Help in SketchUp Macro

Hello, everybody.
I’ve been working in SketchUp for years.
But I can’t understand how I can generate macro in SketchUp in order to record my works.
Is Macro possible in SketchUp?
Or not, can I record my works as a macro and refresh it?
Please help me.
Thank you
Tarjan

SketchUp does not have a macro facility. Because it is based on interactive tools, not commands, macros wouldn’t work.

Try using MacroRecorder from JitBit. It will work with any program as long as you can control it with mouse or keyboard. Keyboard shortcuts are easier to use and more precise because they don’t rely on screen locations like mouse clicks. So create keyboard shortcuts to activate the commands you want to automate (See https://help.sketchup.com/en/sketchup/customizing-your-keyboard-and-mouse). Then use JitBit MacroRecorder https://www.jitbit.com/macro-recorder to string your actions together. It takes a little practice, but once you learn to use it, you can use it with pretty much any app.

1 Like

Can you give any examples of actual macros for SketchUp that have been useful to you? Some use cases would help to understand the idea.

As I pointed out in my earlier post, because of how the SketchUp GUI works, it seems to me that macros are of limited usefulness beyond regular SketchUp single-action shortcuts. I struggle to think of a sequence of keypresses that would be useful enough to bother making a macro. I’m not saying there couldn’t be any, but I don’t see them.

I could use a macro when I import plans from dwg. I normaly only want to have lines on this drawings so I can keep it visible while rendering and not bother hiding it on layers or scenes.
This is pretty easy on exploded or ungrouped geometry by selecting only faces and delete. but when nested becomes a painful task. So a macro that opens selected groups and components selects all the geometry , then selects only faces and deletes them and closes the group.

A macro can only reproduce exactly what you have recorded.
This requires

  • prerequisites that any new document is “similar” enough to the original document so that the same actions can be applied
  • well-defined actions

A sequence of menu actions (no parameters) or dialogs with text input fields (as fixed parameters) are well-defined. Cursor movements are not well-defined because they heavily depend on the current view and the content of the document (what objects are below a certain screen pixel).
For example by simply recording a macro, you wouldn’t be able to teach the macro whether you did a click at a certain screen pixel for no reason or in order to select whatever object is there (maybe in another document there is nothing) or to select the object because it is a group (so when replaying, the macro shouldn’t select the object if it’s not a group).

  • This is the reason why graphical design applications tend not to have a macro functionality.
  • And if they do, then recorded macros often need manual editing (which requires programming knowledge) to fill the gaps or make certain actions parametrizable.
  • Such GUI-automation scripts tend to be slow and of bad, unmaintainable code quality, so the before mentioned person with some programming knowledge would prefer directly scripting the actions without involving the user interface.

While the actions you suggested (“Select all”, “Select only faces”, “Delete selected”) are well-defined, it just happens that that SketchUp decided for a more flexible, almost unlimited scripting API rather than a limited macro recording functionality.

Even with groups nested to another groups (with no need to open/close groups), with only two keys to press… one (a shortcut) for selecting faces, and the second - Del for deleting (with Curic Deep Select plugin)

sel-02

Thanks mihai.s Didn’t knew Curic Deep Select plugin.
Definitely a great addition to my workflow.