[plugin] realSection v0.6 Béta (Updated 31/12/10)

[GWD]

There was a small problem with version 0.3. This is now solved in realSection v0.4. I hope you will still enjoy realSection!
I tested it on SU7 en SU8 and it should work on both version without a problem.

[Jim]

Is the problem because the plugin relies on Windows-specific libraries (Win32API.so) which are incompatible with Mac OS?

[GWD]

Is the problem because the plugin relies on Windows-specific libraries (Win32API.so) which are incompatible with Mac OS?

No plugin check if it's a PC or a MAC. But the problem should be fixed.

[Dave R]

That seems to work now although, curiously, the faces don't align accurately with the section cut. See the attached model and zoom in close to the corners. And it seems the materials must already be defined in the model before starting to create the realSections. Is that right? I added the material called _Blue after creating the realSections. The name shows up in the list for defining materials but after selecting it for one group and updating the realSections the face disappeared. When I set it back to the brownish color, the face was recreated.

[GWD]

That seems to work now although, curiously, the faces don't align accurately with the section cut. See the attached model and zoom in close to the corners. And it seems the materials must already be defined in the model before starting to create the realSections. Is that right? I added the material called _Blue after creating the realSections. The name shows up in the list for defining materials but after selecting it for one group and updating the realSections the face disappeared. When I set it back to the brownish color, the face was recreated.

That the section faces don't align is normal, because i place the faces a little before and a little behind the sectionplane. But because you work in other units the gap is to big. I try to solve the unit problem asap.

[GWD]

That seems to work now although, curiously, the faces don't align accurately with the section cut. See the attached model and zoom in close to the corners. And it seems the materials must already be defined in the model before starting to create the realSections. Is that right? I added the material called _Blue after creating the realSections. The name shows up in the list for defining materials but after selecting it for one group and updating the realSections the face disappeared. When I set it back to the brownish color, the face was recreated.

Problem solved in v0.5
There will always be a very little displacement because it's impossible to put a face on the sectionplane without display problems.

[Dave R]

Thanks. I'll give it a try.

I wonder why it isn't possible for your script to put the face on the section plane in exactly the right spot. TIG's SectionCutFace seems to do it exactly right every time.

[GWD]

Thanks. I'll give it a try.

I wonder why it isn't possible for your script to put the face on the section plane in exactly the right spot. TIG's SectionCutFace seems to do it exactly right every time.

Dave, now it's in the right spot like TIG's SectionCutFace. But also TIG plugin is moved a little bit.

[errror404]

I would like to report that the issues that I was having early are now gone (since the new update).


Thanks!

[ladcwei]

Thinks for GWydouw's hardwork,this plugin works now.
But I think there is a problem remaining :sometimes when I zoom out ,the realsection layer would disppear like this:

1.jpg

2.jpg

I guess the reason of this should be the realsection layer and the section plan at the same plan,then when I zoom out ,the section plan works......

[ladcwei]

And I find this version only works for groups in Su7,if the section plan goes through the components,there is no result......

[schnydix]

hi i tried aut your plugin real section
if i open the test file it works fine
but my own solids would never shown a real section i Played around with 4 hours
I make a solid right click on it and i have NO Dropdown (Arrow) menu. What make i wrong?
Win xp su8
can i make my own Hatching and rename it later in a version?

And Thank you for the great idea and the work

[GWD]

hi i tried aut your plugin real section
if i open the test file it works fine
but my own solids would never shown a real section i Played around with 4 hours
I make a solid right click on it and i have NO Dropdown (Arrow) menu. What make i wrong?
Win xp su8
can i make my own Hatching and rename it later in a version?

