Some ideas
Dear Whaat,
Now when Skimp's active development is over (hopefully) I'm sure many of us would be so happy if PB could get some focused attention. Here's my humble vision what could be improved\added to this already precious tool:
*) ability to select profiles for path editing, get attributes,edit member properties regardles the context with a single mouse click.
Nowadays many plugins are able to suppress the context and act straight. The path could temporaly get thicken+glowing, and the rest of the model get hidden;
*) Tab key for profile live mirroring with preview; Arrow keys for Placement point changing;
*) 'Build' and 'build along the path' could be ONE command: say, vanilla build with no edges preselected, 'build along the path'- with reselected ones. Option for shortcut would be great;
*) Extrude algorithm improvement (currently in many situations PB generate many artifacts,
though all archaic and free extrude plugins are OK with the same path);
*) Input fields. I'd like to numbers will be selected and ready for input with a silgle mouse click;
*) I'd like PB to respect external plugins editing (such as S4U slice, Takahata's Stretch by area, Fredo Scale etc). Currently if you split\stretch some profile and then edit it's path, PB will revert to original path;
*) Gluing assemblies, windows for examples;
*) Nodes? User friendly Itoo RailClone inside Sketchup sounds amazing;
*) I hope we all will continue to enjoy permanent license + reasonable pricing. Please keep it as is. Honestly, I'm ready to buy serious upgrades\new versions on yearly basis, but not via subscription model.
Thank you for attention
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Hello Roman,
Thank you very much for your requests. I have made note of all of them and I have a few comments:
*) Tab key for profile live mirroring with preview; Arrow keys for Placement point changing;The tab key might be a good idea. You can already change the Placement point while building by using the HOME key.
*) Input fields. I'd like to numbers will be selected and ready for input with a silgle mouse click;Can you please clarify what you mean? Are you on a Mac?
*) I'd like PB to respect external plugins editing (such as S4U slice, Takahata's Stretch by area, Fredo Scale etc). Currently if you split\stretch some profile and then edit it's path, PB will revert to original path;
Sorry, this is simply not technically possible.We really appreciate your requests.
Also, thank you for your feedback about our licensing, pricing.
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*) Input fields. I'd like to numbers will be selected and ready for input with a silgle mouse click;
Can you please clarify what you mean? Are you on a Mac?
Thanks for reply!
I'm on PC. I wish double (ideally single) clicking inside input box would select all and then simply input via keyboard.
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Thanks for such a wonderful plugin. I strongly agree with some of the feature requests mentioned above:
- The single click for entry fields
- Ability to select components or profiles regardless of context would be great, I just don't know how easy that would be for components and assemblies once things start to get nested...
- Ability to swap ALL profiles\assembly globally (in the file) religiously keeping their de-facto orientation
I also have a number of things that I think would greatly add to the functionality of PB:
- An always open profile and assembly browser. Rather than having to always click on the search icon, it would be nice to have something similar to SketchUp's native component browser.
- Ability to adjust the left/right offset (and other options too) across all elements in an assembly at the same time. Often I find that I want to offset a railing another inch or so and then I have to cycle through all the profiles, components, spans and add an inch.
- An option to have the start and/or end faces (and/or the face's bounding edges) of a profile hidden when built.
- Auto-length or snap to length increments. This would probably require the path you create or build on to be able to be automatically adjusted by PB to a certain length. I was trying to create a whole building assembly for a building a built years ago. I kept the construction simple - the assembly only uses 3 components, but ideally I could select a setting that would only allow to path to be lengthened or shortened by the width of the spaced component's spacing. That way I wouldn't have to manually adjust the length of the path after the fact.
- Along those same lines, it would be fantastic to have a stretch or scale tool that would manipulate the path of an assembly without having to enter the assembly group and then click the Edit Path button and then manipulate the path. If that could be done for an assemble similarly to how you have some tools for the profiles, that would be great.
- More functionality/advanced options for how components are placed in assemblies:
- An option to have components placed at endpoints within the path (i.e. you could edit the path to have "nodes" along a straight line by breaking the line into segments with SketchUp native tools)
- In addition to "from start" and "from middle" component spacing options, I would like an option that either requires a component to be placed at the middle or for a space/span to be placed at the middle.
- I way to set a min. AND max. junction angle for a component. This could be a possible solution to the problem in the following image examples too.
- A way to differentiate left/right junctions in the vertical plane from left/right junctions in the horizontal plane (this comes into play when trying to create railing assemblies with a component setback at the junctions similar to these images.
Thanks again for this tool. And sorry for this long-winded post!
Best,
Jeff
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