[Plugin] "Drill" extension for making holes

[lunkwill]

I'm making a cabinet in sketchup for export to a shopbot, and it's really a pain to make all the drill holes in the pieces. So here's my first ruby extension, drill.rb. Select it, type a diameter in the VCB, then click on a face. It creates a hole of that diameter (and leaves that "drill bit" installed until you change it) in the face then pushes it through if it can find an opposite, parallel face.

[thomthom]

Sounds interesting.
(A screenshot would be very nice )

[David_H]

just gave it a try. It's pretty cool. I like it better than the Holes.rb

[Chris Fullmer]

Sounds great, and welcome to the forum! Hope you keep hanging around. There's always lots of good Ruby talk goin on here. And script requests too if you want a new project to start on

Chris

[Ken]

Drill

Well drill comes close to a useable plugin. If the item is not a group or component, it works well, and has a function. However, it the item is a group or component, when you edit the group or component, and use drill, the group or component disappears.

Thanks for script.

Ken

[Didier Bur]

Hi,

What's the difference with my "opener.rb" script ?
You can see it here: http://www.crai.archi.fr/RubyLibraryDepot/Ruby/em_arc_page.htm

[lunkwill]

Neat! The main difference seems to be that drill.rb only drills round holes, and it drills them with only one click.

Not being able to drill holes in components and groups (even if the component is in 'edit' mode) is pretty annoying, though. I had hoped that the API wouldn't make me worry about this distinction. Surely there's a standard way in ruby to draw on a face regardless of whether it's part of a component or group?

[TIG]

Neat! The main difference seems to be that drill.rb only drills round holes, and it drills them with only one click.

Not being able to drill holes in components and groups (even if the component is in 'edit' mode) is pretty annoying, though. I had hoped that the API wouldn't make me worry about this distinction. Surely there's a standard way in ruby to draw on a face regardless of whether it's part of a component or group?

The version attached below has been tweaked to change this

Code: Select all

model.entities

to

Code: Select all

model.active_entities

which then lets you work in the model OR inside a group or definition edit...

Also - to find the circle-face made by the new circle arc you've just added I think the simplest method is to make it

Code: Select all

circle=view.model.active_entities.add_circle(center,normal,@@drill_diameter/2)

, and when you make a circle it returns an array of its edges ('circle='), now get the first edge circle[0], then get its faces and now faces[0] is the always inner one that you want thus...

Code: Select all

circleface=circle[0].faces[0]

(faces[1] is always the outer face - if it exists - that you will leave alone*)

*You are also getting some Ruby Console errors relating to your other_entities which make reference to deleted things - using my outline for finding the faces above should fix that... or use around code-lines in the early 70s

Code: Select all

if other.valid? and other.typename=="Face"

test to avoid error...

drill.rb

[meister]

Neat! The main difference seems to be that drill.rb only drills round holes, and it drills them with only one click.

Not being able to drill holes in components and groups (even if the component is in 'edit' mode) is pretty annoying, though. I had hoped that the API wouldn't make me worry about this distinction. Surely there's a standard way in ruby to draw on a face regardless of whether it's part of a component or group?

Its a possible adding depth of hole?

meister

[zero]

I don't know if i have something broken in my install,but i cant snap a hole on any line,construction line or point.is it normal.

[bianhai]

Ver good!

[utiler]

This is great mate, well done!!
I think though; is it possible to somehow enable SU snapping [end point, midpoint, etc...] and also inference locking?

Many thanks!!!!

[cyan.archnet]

very interesting plugin, will give it a try, THANKS!

[k2wengen]

very simple and efficient tool!! good

[m3a4]

sorry to bother the illuminatti with this, but something weird is happening to this plugin (edit: and others)

Only seems to drill a hole size "1". I'm using a metric setup so the hole shows as 22.x mm, I assume it's defaulting to imperial units..?

When ever I try to change the size, it still reverts and drills the hole size "1"

more;.. oops.. just tried another plugin that had an input and that's not allowing a change - or at least taking any notice of what I write in the box.

XP with v8

I've broken something! I've tried the repair from install, if that doesn't work, I'll rip it all out and reinstall? but curious if this has been seen before and what caused it.

Many thanks

[m3a4]

oh, as I have to "drill" about 1500 holes, THANK YOU for the plugin!

[Dadio61]

Thanks for the plug-in. It works at drilling a hole in my panel, but the diameter doesn't adjust, even though I'm entering a number in the vcd.
I looked at the sript in notepad and see the diameter number. So why isn't the diameter changing? Any suggestions?

Regards, Les

[Dave R]

Les, are you hitting Enter after typing the new dimension value? it works for me.

This plugin doesn't seem to utilize inferencing which makes it difficult to accurately place holes. I'd find this a really useful tool if it did.

[Dadio61]

Dave R,
Thanks for the suggestion on using the enter key. It works fine now.
I noticed that the unit of measure came up in the vcd also. In my case it is in millimeters.
tried several different hole sizes, from five millimeter to twenty millimeter, and all worked. This will work good enough for a model representation.
Thanks for your help.

[RiseUp]

I've edited the plugin to include snapping/inferencing. That was the deal breaker for me—without snapping, this plugin was not useful to me. But with it, I will be using this all the time!

Thank you to lunkwill (the original author) and TIG (another tweaker) for all their work!

Hope you find this as useful as I did.