sketchUcation

Overview of FredoTools

FredoTools groups a number of my standalone plugins. By delivering them as a single package, it reduces the footprint on Sketchup and avoids individual installation of each plugin:

The main characteristics of FredoTools are:

• Single folder in the Plugins directory (Fredo6_FredoTools)
• Single menu entry (by default in Tools > Fredo Tools > ….)
• Single contextual menu
• Single toolbar, with control of the icons displayed
• Quick Launcher
• Also, only a small part of the plugins is loaded at Sketchup startup (only the menus). The rest of the code is loaded the first time you launch the plugin

Plugins included in FredoTools

	DrawAlong	Similar to the Sketchup Draw Line tool, but with additional functions
	MoveAlong	Similar to the Sketchup Move tool, but with additional functions
	ThruPaint	Paint Faces and/or Edges across the boundaries of groups and components - Interactive painting by click and drag - Several UV modes to apply textures - Interactive positioning and orientation of textures
	ReverseOrientFaces	Interactively revert and orientate faces - Works across the boundaries of groups and components - Interactive reversal by click and drag - - Manage correctly reversing of textures
	EdgeInspector	Inspects, and then fixes, some Edge defects in the model, usually coming after DXF imports and Intersections. It currently supports 7 edge defects
	ColorBySlope	Create a color mapping of a terrain mesh based on the slopes of its faces. You can optionally add a legend and a 2D color map
	ColorByAltitude	Create a continuous color mapping of a terrain mesh based on the altitude of its faces, based on a single textured material. You can optionally add a set of isocontours, a legend and a 2D color map (for SU2018+)
	ColorPaint	Configurable Color Selector with Favorites, independent from models and persisted across Sketchup sessions
	ColorFlatMode	Switch to Flat colors with no shading and colors shown as close as their RGB specifications
	AngleInspector	Inspect Angles between elements of the model in one click, even if elements are far away. Elements are Faces (normal), Edges, Guide lines, axes (model and local) and axes of polygon / arc.
	ReportLabelArea [Report]	Build a report of areas by material used in model or selection -Support multiple units and decimal precision
	ReportLabelArea [Label]	Interactively show and sum the areas of selected elements - Label elements with areas - Support multiple units and decimal precision
	ElementStats	Provides statistics and information on groups, components and any entity in the model. Statistics are given on the active model (and active context, if within a group or component), the selection (initial, set by the Outliner or interactive selection), entities under the cursor. Information is displayed in a floating palette
	DivideEdges	Divide and/or Mark Edges and curves from pre-selection or by simple click. Marking is done with Guide Points
	AutoReverseFaces	Automatically perform the alignment of face orientations as well as their proper orientation on shapes that looks like a solid, that is, where visually you could tell where is the inside and where is the outside.
	Convexify	Performs the decomposition of 3D shapes into Convex shapes - Can be useful for Physics animation and games
	SolidVolume	Compute the volume and the total faces area of the true solids (groups and component instances) in the selection - SolidVolume gives the correct value regardless of the orientation of faces and the position in the model.
	RevertCurve	Revert the direction of selected curves
	CurviShear	Create ramps by shearing curves
	ConstructFaceNormal	Put a Guide point at the barycentre of selected faces and a small Guide Line along their normal
	MarkVertices	Put a Guide point at the vertices of selected faces and edges - Useful to visualize vertices of curves and edge sequences
	CountFacesBySides	Count the number of faces by number of sides
	RemoveLonelyVertices	Remove the lonely vertices bordered by 2 colinear edges - These vertices are actually useless in most cases
	FaceTriangulator	Face Triangulation - based on Delaunay with possibility to add / edit custom triangulation points

Discussion forum

Links to Sketchucation Forum: Main Post Latest Release

Installation of FredoTools

IMPORTANT: Make sure that you have first installed LibFredo6.

FredoTools is released as a regular RBZ extension file on the Sketchucation Site.

To download the RBZ file, use the red button on the right side of this page:

• Download  If your are already logged in.
• Log in to get it!  otherwise, in order to log in or to register to Sketchucation as a new user (this is FREE). Then you will be able to download the RBZ file.

