LSS

Monday, September 30, 2013

LSS Zone

Today I'm proud to present a reason of my recent social media inactivity (and actually some other kinds of inactivity as well): "LSS Zone".
It took a while to code this extension and now first beta version is available to try out.

Lss zone from Кирилл Баннов

You can download version 1.0.0 beta here.

Chronolux 1.2.1

First of all this new version was adapted to Extension Warehouse requirements. Plus it has some significant new features and numerous minor fixes.

Lss chronolux 1.2 features overview from Кирилл Баннов

Here is a list of related links:

The best way to install new version is to do it from Extension Warehouse window right in SketchUp2013.

You might probably already know about new version of SketchUp and its brand new feature called 'Extension Warehouse'. Well now we all have a place to get cool stuff from. Hallelujah!

Here are some reasons to get extensions from Extension Warehouse only:

it is a place where only serious developers may post their applications, because each candidate has to be approved before he will be allowed to post anything to Extension Warehouse
all extensions have to pass quality assurance test before publishing in Extension Warehouse, so all of them safe guaranteed and meet some certain quality standards
installation process from Extension Warehouse is easy and safe: now no one need to extract files and folders manually, just click "Install" button right in SketchUp's Extension Warehouse window

You might want to hear some more details about what exactly 'quality' means. Well here is some guidelines for developers published on 'Developer Center' page:

Extensions offered through the Warehouse must be:

Useful: The extension should provide some useful functionality for SketchUp users.

Unique: Extensions must not simply duplicate existing features or services of the SketchUp client—they must significantly extend some core feature or add entirely new functionality.

Functional: Extensions must install and operate as advertised. The extension should not cause SketchUp to crash or perform slowly.

Safe: The extension should not, through the developer's malice, cause damage to the user's data nor to their operating system.

Documented: The extension should be documented. The SketchUp team will not document your extension for you.

Supported: The extension's developer should be available to answer technical support questions after users have installed the extension. The SketchUp team will not offer support to your users.

Packaged properly as an RBZ Archive: RBZ files are nothing more than ZIP archives of ruby scripts and other assets with a particular, internal folder structure. More on that below.

That's why it was decided to adapt all previously released LSS tools to Extension Warehouse requirements. And we are very glad to announce that LSS became approved publisher at Extension Warehouse and two extensions already successfully passed quality assurance test and were published!

Here is a link to LSS Store at Extension Warehouse: http://extensions.sketchup.com/ru/user/2681/store

And published extensions are:

Tuesday, April 2, 2013

Layout

Since I finally bought SketchUp Pro in addition to cool features of Pro version I gained Layout (it is a stand alone module, which is included in Pro version, for creating 2D design documents). First thing, that I decided to do with it, was creating portfolio of my SketchUp projects. The great thing is that possible to export layout document to PDF.
It took a while to gather all three-dimensional data for that purpose because I decided to include some old projects, but finally I completed this task and here is a result of my efforts:

Projects 2009-2013 from Кирилл Баннов

'Layered Cake' Concept Explanation

The most interesting approach implemented in version 2.0 of 'LSS Toolbar' is that result of each tool processing is a parametric object, so it is possible to continue interaction with it any time later after tool termination. Each 'LSS Object' has two basic parts:

'passive' part — new geometric entities (a direct result of tool processing)
'active' part — existing (initial) and/or newly generated (utility) entities

So it is possible to continue interaction with an object by modifying its 'active' part.
The significant side effect of the above mentioned approach is that it is possible to make 'layered-cake' objects: use 'passive' parts of some already made objects as an 'active' part of new ones. Extension refreshes the whole 'layered-cake' object in a cascade manner after an active part of a 'bottom level' object changes. It is also possible to play with 'active' parts at any level to affect 'top level' results obviously. The combine use of multiple 'LSS Toolbar' tools for object creation demonstrates synergistic effects of the whole extension.

'LSS Toolbar' Productivity Hints

Usual way of 'LSS Toolbar' typical tool processing has following steps:

activate a tool dialog
pick all necessary entites in an active model one by one
adjust then apply settings to generate results

But actually it is possible to select all necessary entities before tool activation if you know in advance what entites are needed for tool processing. The more entities are to be picked the more handy 'preseleciton feature' becomes, because it is possible to select all necessary stuff at once using selection rectangle instead of picking objects one by one.

'Make 3D Mesh' tool demonstrates 'preselection trick' advantage in a most clear way when it is necessary to make terrain surface from existing point cloud. Preselection becomes actually the only reasonable way to solve such task when point cloud has hundreds or thousands of points.

Note that obtaining a point cloud from CSV file feature added in 'beta 1' of 'LSS Toolbar 2.0'.
It is not an intellectual CSV parser yet, so this functionality has a lot of limitations and it processes only properly formatted CSV files. Appropriate file has to contain only XYZ values separated by comma.
Here is an overview of steps to prepare CSV file for processing with 'LSS Toolbar' when it does not match required formatting.