[Plugin] Edge Tools (2.0.4) — 11 July 2011

[Pilou]

"Outside" is not given by face's sign of a normal?

[arjunmax09]

Awesome!!! Awesome!!!Awesome!!!Awesome!!!Awesome!!! Thomthom you rock...that's why a rocking cake for you btw..do you listen to u2??

[mitcorb]

Sketchup would have to decide what is outside, what is inside. What if it would have something to do with faces facing camera? Or, if the model is a closed volume somehow Sketchup would check for this and assumes all outside faces should be white, all inside faces should be grey. But what would it decide on an almost closed volume?

[TIG]

That is why with some of my tools - like EEbyRails - it makes the mesh and asks if you want to reverse the faces - it tries to double-guess which is inside and which is out, BUT only you know which way round you'd like it...

[thomthom]

Problem arise when you have meshes with internal faces.

[TIG]

If an edge has more than two faces it is impossible to have all of those faces oriented the same way.
A simple fact of geometry - therefore trying to orient meshes with 'internal' faces is futile...

[mitcorb]

This must be due to Sketchup being a surface modeler?.
I'm not sure what Blender is classified as, but it has ways to deal with face orientation, internals and duplicates. I wonder if some analogous form of these concepts could still be applied to Sketchup?-- that is, short of exporting to Blender and back.

[thomthom]

Update 1.1.1
Important bug fix in my Ramer-Douglas-Peucker implementation of the curve simplification.

[Ben Ritter]

Thom thom, thank you for the great plugin. I don't seem to understand how to get the colinear function. I see the rest but not this one.

Ben

[notareal]

Nice!

[thomthom]

Sorry about replacing the Divide Face video is a poorer quality YouTube video, but I ran out of bandwidth on Screencast and I did not have the original video.

[pilger]

Hey thom!

I wonder if the simplify curve bit work with closed curves or even surfaces. I find myself in a position in which i imported geometry from a DWG and it left me with some insanely segmented edges. I'm trying to find a method to simplify this thing which complies with the Human Rights.

I've uploaded a small sample to make it clearer.


Thanks in advance.

EDIT:
Found a neat SimplifyCountours.rb script right on the SketchUp repository (http://sketchup.google.com/download/rubyscripts.html). Silly me.

I figured i should post it here in order to help whoever has a similar issue, since it's somehow related to the plugin subject.

I'll be keeping your plugin though, thom. It's pure juice. Keep it up!

[thomthom]

I realised last week that it did not work for closed curves. But this I should be able to make work.

However, it will not work with faces attached.

[pilger]

That wouldn't be much of a problem. There's a pretty good Make Face plugin around (i don't remember who wrote it, though).

I'm having some difficulties in using that Simplify thingy i've found as it uses angles to do the dirty job and not the neat Rammer-Douglas_Peucker algorhithm. :\

[thomthom]

Yea - it's why I was looking for a different algorithm as I found that Simplify didn't preserve the overall shape as well.

From your screenshot it looks as though you have a lot of criss-crossing curves. That leads to problems with any curve simplification algorithms.

In my DP implementation I pre-process the selection to locate curve segments. A curve segment is only valid if it doesn't have faces connected or forks. Anything that doesn't fit the requirements is silently ignored.

[pilger]

Indeed, i realise the crossing is a bit of a problem. However, i separated them all in groups (which is basically double clic and group, being a fairly easy task) so i guess that wouldn't get much in the way.

[thomthom]

hm... I guess it could be made into an option to consider a curve segment to be between forks...

Adding to Experiment list.

[thomthom]

Version 1.1.2
Important Bug Fix!
Fixed incorrect lengths for Divide Face tool.

[Pilou]

Perfection is not for this world

[keyston]

Hi Thomtom,
First, thanks for your hours spent making all these plugins. its a wonder google dont take some onboard for future su releases.
I not very technically inclined when it comes to 3d terminology, just want to ask about importing terrain from google earth (get current view ), If I get a few views all slightly overlapping,then explode and toggle terrain, I get holes and overlaps and mess.
Which one of your scripts is best to clean this up? Edge tools or cleanup rb?
Also in su 8 get current view is no longer in the google toolbar?

[shoeb_cars]

RESPECT ++
u saved my life again...TQ very much

[thomthom]

Version 1.1.3
Important Update! Now handles curves the forms loops.

[rv1974]

Damn how could I miss it? Excellent! With this set of tools you came very close to the one of the biggest hemorrhoids in my workflow- the acad generated arcs\polylines\curves. They typically overlap, cut each other, have different segment length and stray ends etc. If only you could make something in this direction

[thomthom]

Overlapping curves that intersect each other is troublesome. It's something that should be corrected in Autocad before importing as it'd be difficult to separate them afterwars. ("Garbage in garbage out")
As for the curve segments - Fredo's Bezier Curve tool let you convert curves into parametric curves you can adjust - can be used to interpolate I think. Maybe his plugin could be automated to process a set of curves?

[bentleykfrog]

Awesome toolset, would be nice if divide faces preserved the edges soft, smooth and hidden properties though.

thanks thomthom

[thomthom]

Awesome toolset, would be nice if divide faces preserved the edges soft, smooth and hidden properties though.

thanks thomthom

Good idea. I have an update coming up very shortly. Though it won't make it for that, but I'll be on my todo list.

[thomthom]

Version 2.0.0

• Bug fixes
• Toolbar
• Close Gaps
• Erase Stray Curves

[srx]

Thank you, thank you, thankyou...

[thomthom]

Version 2.0.1

• Fixed minor issue where the plugin might throw an error if another plugin hadn't already loaded TT_Lib2.

[dedmin]

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