Then, you can install the RBZ file from within Sketchup, via the Sketchup Extension Manager

If you are not familiar with the installation of Sketchup extensions and Sketchucation, it is advised to watch the video LibFredo6 installation.

IMPORTANT: Whatever way you choose, you MUST quit and restart Sketchup to get FredoTools (and LibFredo6) properly loaded.

After the installation, you should have the following footprint in the Sketchup Plugins directory:

FredoTools Quick Launcher

FredoTools Quick Launcher allows to launch any of the FredoTools plugins from the list of plugins, as well as to access their documentation online. The Quick Launcher can be invoked from the toolbar or from menu entry Tools > Fredo Tools > FredoTools Launcher. The Quick Launcher shows the list of Plugins available. Just click on the plugin name in the list to launch it.

To access the homepage of each plugin on Sketchucation, just click on the documentation button

For convenience the Quick Launcher Window can be pinned and remain visible on the Desktop if you activate the option. Otherwise the Quick launcher window will close when you launch the selected plugin

The Wrench icon gives access to the Default Parameters dialog box, which contains default options for FredoTools as well as a section for each standalone plugin.

Controlling visibility of plugin buttons in the FredoTools toolbar

By default, the icon(s) of individual plugins are not shown in the FredoTools toolbar, in order to save real-estate on the Sketchup window. So, you have to enable manually the visibility of plugin icons. This can be achieved by setting the visibility of icons in the last section of the Default Parameters dialog box. Note that a similar setup applies to the visibility of menu entries of each plugin in the Selection Contextual menu of Sketchup.

Default Parameters for plugins

Some plugins may have Default Parameters, available in the common Default Parameters dialog box of FredoTools. You can invoke the Default Parameters by

• Menu Tools > Fredo Tools > Default Parameters...
• Wrench' button in the Quick Launcher window of FredoTools
• Left-most button in the button palette of some plugins

There is NO documentation for FredoTools at the moment.

However, each individual plugin may have its own documentation available at its home page. With FredoTools quick launcher, you can access the page for each individual plugin by clicking on the small 'book'icon on the right.

There is also a quite comprehensive tutorial on most plugins of FredoTools by Tutorials Up

Links to Sketchucation Forum: Main Post   Latest Release

Release History

FredoTools 4.5c – 24 Jun 24: Fix for wrong calculation of volume in SolidVolume

FredoTools 4.5a – 02 Apr 24: Future compatibility

FredoTools 4.4a – 13 Nov 22: Update for SolidVolume (bug and evolutions)

FredoTools 4.3a – 06 Mar 22: Compatibility with a future plugin (ThruPaint)

FredoTools 4.2a – 17 Sep 21: Fixes for Autosmooth in MoveAlong

FredoTools 4.1c – 13 Jul 21: Republishing of version v4.1b

FredoTools 4.1d – 13 Sep 21: Fixes a bug in MoveAlong whereby AutoSmooth was always activated

FredoTools 4.1b – 10 Jul 21: Fixes for major bugs in ColorByAltitude

FredoTools 4.1a – 24 Apr 21: Performance of contextual selection menu

FredoTools 4.0b – 06 Dec 20: For ReportLabelArea auto-refresh option

FredoTools 4.0a – 17 May 20: For ReportLabelArea and first version for SU2017+ only

FredoTools 3.8c – 10 Feb 20: For Solid Volume (sensitivity to face orientation)

FredoTools 3.8b – 05 Feb 20: For ReportLabelArea (count material painted from objects, not just faces)

FredoTools 3.8a – 18 Nov 19: Introduction of ColorFlatMode and bug fixing

FredoTools 3.7a – 02 Nov 19: Evolutions in ColorPaint, ColorByAltitude and ReportLabelArea

FredoTools 3.6a – 16 Oct 19: Introduction of ColorPaint, ColorByAltitude and Outliner view in ReportLabelArea

FredoTools 3.5a – 12 Sep 19: Introduction of ColorBySlope

FredoTools 3.4a – 12 Apr 19: performance when Outliner is open (start_operation)

FredoTools 3.3c – 24 Mar 19: bug fixing for Edge Inspector in SU2019

FredoTools 3.3b – 14 Mar 19: bug fixing for ReportLabelArea in CSV export

FredoTools 3.3a – 21 Oct 18: bug fixing for ReportLabelArea

FredoTools 3.2d – 09 Apr 18: bug fixing for EdgeInspector (Disolve_Edge)

