue axis and then RENDER all points to "vertex location = current x location + tan z location, current y + tan z location". In this way I hope to be able to create a real time view that will look like the classic architectural 45/45 degree axon but not ruin the actual geometric location of vertices.

I am new to programming in general and have looked through sketchup's ruby website but have not found anything that discusses modifying the real time rendering engine. Does anyone know about doing this or if I'm even barking up the right tree?

Thanks for the help,

Scott

Hey great question, I hope I can help some.

Firstly, the better the computer & network you are working on, the more pleasant your modeling will be. That being said you need to organize your model well.

To do this:

1. Use the Organizer! (window>organizer)
   Using it will remind you to...
2. Create groups and components! Everything should at least be grouped or component-ed.
3. Nest your groups and components! If you have your organizer open and have to scroll around when all of your groups/components are collapsed, then you are not nesting enough. If you are making a 5 story building, then all of your exterior walls should be in an exterior group/component and all of your furniture should be in a furniture group etc. If you are doing a 10 story building then maybe do each floor in a component but things that continue through like elevator cores and plumbing will go in its own component. It is nice to use components for these things since you can export each into its own sketchup file and have a different person responsible for each floor and then reload the component in sketchup. (use the organizer and right click on the component to see the reload option.)
4. Layers = BAD! Very different than autocad but layers will only confuse you. Have a layer for radically different things that appear in multiple groups. Examples include plants and people. You might have Existing plants be in your Existing Site component and New plants be in your New Site component, but you don't want to see then when you are modeling because they get in your way. To do this effectively; put all geometry in default layer and then put the larger group/component in a layer.
5. Texture at the end! Use the paint bucket sparingly. Use solid colors when possible and model textures, ie. a modeled shingle wall will look way better than a bitmap one. Do not model detail for things in the background. Use tranparency sparingly as well (if you make a window, make it 2 planes rather than 1 prism, that is 2 faces per window vs 6).
6. Turn off the sun! The sun will always slow you down. Only turn it on when you are ready to make your images and videos.
7. Purge unused!
8. Turn on wireframe to zoom around faster in big models and to step through your walkthroughs.

I hope that helps. I have opened another person's file that was 80+mb and it took like 20 mins to open and save which was a real bummer (turn off autosave if you have this issue). I created a very similar model for a different part of the project that was half the size on disk and opens and saves in less than 5 mins. I think in this way sketchup has a bit of a deadly curve where the bigger your file gets it gets more annoying to deal with at a much quicker rate.

@mike lucey said:

I am of the 'old school', I started with a pencil, drawing board, T-Square, Set Square and Scale Rule and later on an adjustable? ...... God I've forgotten what it was called ..... eeeeerrrrr .... hold on! I have it now, Adjustable Set Square! Boy were they handy, saved all that messing around with the protractor

I had no difficulties in producing plans, elevations, sections and isometrics also the occasional perspective view for jobs. When computing came into the picture it should have made things simpler BUT this was not the case IMHO. Things became somewhat more complicated for me until SketchUp came along. I initially worked on MicroCAD, this was a decent attempt at 3D. It ran into financial difficulties and was shelved. I was then stuck with AutoCAD ..... the adapted Word Processor Program for draughting!

Mike

Very good comment you are making. I think what made these "old School" production methods work so well is that you were intimately aware of what you were doing. With all this technology we have lost awareness of what we are actually doing. I'm looking in to making a ruby script that can make the classic architectural "axon" using a 45/45 triangle. Simple to do on paper - once you know how to do it - and, I hope, simple to learn to script. Programming things was not what I concerned myself with when I was in architecture school and now I'm kicking myself!