@utiler said:

Feel free to get a jump on me.
Sure!

1. Implement global attributes in Dynamic Components.

2. Allow scenes to trigger "OnClick" functions in Dynamic components. In other words, whenever a certain scene is triggered, it also then triggers a dynamic component action similar to how "OnClick" works, such as opening a door or moving a component.

3. Fix the many-years-old bug where SU does not respect the "View -> Scene Tabs" state between sessions (even if it shows that scene tab are off, they are still shown: you have to click it on then off again to really make them go away)

4. Fix the many-year-old bug where adding a new layer in the "layers" window causes focus to jump to the "L" alphabetic location in the list of layers, even before you type the name of the new layer, and then it stays there on the "L's" after you hit enter, but with no layer selected, even if the new layer name does not start with "L"! Logically, it should jump to the location of the new layer, and leave it selected. (Not a big deal if you only have a couple of layers in your model, but a huge deal if you have several hundred! Such a pain to go scrolling up and down, trying to find where you were before, and where the new layer went... Oh, the wasted hours....)

5. Fix the bug where hitting "enter" after changing any of the numbers on the "Model Info --> Units" window, closes the window entirely! It's almost second nature to hit Enter after typing a number. The window should stay where it was, and just update the number, like it does on all the other SU windows. It's only the "Model Info" window where this inconsistent, and rather silly, action happens.

6. Fix the multiple bugs in the "scenes" window, and make it more consistent with how the "Layers" window works for typing names.

7. Fix the bug where, as soon as the model size hits about 32 MB, SU gets really slow.

8. Fix the bug where making a new component for the first time after opening a very large model causes SU to hang for several minutes before continuing, and the file size to grow by several MB for no reason at all.

9. Make the auto-save feature a background task that does not interfere with normal operation. It should happen invisibly. Also add the functionality of optional auto-incremented file versions in auto-save, so each new auto-save file name has a different name, with a number tagged on the end, where the number increase each time.

10. Fix the bug where "Follow me" breaks up the original shape into many individual lines, instead of leaving them joined as a polygon.

11. Implement some form of hierarchy in the "Layers" window, so layers can be grouped together, and the groups then collapsed or expanded in the list, to make it easier to navigate models with many layers.

12. Fix the bug where having the "Model Info --> Statistics" panel open, or the "Entity Info" window open, with a very large model, makes SU run very slowly, since it wants to update everything in those windows each time you select something, or move the camera, or move a component. There's no need to update that info all the time! It just slows things down terribly and unnecessarily. Add a "refresh" button to those panels instead.

13. Fix the bug where having more than about 5 or 6 six nested levels of layers makes SU run very slow when working on the lower levels.

14. Implement visible and editable camera paths, to make it easier to see (and modify) the location where the camera is for each scene, and which way it is looking, and the Field of View, so that walk-through animations can be done a whole lot more easily and smoothly.

15. Fix the bug where dimensions lose their connection to the original geometry if you group them together. This make it impossible to have sets of dimensions that you can turn on or off, but that also update as the geometry updates. A dimension should always stay connected to its original geometry, even if it is placed in a group different from the geometry. In other words, if I have a model of a building, and I want to have the windows on a layer called "Rooms: Windows" but I want all the dimensions related to the windows on another layer called "Dimensions: Windows", then that should not disconnect them from the windows: The dimensions should still update if I re-size a window.

That's what I can think of off-hand, but I'm sure there's a few others I'll be adding later.

(Sorry to steal your thunder, but you did offer!)

@tig said:

Actually I rewrote the code in my version so that it remembers the current ...
Any chance you could make that version available for download?

It is now many years, later, the current version is SketchUp 2017, yet I'm still seeing the exact same issue with a complex dynamic component.

The basic problem is that there are no global attributes in Dynamic Components: only local attributes that can be seen one level up and one level down in the hierarchy. I thought that this severe limitation could be bypassed by creating some lower level attributes the refer up to "parent!" attributes at a higher level, and others at higher levels that refer down to "child" attributes at lower levels, but it does not work. SketchUp does not traverse the entire hierarchy in both directions with each refresh or "redraw": it only seems to go down each branch once, so lower level attributes cannot be passed up one branch and down another.

