sketchUcation

Overview of Ruby Console+ for SketchUp

This is a powerful Ruby Console with IDE features like code highlighting, autocompletion and a code editor. It lets you open multiple independent instances of the console and remembers the command history over sessions. Hovering an entity or point in the console will visualize it in the model.

How to use Ruby Console+ for SketchUp

Usage:

Window → Ruby Console+

There are two modes:

The console is a command line interface to try out codes and inspect return values. With the Enter ↵ key, code will be evaluated (use ⇧ Shift+Enter ↵ for line breaks).

The editor is a full-featured text editor. Here you turn code into a script and save it as a file.

The buttons have the following features:

Autocompletion and doc tooltips: Intelligent live autocompletion tells you not only which methods you can call next on a reference but provides you also with detailed info on how to correctly use them. Use Tab ↹ to accept a suggestion.

Entity inspection: Hover an entity or point in the console output and you will see it highlighted in the model.

Get a reference to an entity in the model by picking it with the pointer. No more selecting and doing Sketchup.active_model.selection[0]. By holding the ctrl key when the main window is focused, you can select points and by holding the shift key you can turn on inferencing.

Remembers which scripts you reload and reloads scripts automatically whenever they are changed.

Clear the console (Ctrl+ L)

Open online documentation for the currently focused word (beta) (Ctrl+ Q)

Menu with preferences

Binding: An advanced feature that allows to step into an object or class and call methods or access instance variables as if you were locally inside of the class source definition. Try to set binding to Math and you can directly call math functions like sqrt without NameError.

Source code: github.com/Aerilius/sketchup-console-plus

Bug reports and feature requests: github.com/Aerilius/sketchup-console-plus/issues

History:

3.0.2: 30.10.2017

• completely refactored and modernized
• tested SketchUp 2017 support and HtmlDialog
• editing capability for files
• better autocompletion
• added feature to wrap an operation in undo

2.1.7: 08.05.2014

• new button on dynamic toolbar on console output: "Remove all downwards"

2.1.0: 12.02.2014

• updated the ace editor to 1.1.2 (which fixes auto-resizing issues)
• ace's autocompleter connected to SketchUp's Ruby interpreter
• ace's snippets
• file observer to reload files automatically
• fix: now modifier keys in the SketchUp window work when the webdialog has focus

2.0.0: 13.06.2013

• more robust webdialog communication (should avoid corruption of settings)
• saves history immediately and to a file and separate from the preferences. Thus issues with escaping and registry reading are avoided.
• new architecture supports several independent instances of the console
• added: Select Entity tool
• removed: JavaScript mode because it had unsolvable issues

1.0.10: 15.05.2013

• better support of higher dpi settings

1.0.9: 01.03.2013

• icon added

1.0.8: 03.11.2012

• removed debug messages that were left over by mistake

1.0.7: 27.10.2012

• improvements for initialization

1.0.5: 30.08.2012

• now it tracks also script errors
• better webdialog communication
• input field resizes more reliably
• inspector: highlights entities in the model
• "repeat" button: allows to quickly repeat previous input without browsing too long in the history
• after clicking buttons, the input field gains focus again
• many optimizations

1.0.2: 10.07.2012

• minor change: validates data before using execute_script.

1.0.1: 07.07.2012 - intial release