And Thank you for the great idea and the work

Yes you can make your own materials just see that the material name starts with '_'

Guy

[paddyclown]

Can't Choose Materials...

webqq_app.jpg

Hi there, i just tried v.06beta in su7 and su8 and in both can't select material. In 8 i can get it to make a section that has a black fill... infact it is a group in a group sou you can go in and manually change the face material as a workaround. & in 8 if I dont make a perfect group from scratch it won't work at all...
The idea is a wonderful one, so all I can say is bravo for doing this, & I hope that a really stable fully functioning version will see the light of day ! Maybe my problems (as so often) come from Vista & it's in french so Program Files folder is seen as "Programmes" which seems to f up lots of plugin's who look for precise path names in english... Vista also seems to make copies of some (but not all ?) plugins in another deeply hidden folder... some days I hate microsoft but heh...

Anyway, do keep up the good work !
All the best & happy new year

[schnydix]

Thanks for the fast answer GWydouw GREAT Support
Sometimes is my iq just some points higher as the actual room temperature
its enough to survive but too less for your great work

Thanks again

Can i translate this plugin for you to german?
best-off@gmx.net

[tomb85]

This is really a nice plugin. I've been looking for a plugin like this for a long time.
Also many thanks for the section-hatch materials.

I don't have any experience with ruby scripting, but maybe an extra useful feature would be if you could assign a lineweight thickness to the group/material that is sectioned? Maybe trough an extra parameter that can be entered in the "define realSection material"-popup window. With this you could get a better readability of construction drawings. In the "SectionCutFace.rb"-plugin this is possible, but only for the whole section plane.
For example: walls could have thickness 5, furniture thickness 3, etc...

greetings from a fellow belgian

[GWD]

This is really a nice plugin. I've been looking for a plugin like this for a long time.
Also many thanks for the section-hatch materials.

I don't have any experience with ruby scripting, but maybe an extra useful feature would be if you could assign a lineweight thickness to the group/material that is sectioned? Maybe trough an extra parameter that can be entered in the "define realSection material"-popup window. With this you could get a better readability of construction drawings. In the "SectionCutFace.rb"-plugin this is possible, but only for the whole section plane.
For example: walls could have thickness 5, furniture thickness 3, etc...

greetings from a fellow belgian

Good idea. I try to put this in the next version.

[tomb85]

if the section plan goes through the components,there is no result......

There is also no result with "groups inside a group"...
@GWydouw, how do you fix this at your office when you section on components or groups-inside-a-group?
I've tried mixing the results of sectioncutface.rb and realSection together into 1 group but it gets a bit tricky and sections are no longer updateable. Is there a workaround ?

Thanks

[GWD]

if the section plan goes through the components,there is no result......

There is also no result with "groups inside a group"...
@GWydouw, how do you fix this at your office when you section on components or groups-inside-a-group?
I've tried mixing the results of sectioncutface.rb and realSection together into 1 group but it gets a bit tricky and sections are no longer updateable. Is there a workaround ?

Thanks

At this moment this isn't possible. But i try to put it in the next version.

[Edson]

thanks for this most useful plugin!

a question: does anyone know were one can get textures with the hatch patterns normally used in section drawings?

[GWD]

thanks for this most useful plugin!

a question: does anyone know were one can get textures with the hatch patterns normally used in section drawings?

Look in the demo skp file and you find very nice section materials.

[Edson]

thanks for this most useful plugin!

a question: does anyone know were one can get textures with the hatch patterns normally used in section drawings?

Look in the demo skp file and you find very nice section materials.

guy,

I have seen it, of course. I meant other textures beside those good ones.

[simon le bon]

Hi Edson,

I meant other textures beside those good ones.

Not very far you have a nice bench of hatching textures with TIG's 2D Tools. It will be the occasion to test this excellent set if you've not already done..

++simon

[Edson]

Hi Edson,

I meant other textures beside those good ones.

Not very far you have a nice bench of hatching textures with TIG's 2D Tools. It will be the occasion to test this excellent set if you've not already done..

++simon

thanks, simon, for bringing this to our attention. there are so many good plugins that one forgets about some of them.

[simon le bon]

Dear Edson,

there are so many good plugins that one forgets about some of them.

I agree.
Plugins are like books in a library. Depending on the kind of work we are interested by in the moment, we are interested to test those which are in relation.

