I don't know why it stopped working. It is possible that Apple changed something in releases of OS X since I wrote my qlgenerator or that subsequent versions of SketchUp associate the skp files with a different system id. There was so little interest expressed at the time that I haven't bothered to maintain it. I've since moved on to macOS 10.13.2, which might also behave differently than your OS. Plus, SketchUp 2018 comes with its own new qlgenerator, which eliminates the need for mine going forward. That said, you could try the ideas below to investigate.

You are using the wrong pattern in grep to search the return from qlmanage. Try qlmanage -m | grep Ske instead and you should see what is handling SketchUp files. If my qlgenerator is correctly installed, you should see entries for dyn.ah62d4rv4ge81g45u and com.sketchup. I had to use these because at the time SketchUp itself wasn't registering anything. The icons will take effect only after you save a file while the plugin is installed, as the plugin is what creates the image used by the icon.

It's been long enough I may have forgotten, but I don't think qlgenerators can be run standalone from the Terminal. They hook into a calling chain where they are fed a file and return an image handle, which doesn't make sense standalone.

You might also check for a folder named .QL_SketchUp in your home folder (things starting with . are hidden by default - in terminal you need to use ls -a to see them). It should exist, be writable, and should contain an image for each skp you have saved since the plugin was installed.

Check your system's log files to see whether you can find anything about quick look errors. Because OS X creates vast numbers of log messages about things that will mean nothing to you, this is somewhat like looking for a needle in a haystack but if you find something it might provide a clue about why it is no longer working.

I downloaded the GroupByLayer.rb from Smustard and looked at the code. It would actually be quite easy to modify it to apply the layer name to each of the groups it creates (and also to bring it in line with modern coding practices which it badly violates - it hasn't been updated since 2006!), but the Smustard general EULA expressly forbids altering any downloaded files and the extension's source code does not provide a more lenient license. I don't know how to contact the author, Rick Wilson, as he doesn't provide any info in the source. But if you can reach him, he might be able/willing to make this simple change or to grant permission for someone else to make it.

I started playing with this question as an exercise of Ruby API programming. On the surface, it is pretty easy to do. But when you look closer, the question is an excellent illustration of why the standard advice is to leave all edges and faces referencing Layer0. In this model, none of the edges and faces do so, and this causes issues in the attempt to convert geometry into groups or components! I realize the abuse is a result of the way the model was constructed in CAD before import, but nonetheless it shows the kind of things that happen.

To be more specific, an edge or face can reference only one layer. When, as in your model, the layers have been employed to identify objects, wherever two such objects touch their shared edges and faces can reference only the layer for one or the other object. So, if you turn off visibility for all except one layer, you get strange effects as shown in the attached images, where edges are missing from the faces they border and faces are missing from what should be a continuous surface. The geometry that references a particular layer does not form a SketchUp solid! This happens because the associated edge or face references a different layer than the one for the rest of the object.

In this specific context, it means that it is much more complex for a conversion tool to find and fix these defects while creating groups or components from the geometry that references a particular layer. Every object will have missing edges and/or faces as illustrated (because they all touch at least one other object), and the tool would have to understand this to find and collect copies of the missing parts into the assembly for each object.

I agree with @cotty that you are most likely thinking of backup .skb files, because on the face of it this seems like a silly question. Once you are comfortable that your .skp file is finished and you have made a copy somewhere in case of a computer crash, there is no need to keep the .skb backup files around. They are created so that all is not lost if you make a mistake or have a SketchUp crash while editing.

In a separate model, you could draw a 2D edge consisting of a stack of rectangles and apply alternating materials to them. Save the result as a 2D graphic export. Then import that image back into your real model as a texture and paint the edges of the plywood with it.

Try Fredo6's Bezier Spline. It stores the parameters of the spline as attributes on the curve and lets you go back later to edit the spline. It also supports a wide variety of kinds of splines.

I expect that SketchUp reads these json files as it starts and writes out revised copies as it quits. So, if you edit the file while SketchUp is already running, SketchUp will not see the changes and will overwrite with its in-memory version when it quits. You need to quit SketchUp before editing any preferences files.

@dohyungkim said:

@box said:

but after rotate a circle, I'm still not comfy that I got '~x.xx'......
no precise number of length. I don't like '~' in front of my measurement = =;

thanx!

Because SketchUp represents a circle as an inset polygon, only the vertex points are at the true radius of the circle. The midpoint of each segment is actually closer to the center and will usually not be any distance that the UI can represent exactly, so you get the '~'. Sometimes you can eliminate the '~' by increasing the precision of the units displayed, but this will just make the display correct (e.g. 10.35554 instead of ~10.36) it won't cause it to change to the true radius.

There are a few ways to get dimension to be the exact size of the theoretical circle.

If you activate the dimension tool and click on the circle as the start, the tool will create a dimension showing the true diameter of the circle no matter where on the circle you clicked. You can right-click this dimension and select the Type item to change it to a radius dimension. A radius dimension has a different look than other dimensions, more like a leader text with the letter 'R' preceding the radius. This might not provide the appearance you want.

