Construction Line Tool Update (version 1.2)

I made a few minor changes to my Construction Line Tool.

• Cursor updates immediately after key press to indicate current line type. (Thanks to Thomas Thomassen.)
• Use the current stipple when rubber-banding.
• Made the default stipple to be the first in the selection list.
• Updated the infinite cursor to be less heavy in appearance.
• Increase line width when inference is locked.

Download Version 1.2

There are 2 downloads available. The Windows installer can be used in any situation and will replace any currently installed version. The downside is it is a larger download. It also allows for uninstalling from the Windows Start/Programs menu, or Control Panel.

The .zip file must be installed/removed manually - just extract and over-write the existing Construction Line Tool files in the Plugins folder.

Sculptris V1.0.1 Released

Sculptris

Updated WebConsole

I updated WebConsole - a multi-line Ruby code evaluator aimed to be an enhancement of the built-in Ruby Console.

Look!
This version will not prompt you to save code snippets when you close or clear the console. I found the prompts annoying, and so removed them.

Windows only
This release won't work on a Mac, I'm almost certain of that. I do plan on making it cross-platform in the future.

No More Results Area
I eliminated the results area of the console in favor of using SketchUp's Ruby Console. This was partially for performance - if you process a large number of entities, then the result is a large list which needs to get uploaded to the results. I figured why not just use the Ruby Console?

Open Ruby Console Button
So since there is no more results area, I added a button to open the Ruby Console. The same button will clear the Ruby Console if you have morisdov's rubyCons.exe utility installed.

Save/Load retains indentation
The code indentation is retained when loading and saving snippets.

Push/Pull code to Model
You can "push" the code into the Model, and "pull" it back into the console. Good for sharing a model and code in one file.

Code Indenter
I included a Ruby code beautifier from http://www.arachnoid.com/ruby/rubyBeautifier.html - so now you can indent the code in the console and even select the tab size.

There's more, but those are the biggies.

Download here.

Driving Dimensions v.1.3 for Google SketchUp

Version 1.3 supports new platforms and contains several improvements and fixes. Answering numerous requests by the users of Windows 7 and Mac OS X v.10.6 operating systems, LEDAS development team focused on supporting these new platforms for its SketchUp plug-in. The functionality of multi-document interface (MDI) on Mac platform has been improved. Version 1.3 also includes several fixes of internal errors reported by Driving Dimensions users. To see the full list of changes, please visit the release status page.

[ Announcement ]

Point-Cab Laser Scanning -> SketchUp

Laser scanning company Laser Scanning Europe has made available a data importer to import Point-Cab Layout data into Google SketchUp.


More information here: [ Point-Cab and SketchUp ]

Driving Dimensions 1.3 Released

Version 1.3 supports new platforms and contains several improvements and fixes. Answering numerous requests by the users of Windows 7 and Mac OS X v.10.6 operating systems, LEDAS development team focused on supporting these new platforms for its SketchUp plug-in. The functionality of multi-document interface (MDI) on Mac platform has been improved. Version 1.3 also includes several fixes of internal errors reported by Driving Dimensions users. To see the full list of changes, please visit the release status page.

[ Driving Dimensions ]

List of New Plug-ins and Updates.

There have been a number of New and Updated Plug-ins released recently. Here's a list:

• Twighlight Render 1.4 -"Our latest version fixes a longstanding material problem, providing better, faster results!"
• LibFredo6 and ToolsOnSurface - Important updates to fix the menu gray-out problems.
• Make Fur - New plug-in for creating fur or grass component arrays.
• ShapeBender plug-in by Chris Fullmer has been recently updated.
• PickIt - A new plug-in by Thomas Thomassen pops-up a menu of selectable entities when there is ambiguity.
• Cleanup - Thomas' essential utility has improved methods for cleaning up, and now also repairs broken lines.
• Edge Tools - Yet another of Thomas' growing and great collection of plug-ins. Adds a face division tool. (see video)
  
• Camera Stats - A plug-in to inspect and manipulate the Camera in SketchUp by Martin Rinehart.
• Extrude Edges by Rails to Lattice - Another fantastic addition to TIG's powerful Extrude Toolset.
• Probes - Recently updated query and inspection tool by TT. Shows face normal, edge normals, UVQ values, and more.
• RayTrace and RaySpray - A couple of TIG Tools that add construction geometry to trace ray paths.
• Fix Component Names - A TT plug-in that fixes a bug that happens when 2 Components have the same name.
• Delete Internal Faces- New scripter kyyu released a plug-in to remove internal faces from faces.
  
• Key Rotate - A shortcut for rotating things also by kyyu.
• OnTime5D Plugin - connect 3D objects with schedule made with OnTime software.
• Automatic SketchUp - The first Ruby book aimed at SketchUp development has been published.
• 3D Printing - i.materialize has released a plug-in to help create and upload models for 3d printing directly from SketchUp.
  

Important Updates to Fredo6 Scripts

Yesterday I mentioned a problem with SketchUp's context menus becoming unavailable, and implicated the FredoScale plugin in particular.

Today, Fredo has released important updates to his scripts in which he:

fixed the bugs and would strongly advise users to upgrade the following scripts to their latest versions, all dated 6 May 10:

LibFredo6 --> v3.4c (the most critical)
ToolsOnSurface --> 1.6a
RevertCurve --> version 6 May 10
DxfTransformation --> version 6 May 10
MarkVertices --> version 6 May 10

In principle, you don't need to upgrade the other scripts (FredoScale, RoundCorner, HoverSelect, GhostComp, JointPushPull, BezierSpline, etc...).

SketchUp Context Menu Greyed Out?

There has been an extremely annoying problem occuring for Windows users of Sketchup where the right-click Context menus become grayed-out at some point during modeling. The only solution was to reboot SketchUp.

SketchUp employee jhauswirth has tracked down the problem to how Ruby scripts are creating the menus (see below.)

More importantly, it was found that one plugin in particular - FredoScale - was one of the main causes of the problem.

So if you are experiencing this problem, the best solution for now is to disable the FredoScale plugin, and only use it as needed until FredoScale can be updated.

---

SketchUpper jhauswirth explains the problem:

The problem is Ruby scripts are calling-
UI::Command.new
and not attaching the new command to a menu item.

If you want to verify this run-
-------------------
for i in 0..1000 do
cmd = UI::Command.new("Tester") { UI.messagebox("Hello World") }
end
-------------------

I can see Ruby scripts creating new commands on each right mouse click.
Every new command creates a unique command ID in SU and there are only 1000
command IDs available. Normally a command is attached to a menu and when
the menu goes away the IDs are recycled, but since these commands are not
attached to a menu, they don't get recycled.
I'm going to try and figure out how to dump the list of commands (they have
menu item text) so that people can see who's causing the problem.

and

There was another bug regarding recycling menu IDs. This was caused by the app not being able to execute OnIdle because the context menu was constantly being popped up. I didn't mention this issue because once OnIdle got a chance to do its business all the menu items came back to life. All the issues I've seen would be Windows only.

Fur and Grass Plugin for SketchUp

Folks are having lots of fun with a new Fur plugin for SketchUp written by SketchUcation user tak2hata.

Fur can be downloaded from SketchUcation, or directly from the author's site (along with more SketchUp plugins.)