Like for books, we need sometimes the help of the community to help us to focus on one or two plugins. We can't try everything _ not enough time for that.

This reminds me that I think there is a plugin to pick in our "library" only the plugins we want to open in our session of SketchUp ??? May be a plug by Jim !?

Cheers,
simon.

[Jim]

This reminds me that I think there is a plugin to pick in our "library" only the plugins we want to open in our session of SketchUp ??? May be a plug by Jim !?

I may have posted some thoughts, but I do not have a good solution.

[simon le bon]

Hi Dear Jim,

I may have posted some thoughts, but I do not have a good solution.

In fact I was thinking of one of your plugs I have still never tried: a plug to assemble family of commands in our own toolbars

SketchUp Custom Toolbars

Custom Tollbars described in Pushpullbar

But its purpose is not what I was remembering. Because it only gather the native commands of Sketchup and not the external plugins..

++simon.

________

Retroperspectively I'm very sorry Dear GWydouw to bump this way your thread.
In fact I haven't yet tried your tool. I love already Tig's SectionCutFace and I know your tool is going to give more. So I love it without knowing it

I see that Plot Paris reloads the thread in it good way with his following post.

[plot-paris]

Hi GWydouw,

first of all: fantastic plugin! I like it a lot.
playing around with this tool instantly got me dreaming... so I've got some ideas / wishes:

1. Nested Group Support: as mentioned before, the ability to process nested groups is of vital importance for this plugin to become a mighty tool (most models in SketchUp (definitely all of mine) heavily rely on nested grouping)

2. Components Support: components need to work as well (again, i've got lots of them in my models ). ideally one would define one component and your plugin then would apply the section-material to all component-instances in the model.

3. Texture-Linking: another great feature would be to link section-materials to materials used to paint the model. so for example I draw a building with concrete walls and timber floor boards and use textures to paint these object accordingly. now, when creating the realSection, I link section-materials to these textures. as a result all objects textured with a concrete texture will be sectioned with the linked section-material, objects painted with the timber floor boards will get the section-material linked to this texture and so on.
(I know, this might be quite tricky. but should you decide to give it a try, please remember, that sometimes objects can have several materials applied to them (one material on the raw geometry, another applied to the group itself. and it gets even messier, when you have nested groups). in such a case its probably best to give the innermost material the highest priority (cause thats how SketchUp itself treats materials)).
interface-wise it would probably be most comfortable to have a dialog window where you have pairs of materials; the texture-material on the left, the associated section-material on the right. you can then choose from a dropdown-list.
to keep the interface clean, you would only have one pair of textures at first. as soon as you choose your first texture, a new blank set is added. thus keep the size of the window small without limiting the number of textures...

4. Interactive Section-Texturing: first of all you would have to close all groups that haven't been assigned a section-material with a default material. and then you make the texture-selection process interactive. the workflow would be the following: you right-click a group (or it's section-cut face) and define a section-material. when you now hit the OK button, the section gets updated, letting you see the results instantly.

5. Linking Cut-Faces to Section Planes: and finally a really tricky, but clever idea Imagine it was possible to link the layer-visibility to a section plane. so when a certain section plane is active, the layer with the associated section-faces is made visible. when you switch off the section plane, the section-faces layer automatically is made invisible. when you activate another section plane, it's dedicated section-faces layer gets activated and so on...
so no manual showing / hiding of layers. everything is done automatically. what a wonderful prospect!

Ok, that was quite a lot of ideas. and I have no idea how realistic they are. but anyway, what do you think?

[troyhome]

I can't use the plugin...this is all i get. I'm on a Mac and use SU8

[ivreich]

Hi GWydouw

Ok i don't know what is happening but i can't get this plugin to work even in the demo file. The preset sections work fine, but when i set my own section nothing happens.

I've followed every step you outlined, defining real section etc but still doesnt work for me. I have the latest version (0.6) of your plugin and am using SU 7.1 Pro.

I have attached two images showing how your sections work but mine don't, including the error message that pops up on the ruby console. i'm stumped. HELP!

Joel