[Plugin] Selection Toys

[thomthom]

Done!

[Dave R]

You're a champ!

[mitcorb]

Thomthom:
I would make a suggestion here.
I think the title of this ruby should be Thomthom Selection Toys, in your own honor and ownership.
You have advanced Sketchup to a new level here!
Thank you.

[mitcorb]

hmmm. perhaps my last post here was a bit effusive and over the top. excuse me.

[Chris Fullmer]

hmmm. perhaps my last post here was a bit effusive and over the top. excuse me.

Too effusive? No such thing around here!

[thomthom]

heh, no worries. I'm glad you liked it.

[mitcorb]

Well, then, you guys must have been napping. And I reinstate what I said about naming that plugin.
Best Regards,
mitcorb

[thomthom]

I think I'll keep the name as it is. But I do accept donations in the shape of cookies*.


* Cookies can be replaced with beer. (Excluding white beer and Budweiser and Spitfire).

[mitcorb]

Thomthom:
I do not know how to do the cookies thing in cyberspace. I am sure they would taste a little bit flat, and I'm not sure if you would want one of those giant cookies or just "byte" size.
It is ok with me if you want to keep the name as is.

Now to business. I tried to do a Select Loop on a roughly cylindrical model with a lot of triangular faces. The target loop was a fairly direct series of segments. I first set Edges only, then select loop. This portion of the model is contained inside a group.
What I got was the edge and the two adjacent triangular faces highlighted. I was obviously expecting a loop around the circumference to be highlighted. What did I do wrong?
mitcorb

[thomthom]

It only deals with faces with four edges at the moment.
Loop is one of the functions I plan to improve at some point.

[EarthMover]

Thanks so much Thomas!!! Any way to be able to create a shortcut for Select>Loop function? I use it a lot and would like to assign it to a key on my keyboard, but it doesn't show up as an option in preferences.

[thomthom]

Thanks so much Thomas!!! Any way to be able to create a shortcut for Select>Loop function? I use it a lot and would like to assign it to a key on my keyboard, but it doesn't show up as an option in preferences.

You have to select one edge first. You can only assign shortcut to menu items if they apper in the menu's at the time.
I use the loop function myself allot. I really wish it was smarter though.
And I want to make a function that select the next connected edges if they are under a given angle.

[alz]

Holy crap! Fantastic work -- thanks for sharing it

[simon le bon]

Dear thomthom,

And I want to make a function that select the next connected edges if they are under a given angle.

perhaps you should take a look at Matt plugin Selection Manager I think he had already well-done made the development you are thinking of

*simon

[thomthom]

Ah, I'll keep that in mind. Thanks for the heads up.

[majid]

Dear TOM....
you have made a section (included in yr plugin ) that can find copies of the same group
at the same time yr plugin is able to finde "same area"s.
the question is: (for the next step) is it possible to find smae shapes--->convert them to copies of 1 component?
.....
if it is possible then SU would be really poweful , bkz then it could import from other application , with less polygon... and it would be great step ....

[thomthom]

I have considered this - as lately we've been using more and more Revit at work and when I import via DWG windows that should have been the same - isn't. It's certainly something I'd like to see myself.

[thomthom]

• Added filter support for 3D Polylines (Drawn with the freehand-tool)
• Fixed a flaw in the .typename optimisation code to detect dimensions and 3D polylines
• Fixed a flaw in the circle filter where arcs that made up a full circle wasn't recognised if the start_angle wasn't 0.
• Worked around a SU bug where an extruded circle is reported as being 720 degrees. All arcs that report more than 360 degrees is considered a circle.

[thomthom]

• Added the menu elements for 3D Polyline filtering
• Fixed a bug in two of the filter methods for Drawingelement based entitites.

[EarthMover]

Thom,

Anyway to have the selection tools work with multiple selections or by adding to a selection? Let's say I select two faces with two different materials and I want to extend the selection to connected by material for both faces, is this possible?

Same with Select Loop. It would be nice to select a line, run select loop, then while holding shift select another line and get to run select loop to add to selection. Don't know if this is possible though.

[thomthom]

Anyway to have the selection tools work with multiple selections or by adding to a selection?

In it's current state: no.
But it's something I wish for myself. But it requires complete rewrite of all the functions - making them into tools. It's something I'd like to add to version 2.

[mitcorb]

@Thomthom:
I seem to be having a problem with Selection Toys.
I see it in plugins and I see Selection in drop down menu with a flyout trigger to the right, but nothing flies out. So I am unable to use the various selection tools.
In case it is a conflict or interoperability issue, I will mention that I have downloaded in the last few days updates of Extrude edges, Grow, Projections v2 and I am experimenting with Sculpt. I have also, Hoverselect.
I just thought you would want to know about this.
Of course, the possibility exists that it has nothing to do with the plugins mentioned and I am just not activating Selection in the proper way.
Nonetheless, thank you for the opportunity to use the plugin.
mitcorb

[thomthom]

Can you open the Console and see if there's any error messages that appear there?

[mitcorb]

I will give that a try, and post back. Thanks

[mitcorb]

Thomthom:
My apologies, it is not your plugin, but Matt Extend Tool that has the Selection with the fly out trigger. This time the fly out did happen and it says Extend edges. However, at this time, the Extend Edges is not working, and it may have to do with interoperability with other tools.
Sculpt is currently not working, though I understand that it is still in development.
By the way, at first I could get no activity in the Ruby Console with the dead end menu with "Selection >". Then, for some reason the fly out trigger '>' worked and Extend Edges flew out, and the console displayed that action, but no results from the selection. I will stop here, before it gets confusing.

[thomthom]

That's odd... Can't say I can provide any explanation to that. Poke Matt and let him know.

[thomthom]

• Added Layer filters
• Added function to select all entities on selected layers

[thomthom]

• Added function to select all active entities on selected layers

[Bob James]

Convert into Components - Converts all the group copies into components. Transformation and materials will be transferred.
Useful for when you have a model where groups where used instead of components.

Wow! Really useful.

Alas! When I load select_toys.rb it does not appear in the plugins dropdown

[thomthom]

Alas! When I load select_toys.rb it does not appear in the plugins dropdown

All the menus are access via the context-menu. This is because the commands depends on the selection. Putting them all in the plugin menu would leave a huge number of menus that most of the time wouldn't do anything.