I just hope he lives forever since some of his extensions (all excellent stuff, many thanks!) seem to be time limited / time bound - to which he releases updates to on a regular basis. Talk about ongoing anxiety and praying for someone’s well being!
This is not a complain… far from it!
But I seem to observe a small initialization (I believe?) issue with the FredoGuide plugin:
The observed behavior is easy to reproduce:
Case 1:
After having freshly started SketchupPro, I create two guidelines. I protect one of them.
When selecting the native menu item Edit/Delete_Guides, both guidelines disappear. I guess this is an error.
Case 2:
After having freshly started SketchupPro, I create three guidelines. I protect two of them in the same go. When selecting the native menu item Edit/Delete_Guides, all guidelines disappear. I guess this is an error.
Case 3:
After having freshly started SketchupPro, I create three guidelines. I first protect one of them. Then I protect one more, i.e. altogether two protected out of three.
When selecting the native menu item Edit/Delete_Guides, only the unprotected line disappears, which I guess is expected behavior.
Case 4:
After having freshly started SketchupPro, I create two guidelines. I protect two of them in the same go.
Then I save this file to “Untitled.skp”. The test case is to save a file with one or more protected guides. Then starting Sketchup with this file, I get Load Error message indication:
“Error: #<NoMethodError: undefined method `all_dico_to_hash’ for G6:Module>”
BTW, I run SketchupPro 2019 on Windows 10, LibFredo 9.5a and FredoGuides 1.1a.
Is this only me?
Thanks for reporting. I found the issue which is due to the fact that you trigger the action from the context menu as the first thing you do in Sketchup (due to my lazing loading of LibFredo6, I forgot to trigger the load of the relevant methods).
I will publish an update soon.
In the meantime, could you confirm that it works fine when you protect / unprotect from the dialog box.
I just updated to 1.1b. Test case 1 and 2 survives just fine now.
However, the case 4 still gives an error.
I stored a Sketchup file with four guidelines, two of them protected. When opening the file by double-clicking the file name in Windows Explorer I got the appearance and dialog shown below.
The guidelines appear as expected for two non-protected and two protected ones. When clicking away the dialog and then selecting the native menu item Edit/Delete_Guides, all guidelines disappear. So I guess this error is still present.
Bu again, just amazing work!!
OK, I am feeling really stupid. Even though I have been using SU for several years now, I do not know how to create some of the guidelines Fredo shows in his video. I use the tape measure tool but see limits that only allow me to draw long straight lines that are oriented to an axis or other existing line/edge.
What the heck am I doing wrong/not understanding. I can see that this would be VERY valuable and Fredo’s tool would be a really great way to manage them.
Use the tape measure, then click on any line you want to align the guide line with (for example one of the axes) and move the cursor…
You should see the guide line moving with your cursor…
They could have been made a few different ways. Some of them most likely were converted from edges using the converter tool in Curvizard. Others could have been made with Guide Tools, and still others with PenTool +.
Hi –
Pardon me for a possibly stupid/naive question.
I have found FredoGuides a very useful extension, dealing with an issue which should have been handled natively in the Sketchup core years ago…
Now, if such “protection” was internally done in the Sketchup core, then surely we would have had API functions through which other users extensions could directly handle “protection” of any guidelines in question.
For example, an importer extension could want to make use of such protected guidelines for its own purposes.
My question is therefore: Is it possible (somehow) for other extensions (not by Fredo6) to lean onto (i.e. call to) the FredoGuides extension for protecting guidelines (given that FredoGuides is installed, of course).
As the FredoGuides code is encrypted, it is not at all evident how to make calls from external extentions.
Again, forgive me if I am asking a silly question.
I was not very keen to expose a formal API, because the whole object of FredoGuides is to emulate what should be a native functionality of Sketchup. And FredoGuides implements one of the possible methods to maintain guides alive.
I can indeed expose a clean and maintained API. Not a big work.
I wholeheartedly agree that this should have been a native functionality of Sketchup. And a long time ago as well…
If you would expose an API, I for one think this is a fabulous idea!!!
IMHO quite some of the Sketchup plugin extensions should expose an API, to encourage others to build “on top” of it.
The fact that the Sketchup core these days evolve so slowly, is - in my view - a danger to the existence of Sketchup itself, as much of the tool-development is left to 3rd-party developers. If one of them is run over by a bus, a whole tool-set could be left in the dark.
Secondly, clever as some of these developers are, I fear that some 3rd-party tools could actually hamper the development of the Sketchup core itself if:
Trimble is “afraid” to provide enhancements which “collide” with 3rd-party developer’s extensions,
If these extension do not provide an API, consequently the evolution of API functionality of Sketchup suffers.
We had a cases a few days ago, where the symptom was that it would take a few seconds for contextual menus to appear, and if you tried to use the same menu from the Edit menu, it would not appear at all. The customer tracked down the issue to being FredoGuides.
Does that sound familiar, and were there any fixes up to the e version that would cure the problem?