Thus, the ONLY option is what the original poster already discovered, years ago: calculate all attributes at the highest level, and then pass them down each branch. There's no way to reliably pass things back up again, nor to pass things between branches of the hierarchy. It's a great pity, as adding the simple functionality of global attributes would solve the problem entirely, and completely avoid the need to be passing things around between levels!

Hopefully one day the SketchUp developers will figure out how to implement global attributes. Is this product even still being developed? There doesn't appear to have been any changes or updates to it at all, in YEARS! I have seen changes to the version number each year, but precious little in the way of new features, or even bug fixes. Is this a dead product?

In the meantime, your solution is the only way that works.

Wow! Cool! Thank you so much! That's VERY useful. Makes things a whole lot easier when there's hundreds of layers in a file. I wish I had the time to learn Ruby so I could do that type of thing.

Thanks again! Very much appreciated.

@glro said:

when i click on 'name' (title of the column) in the window that shows layers, they are put in alphabetical order...

Then I guess I must have an older version of the plugin, because I don't see any "name" column in the plugin. All I see is a pull-down box with an arrow pointing down, and a button next to it labeled "New". Below that is a check box labeled "Layer visible on selected Scene only". If I click in that pull-down, I get the list of layers, but they are in random order. I don't see any column labeled "Name" on the plugin window. That's only in the layers window, not the plugin window. And when I click on "name" in the layers window, it does not change the order of the layers in the plugin window, only in the layers window.

What version of the plugin are you using? Is there a new version that has a "name" column on it?

This is what I get: Are you seeing something different?

I realize that this is an oldish plugin, but it's really useful, and seems to work great in v2017.

However, the layers in the pull-down list are shown in apparently random order... Is there any way of changing that, so they are in alphabetical order, just like in the actual SK "Layers" window?

I often have many dozens (or even hundreds) of layers in my models, so it's a real pain to scroll through a long list, looking for the ones I want. It would be great to have the option to sort that list in alphabetical order, and even better if it could be set to either ascending or descending order.

Cool! I'll do some tests over the next few days, and let you know.

The reason I ask is because I do consulting work (recording studio design), and I often have several projects from different customers all open at the same time, and during the day I spend time on each of them, which I'd obviously like to account for separately. So I'd be billing each customer only for work I did on his project, not for work that I did on someone else's project but that got added to his by mistake.

And on the other hand, I sometimes do have two projects for the SAME customer open at once (such as two versions of the same studio design, with different layouts, that he's going to choose from later) and I'd like the work done on both of those to accumulate on one single clock.

From what I see in your documentation, I should be able to do this by having a separate suclock file for each customer, and pointing all of the SKP models related to that customer to the clock that has his name on it. That should work in theory, right?

Anyway, I'll try it out like that, and like you know what happens.

This is a great tool, by the way: Thanks for making it!

Thanks everyone. It's working great now, and very useful.

Just one more question: If I have several projects open at the same time in different instances of SketchUp, each with it's own clock, will that accumulate time correctly in each one, as I switch between projects and work on each one separately? No conflicts?

Thanks! That fixed it. I figured it was the missing library, but since the link at the head of this page is broken, I didn't know where to find it.

Much appreciated!

It doesn't work for me: produces a string of error messages each time I start up SketchUp. According to the Extension Manager it is installed, but it does not appear on the "Extensions" menu. The errors are:

Error Loading File Fredo6_SUClock.rb
Error: #<LoadError: cannot load such file -- Fredo6_!LibFredo6.rb>
D:/Program Files/SketchUp/SketchUp 2017/Tools/RubyStdLib/rubygems/core_ext/kernel_require.rb:54:in require' D:/Program Files/SketchUp/SketchUp 2017/Tools/RubyStdLib/rubygems/core_ext/kernel_require.rb:54:in require'
C:/Users/Stuart/AppData/Roaming/SketchUp/SketchUp 2017/SketchUp/Plugins/Fredo6_SUClock.rb:25:in `<top (required)>'

Based on that message, I assume that it must be missing the "LibFredo" library, which mentioned at the top of this page with a helpful message and link that says: "IMPORTANT: Requires to download LibFredo6 7.4c or higher if not already installed": I clicked on that link, but I get a message saying: "The requested topic does not exist.".

Bummer! This sounded like a great tool, and exactly what I need, but not much use if it doesn't work!

So please could you fix that link, or is there another way I can get that library that seems to be missing?