If you click first at the center of the circle and then at one of the vertices, you can create a dimension that shows the actual radius of the circle. Because this dimension is "associated" with the vertex, it will rotate along with the circle when you rotate the circle, remaining true instead of changing to the distance to a midpoint. This has the disadvantage that the dimension's leader lines will be askew from the model axes by the amount you rotated the circle.

Finally, you can fudge the dimension by editing its text to show the value you want. Activate the dimension tool, right-click on the dimension and choose "Edit text". Obviously, this has the downside that the displayed dimension isn't the actual distance to the midpoint, which could cause errors later. It will display in red in SketchUp to remind you that it isn't associated with an object in the model.

Look in
~/Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports

@kimi kimi said:

I'm waiting for a few developers to join together and make an alternative to SketchUp. I'll pay filthy money for it. Just do it. Make yourself rich. You know what it needs to be.

Competition would be good. But I think there are patents that would prevent replicating some of our favorite features such as push-pull. It would be interesting to see what others could come up with.

In Preferences->OpenGL SketchUp 2018 provides choices for AA. They work on my mid-2012 MBP Retina on High Sierra 10.13.1.

@ketchupu said:

However, I am having trouble subtracting this oval cylinder out of a curvy wall.

Could you clarify what you mean by this? What sort of trouble are you encountering?

Seems to me that ktkoh is right. Make an Array using #to_a to remember the contents of the current selection. Then later use Selection#clear! and Selection#add to put the contents of the Array back into the Selection.

Whitelock, sorry to say there are two problems with what you just reported! First, the error message you posted earlier plainly said the folder I told you how to examine is where the offending extension script lives (see the yellow highlights TIG added to your screenshot)! Second, the extensions you show in your screenshot are not placed in that folder, they are in your personal Library (/users/yourname/Library/..., not the system's /Library). I mean no offense, but that sounds like you didn't follow my detailed instructions and are looking in the wrong place.

@pipingguy said:

Thanks! And it seems to be permanent....vs. lasting only for one session.

Yes - provided you save the model. Page behavior is a property of each Layer and is saved within the model.

TIG's advice is dead-on. I suspect that you are either omitting spaces in one or more items in the path or breaking the path over multiple lines the way it wraps in the error popup. So let's try another one-step-at-a-time route.

In Finder, at the bottom you will see a stripe listing the folders in the current path. The left-most entry will be the base folder of your hard drive (typically named something like Macintosh HD). Double-click that entry to open it in Finder. You will then see a list of contents including a Library folder. Open the Library folder and in it you will see 'Application Support'. Open that and you will see 'SketchUp 2017'. Open that and you will see 'SketchUp'. Open that and you will see 'Plugins'. Open that and you should find the offending vfs.rb. Delete that file and V-ray should stop trying to load.

Stan, several other people have also reported long delays in getting developer approval. It seems this is something Trimble doesn't have anyone watching very closely. If you contact them directly you might be able to get someone to facilitate your approval.

Perhaps add && e.is_a?(SketchUp::ComponentInstance) to the if test? Also note that it would be good to check whether e.respond_to?(:hidden?) before doing e.hidden? since not all Entities support hidden, and if your code ever encounters one of these it will throw an exception.

I'm not sure what you mean by "all funky"?

You have drawn the circle perpendicular to the edge, which is a correct step that many novices don't get right. I noticed that the board is a Group and that the circle is not in that Group. To get interactions between the board and circle you will need to get them in the same context. The easiest way is to copy the circle, open the Group for edit, and then Paste in Place.

When you pushpull it along the angled edge (or better, use the follow-me tool) you will get extra bits hanging off both ends because the ends are askew to the circle. The pushpull or follow-me will not have generated the edges where the contours of the circle pierce the ends of the board, so you need to add them. In this simple case you can draw them using the line tool (pencil) because there aren't many. Alternatively, you can use Intersect Faces With... to generate them automatically. Then you need to use the erase tool to clean up the extra. Careful use of the selection boxes can speed this step, but erasing one-by-one will also work.

The main difference in a subscription scheme is that if you let your subscription lapse, the software ceases to run at all! In SketchUp's permanent license scheme you just lose support and upgrade to the next version. The software continues to run as is. As a result, there are a lot of people out there still using (for example) SketchUp v8 because it was the last version without the no-commercial-use restriction in the license for free/Make.

I also despise subscription licensed software. From what I can see it is nothing more than a mechanism to keep sucking money out of your wallet even if they have added/fixed nothing that affects you. The big guys went to this when it became apparent that people were no longer slavishly updating to every new release - because the vendors ran out of new things to add that were valuable to more than a specialized subgroup of users, or started making changes that were just "tomayto" vs "tomahto".

Frankly, there are enough long-outstanding bugs in SketchUp that the team could work on them to make a new release without adding any more features at all!