Hello,
I am new to SketchUp as a Developer and I have a question about transferring data (e.g geometry data) between SketchUp and another external program.
What is a good way to transfer data between Sketchup and another program running on the same pc at runtime?
Best regards
Are we talking about one-time transfer? Or continuous stream of geometry update?
we talk about continuous updates
That’s a lot trickier. Haven’t tried this myself, but it’s something I need for a later project.
I’m not sure if pipes are fast enough. I’ve been toying with the idea of shared memory. Perhaps using the Poco library.
I am considering to use TCP at the moment. But I don’t know if that will work properly.
Given you want to continuously update I’d expect you’d have to drop down to C/C++ via a Ruby C/C++ Extension. Particularly if you need to have threads running to keep the communication open.
Is the external program that of your own making ? … or is it an OLE aware application, such as one of the MS Office applications ?
It’s my own program.
OK, well you can if it will only be a Windows application, use OLE.
For the SketchUp Ruby to OLE side, see:
… and the Ruby Standard library:
Or if you are programming C/C++, you can use an equiv of VB’s SendKeys, but target at a specific program: