[Plugin] Perpendicular Face Tools (UPDATED 26-03-09)

[thomthom]

I asked some time back about why subsequent versions of Sketchup don't incorporate more of the most useful tools developed by users. I recall that it was said to be a 'good question'. Do you happen to know? It's not as if it would add too significantly to the size of the download.

As a user I prefer to be able to choose myself - the plugins I find useful isn't the same as the next person.
As a developer - SketchUp plugins often go through frequent updates, so any bundled plugin would be out of date by the time it ships.

On the other hand - it'd be great if we could have a plugin repository where we could search, install, uninstall plugins from within SketchUp.

[frascati]

Finally solved this, hope this helps if any other Linux users stop by here. Rather than repeat a lot I'll refer to the thread....
http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=90&t=69740

On the other hand - it'd be great if we could have a plugin repository where we could search, install, uninstall plugins from within SketchUp.

That would be VERY nice.

This is one thing that I'm really pleased with so far with this "fat" (by linux standards) Linux distro called Mint. There is a wealth of such repositories within the installation for navigating and installing with a minimum of fuss many many utilities. Usually when a Linux tool is discovered on the web I just have to open the "package manager" in Mint and type the name of it into search and it's already there. I just click to download and automatically install it and start using it.

This plugin for Sketchup has been the first real baffler for me, but it turned out to be a pretty simple fix after all. I'm finding that that's usually the case with Mint. Half a dozen hard-core linux people will give you daunting command line instructions but eventually someone will come along to tell you that the solution is actually only two clicks away.

[gehcha]

Just discovered your plugin and it's great! Thank you. I'm having issue with it drawing circles with a radius less than 1". Is a 1" radius the limit on size?

[Chris Fullmer]

I probably did not make it smart enough to do decimals. And if I did, it probably only accepts a period as a decimal placemark - which is the US standard. So if you are typing 0,5 - you might try 0.5 - and I would recommend trying it with the 0 in front, and also without the 0. I really don't know how smart the script is going to be with that. I can dig into and look at it if you would like.

Chris

[thomthom]

I probably did not make it smart enough to do decimals. And if I did, it probably only accepts a period as a decimal placemark - which is the US standard. So if you are typing 0,5 - you might try 0.5 - and I would recommend trying it with the 0 in front, and also without the 0. I really don't know how smart the script is going to be with that. I can dig into and look at it if you would like.

Chris

How are you processing the input. if you use String.to_l then it should make use of the user's locale setting.

Example:
I got comma as decimal separator, model units set to mm;
"10,5".to_l
> 0.413385826771654

[jojo9]

Hi Chris,
whats about an 'put objects perpendicular to' option? Lets say, to put the nearest face of a group/component instance on another face, (having two parallel faces)
application: moving a cabinet to a wall

[Chris Fullmer]

That would be an interesting plugin. I'm not sure it doesn't exist already though. Seems like there might be some script out there for moving like that. I'm not sure what it would be called though.

[jojo9]

Indeed, Didier Bur wrote a similar tool: Align2D. But you have to set 8 points to process objects. Best used to position/put objects on unusual angled planes. Another tool of the same author is 'Drop' but it drops only vertically.
--
A dedicated tool to place/arrange furniture would save a lot of time.
The slide direction could result of the relationship between group-wallface and the bounding box face determine the border line between object-wall. No dialog/input box is needed for this to work.
Another candy to add could be to rotate objects automatically, so that the front face of a cabinet, points always forward of the wall.

[gilles]

Hello, I tried this tool today.
It works fine but I got issue with circle:
It doesn't draw radius under 25,4mm
If I set radius to 100mm it draw 76,2mm radius
???
Is there a way, code to have a component instead of a group?

[Chris Fullmer]

Hi Giles, I did a very poor making this plugin international. It does not work well with metrics AND with comma decimal separators. In the US we use a decimal separator. So 23,12 for us is written 23.12 for example.

The 25.4mm limit appears to be a an inch conversion thing. 25.4mm = 1 inch. I really don't remember if I set this up to work with metrics at all. And I'm so busy I will not be able to fix it anytime soon. If you would like to tweak though, feel free.

Chris

[gilles]

it must be relative to the circle construction method because there is no problem with square.

[brookefox]

Some helpful tipsters pointed me to this handy tool, Chris, after I inquired about one which would do quite a bit less.

Thank you very much.

[TS200010]

Just installed them - however, no icons on the buttons and an almost immediate Bug Splat. Lost all my work.

Any assistance would be appreciated.

[Dave R]

The typical cause for the icons not showing on the buttons is incorrect installation. The Splat could have the same cause.

[TS200010]

Dave,
Thanks - I am a RubyNewbe ... there were no installation instructions so I just guessed - apparantly incorrectly.

[Box]

Just installed them - however, no icons on the buttons and an almost immediate Bug Splat. Lost all my work.

This suggests you installed the plugin while working on a file.
Generally speaking you should install plugins with SU closed, or at the very least close and reopen SU before using the plugin for the first time.
Also worth trying it out on a junk file before anything important.

So having said that, if you did install it with SU open, try installing it again with SU closed.

[Dave R]

Dave,
Thanks - I am a RubyNewbe ... there were no installation instructions so I just guessed - apparantly incorrectly.

There are multiple threads here explaining how to install plugins. The basic thing which would apply to any ZIP folder is to maintain the file structure as shipped in the compressed folder.

Since the icons don't appear on the toolbar, it is safe to assume that the icon images are not in the colder called clf_perpendicular_face_tools which is where the related loader file would be looking for them. If you didn't keep those image files in that folder, you probably also don't have clf_perpendicular_face_tools.rb in that folder either.

You should explore through the Plugins folder and find the .rb and the six image files and put them where they belong. It would probably be easier to delete those files and reinstall the plugin correctly. I wopuld suggest you download and use 7-zip to do this. It won't destroy the folder structure as the Windows native unzipper is wont to do.

[Chris Fullmer]

I also have problems with winzip destroying the folder structure, depending on the winzip version. Also from what I understand Macs add an extra folder to the mix. For most of my plugins, I have a single file that just goes into the plugins folder. If there are additional files, they get loaded into a subfolder.