FredoTools 3.2c – 12 Mar 18: bug fixing for SolidVolume

FredoTools 3.2a – 24 Feb 18: bug fixing and FaceTriangulator

FredoTools 3.1e – 01 Oct 17: fix for OSX High Sierra

FredoTools 3.1d – 28 Sep 17: fix for potential bugsplat in ThruPaint

FredoTools 3.1c – 18 Aug 17: fix for non-ascii usernames, DivideEdges pseudo Arc curves and bug fixing

FredoTools 3.1b – 11 Jul 17: fix in SolidVolume

FredoTools 3.1a – 09 Jul 17: introduction of DividedEdges, and bug fixing

FredoTools 3.0c – 13 Feb 17: fix for web dialog sizing

FredoTools 3.0b – 31 Oct 16: Major fix of a bug preventing FredoTools to run for SU versions < 2014

FredoTools 3.0a – 20 Oct 16: Small Evolutions in ThruPaint (Purge)

FredoTools 2.9a – 13 Nov 15: maintenance release

FredoTools 2.8a – 09 Jul 15: release for Solid Volume v1.2a and ReportLabelArea 2.1

FredoTools 2.7e – 29 Apr 15: release for Solid Volume v1.1d

FredoTools 2.7d – 28 Apr 15: release for Solid Volume v1.1c

FredoTools 2.7c – 27 Apr 15: release for Solid Volume v1.1b

FredoTools 2.7a – 26 Apr 15: release for Solid Volume

FredoTools 2.6a – 25 Feb 15: release for AutoReverseFaces and Convexify

FredoTools 2.5c – 19 Jan 15: fix for SU8 (Dimension and syntax)

FredoTools 2.5b – 18 Jan 15: small upgrade to the Release for ElementStats 1.0, and update of translation to Spanish by Oxer

FredoTools 2.5a – 10 Jan 15: Release for ElementStats 1.0

FredoTools 2.4a – 17 Nov 14: Release for AngleInspector

FredoTools 2.2a – 19 Oct 14: Release for support of non-ascii username

FredoTools 2.1a – 12 Oct 14: Release for EdgeInspector 1.2 and fixes in DrawAlong 1.2 about Construction points

FredoTools 2.0b – 07 Jul 14: Release fixing a bug signaled by dedmin in MoveAlong 1.2b

FredoTools 2.0a – 18 Jun 14: Release for DrawAlong 1.1a and MoveAlong 1.2a with fixes and functional evolutions

FredoTools 1.9b – 17 May 14: Release for DrawAlong 1.0b and MoveAlong 1.1b with fix for VCB inputs in architectural units

FredoTools 1.9a – 15 May 14: Release for DrawAlong 1.0 and MoveAlong 1.1

FredoTools 1.8e – 20 Apr 14: Fix problem when selected entities are huge (signaled by rv1974) for MoveAlong 1.0d

FredoTools 1.8c – 17 Apr 14: Release for MoveAlong 1.0

FredoTools 1.7a – 15 Feb 14: Release for EdgeInspector 1.1

FredoTools 1.6g – 24 Jan 14: Release for EdgeInspector

FredoTools 1.5a – 27 Nov 13: Release for future Sketchup Compatibility

FredoTools 1.4a – 30 Oct 13: Release implementing new naming conventions and some bug fixing.

FredoTools 1.2a – 08 May 12: Update for ThruPaint 1.2a (Paint components and groups and bug fixing). See this post

FredoTools 1.1n – 21 Apr 12: Small update for ThruPaint 1.0n (keep track of scaling and rotation factors by material and support of initial selection)

FredoTools 1.1m – 14 Apr 12: Small update for ThruPaint 1.0m fixes and to integrate the Translation in Spanish (Oxer, Defisto) and Chinese (guanjin)

FredoTools 1.1j – 11 Apr 12: Release for ThruPaint and ReverseOrientFaces

FredoTools 1.0b – 20 Dec 11: Contextual Menu entries can be individually removed (via the Default Parameter dialog box)

FredoTools 1.0a – 19 Dec 11: Initial Release