OK, thanks for this explanation. Is it possible to change the DC’s Description attribute without exploding the component?
Yes, and you likely cannot if you do explode it.
As shown in the screen snip above, you use the Component Attributes dialog of the DC extension to edit any of the dynamic attributes. There is a button to open this dialog on the DC extension’s toolbar or you can open it from the bottom of the Window menu.
Thanks again for the explanation. But I think we miss each others point.
I would like to change the native description. It’s the first description you see, even without having the component in your model. I often change the components, where I would like to add something to this description
This looks really great. I was previously using OpenCutList or 5D Auto Info to get at the description property. And as essential as those extensions are, this one is even less friction.
You cannot do it unless:
- You manually open that component file and then change the native description using the Model Info > File panel.
OR
- Get someone to write and compile a C extension that does this at the file level in memory.
Now yes, I suppose it could be done with Ruby, but on Windows the current model would have to be closed because only one model can be open at a time (currently the Windows edition is not a multiple document interface.) It just would be very clunky.
The SketchUp APIs do not let us effect the context menu in the inspectors, so there is not an easy way to add a command to say open an external component in another instance of SketchUp.
However, if you are the author of the dynamic component, they you should be able to easily copy and paste the dynamic description attribute from the DC dialogs over to the native description property using Eneroth’s extension that this whole topic is about. Then resave the component back out to disk.