Fun with DynamicComponent's

I thought I might share a couple of DC’s I did to help me learn how to do DC’s

The first one is a Circle/Arc DC. You can set the radius, width, height, number of segments and arc length in degrees

A 360 degree arc with three segments makes a triangle, four segments produces a square, etc…

CircleDC.skp (65.8 KB)

If you have some DC you made and want to show off then please do.

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This is excellent work. Chris has taken dynamic components further than the developers first imagined possible I would think. I am hoping that sketch-up 2016 expands dynamic components functions as it is limited and forces you to look at ruby for a better solution. Thanks for sharing chris

I did a fun Dynamic component that i thought you might like to see. I build complex Dynamic components for construction and BIM :department_store: . They are freely available to PlusSpec users I also make them for manufacturers to use as sales tools. This is a lift I made.

Sorry Chris, I have no clue whatsoever what to do with (=how to “tackle”) your CircleDC.
It’s not documented well enough to see how to experiment with / use it.
Mind you, I’m not judging the DC itself.
Could you add some clarification to your post and (better yet) also some screenshots of results, etc.

Hi Wo3Dan, well if you examine the formulas and show hidden geometry -you can see the how the right triangle is used to create circular shapes.

I never took trig in school so I learned how to use a few standard formulas to find the length of various sides based on the angle.

There are all sorts of ways it can be fiddled with to produce other results for example:

if you add z = copy*8 to the Circle component it makes a spiral stair set

I noticed that the width could be set greater than the radius which produced some odd effects and so I created a formula to make the width be no more than the radius which produces what looks like a solid

CircleDC.skp (112.5 KB)

Hi kimberlydesigner,
Me too! they are much simpler than trying to learn Ruby and just need a few more abilities to make them really useful.

I also did this 3D array:
Array.skp (67.8 KB)

I started with the SU array example and added a vertical array plus an array at a higher level which rotates (just for grins)
this one can be modified with random generators to produce all sorts of odd configurations

Very cool - and the functions are fairly straightforward. Nice and clean…

Good job…

Here is one I made when DC’s were new (SketchUp 7)

snake.skp (52.6 KB)

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This is my curious DC, very simple yet weird.

The weirdness is the squeezed cylinder. At some point I had success scaling the cylinder to make the water surface appear flat inside the rectangular construction. Yet it doesn’t allow me to alter either the scale, or the ultimate rotation angle. And I can’t reproduce such a DC either. It would help to be able to, to keep the fysical size (a flattened cylinder) of the model rather small, yet have a flat surface of water flowing in a … steam or whatever. Who can tackle this DC?

Download the model from 3DWarehouse with keywords: Wo3Dan + “running water”

Very clever, Wo3Dan.

If you skew the component, it can rotate in this deformed manner.

skew-dc.skp (58.1 KB)

Note: Uploading this to the 3DW reset the skew.

That is pretty cool Jim

Interesting Wo3Dan, I would have never guessed such a thing was possible.

I was not able to reproduce this. It always wants to rotate the oval

Hi Chris, if I new the answer to reproduce it (it can be useful in certain situations) I would share it here. But I never managed to create another one. I asked one of the SU team members onece if someone could figure out how this DC could exist and “perform” but unfortunately never got the reply.
It must have been the sequence of creating it that didn’t break the weird rotation. I can’t remember.

I was also playing with the section cut at that time, to only have a small portion of a cylinder visible. But as you can see in the DC, also the section cut lines rotate while visible. Thus not very appealing…

Here is the method I came up with to create a “running water” component:

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Thanks Jim. I don’t have the opportunity now to test the method to such a DC, but You may be right. If so then I must have completely forgotten about the skewing with added geometry to a nested cylinder component.
If I’m not mistaken, mine isn’t nested. Did I at some point explode the parent?
But good thing would be an easy (your method?) way to create them.
I’ll see where/how far I get with your method.

Following your steps I failed so far. :astonished: I get a rotating skewed cylinder, not just its skin “rotating”.

Are you adding the DC attributes to the inner component rather than the outer?

Hi Jim, yes, to the inner cylinder component (thus inside the larger group with added retangle).
For all I can tell I did all the exact steps as in your image.

Can you upload an editable new component with “skewed skin rotation” rather than comonent rotation? A completely new one?
And was the time of assigning attributes crusial to the result?

No, the attributes can be added first to the component. Make sure the component axes is centered for rotation. Then nest the component inside a group. Then skew group.

I will review the process, although I am able to reproduce every time.