If you model a lot of profile-based geometry as part of your job, ProfileBuilder will pay for itself in a day or less.

Another winner Fredo! I had a similar idea once but never got to implementing it. I also wanted to mention that I have been using your Round Corner script lately and it is incredible! Great work!

@unknownuser said:

Duh! Loaded it up and it stalls while collecting mesh. I guess I shuld have uninstalled the last version??

You need the latest versions of Indigo and SkIndigo (2.0.12). Install Indigo first, then SkIndigo. Did you try to run Indigo 2.0.12 with an old version of SkIndigo? It may not be compatible.

@solo said:

Whoah Dale!!

What kung-fu are you using? These are amazing.

Is this the commercial version? now for the question that many may wonder....how long did they take?

The commercial version is identical to the free version. There is just a resolution limit of 0.7 megapixels and a watermark in the lower right corner.

The ocean horizon render and the caustics render took about 3 hours on one thread over a mediocre computer. The others took about 8 hours. Indigo supports unlimited processors and has great network rendering support to quicken the pace.

Still, it is not fair to compare these times to other unbiased render engines because scene setup time is blazing fast. A total Indigo newbie could set up these scenes for rendering in anywhere from 1-5 minutes. The time savings for setting up materials and lighting makes up for the render times. With Indigo, you don't need to spend 6 hours doing test renders and tweaking to make sure you have all your settings corrrect. You just click the render button and let it cook!

I don't do a lot of rendering but here are some of my more recent Indigo renders. Some of these will be featured in upcoming SkIndigo tutorials.

Keep in mind that all of these are rendered right out of SketchUp with zero post production. For more information on Indigo 2.0, go to http://www.indigorenderer.com

For those who have not been following Indigo's development lately, it is more powerful and easier to use than ever. Mac OSX version is available now!

Ok, I am successfully reading the windows registry. However, I have run into a roadblock on Windows Vista systems. It seems as though Vista prevents access to reading the registry unless you are logged in as an administrator.

If anyone knows how to get around this issue, please let me know!

This is the code I am using:

require 'Win32API'
require 'registry'

Win32;;Registry;;HKEY_CURRENT_USER.open('Software\Glare Technologies\Indigo Renderer') do |reg|  #this line works fine...
	reg_typ, reg_val = reg.read('InstalledVersion')  #...but this line fails on Vista only.
	return reg_val
end

A user of one of my plugins is getting a 'Stack Level Too Deep' error when the plugin is loading. The plugin, thus, fails to load.

This is occuring using SketchUp 7 and Mac OS 10.5.8. Any ideas what the cause and solution is?

Thanks.

Read the announcement by Nicholas Chapman here:

@jim said:

Hi Whaat,

I have some code already that is a similar effort. My inputbox class can use the standard UI, or a WebDialog, has accessors for the input fields, and has persistent storage abilities.

http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=314&t=19493&p=163076&hilit=inputbox#p163076

Inputbox class

The Inputbox class makes it easy to create user input dialogs by providing a consistent interface to UI.inputbox for text fields and drop-do...

(sketchuptips.blogspot.com)

Hi Jim,

I was not aware that you are adding webdialog support to your inputbox class. Have you released the code yet?

I think our goals are slightly different so I might keep working on my little project. One of my goals is to make the interface as similar as possible to the existing UI.inputbox class, thus increasing the liklihood that it will be used.

Hi,

Seeing as how most ruby developers are hesitant to make the plunge to using Webdialogs, I thought I might try creating a simple API that allows developers to easily add a floating inputbox to a tool that they created. The inputbox would provide an interface for the tool options while keeping the tool active.

Here is what the initialization code looks like (should be familiar )

prompts=["Style","Color"]
values=["LINE","Black"]
dropdowns=["CLINE|LINE","Black|Blue|Red|Orange"]
title="Linetool Options"
@dlg=UI.floating_inputbox(prompts,values,dropdowns,title)

Values can be set or read from the dialog using a very simple interface as well.

It's not ready to release yet but here's a screenshot of the output.

Hi,

I am trying to figure out how to use package maker to install plugins on the Mac. What I can't figure out is how to handle the different directories that SketchUp could be installed in, and how to handle different versions of SketchUp. I would like Package Maker to be able to figure out which folder to install the plugin in.

I noticed that Podium uses Package Maker for installation so it seems like it is possible. Maybe TBD can help me here?

@didier bur said:

Hi Whaat,
Would you please post a link where I can download win32api.rb
Thanks,

yeah...i got it when i downloaded full ruby. Strangely enough, it did not include win32api.so. I think that the .so version is now obsolete (still works though)

I am finding the following code very convenient:

$;.push(some_sub_folder_in_plugins_that_contains_other_ruby_files)

Then I can use the require command for any ruby files that are in my subfolder:

require 'some_file_in_subfolder'
require 'some_other_file_in_subfolder'
etc.

Are they any reasons why I shouldn't add directories to the $: variable?

@coronel said:

I don't remember if you need to have installed "finder scripts addictions" but to get the path on mac just select the object > right mouse button, contextual menu > "More" > "File Utils" > "copy path to clipboard". Voila

Thanks for the reply but this is the Ruby forum and I am looking for a solution using Ruby code inside SketchUp.

@jim said:

Without looking, the .so would be a compiled library and the .rb is the 'friendly' interface.

So which should be used if a plugin wants to access the Win32API? Maybe it doesn't matter.

@thomthom said:

When I made some API calls I just wrote: require 'Win32API'
I had not downloaded any extra packages.

...maybe some other plugin has it...

Check your plugins folder. I think another plugin likely has it.

I need to get the path to an application on a Mac. The application would typically be installed in the users /Applications folder. Is there a method to get the path to the /Applications folder without prompting the user? Thanks.

so is there a difference? I can't find win32api.so in my ruby files (after I downloaded the full Ruby package) Is it obsolete now? Which should I use, win32api.so or win32api.rb? Thanks!

@thomthom said:

Seems that the Win32 module already got some wrappers for the registry: http://ruby-doc.org/stdlib/libdoc/Win32API/rdoc/classes/Win32/Registry.html

Aha...I recently came across that too, Thomthom! I think that 'registry.rb' is the ticket. While it is part of the Win32 API, it looks quite simple to use. Thanks!

Hi TIG,

I can't quite tell from your description if your script imports UVs correctly. If you are looking to add this feature, I was working on an OBJ importer awhile ago that imported materials and UVs. If you would like the code, let me know and you can have it. I don't think I'll ever get around to releasing it officially.

Thanks for another great script!