Cutlist and Layout plugin for Sketchup

Most awesomeness! Your plug-ins all grown up and get its own fourm!

-- //FC - Round Rock, TX - "Experience is what you get just after you need it"

Steve, thanks for setting this up. This should be very helpful.

-- Until you spread your wings, you'll have no idea how far you can walk.

Q. Is it easy to add multiple units?
I mean, sometimes you want to make two units and each one takes about 1.5 sheets.

A. There’s no way to multiply the number of units through the plugin, but if you cut and paste a second copy of your model and select it for the plugin, then it would lay out all of the pieces from both.
It’s an interesting idea, however, and I may add this option later.

-- Steve, New Zealand, www.steveracz.com

Thanks for setting this up. A great plugin and one that I have used to help me build (in the process right now) my bathroom vanity.

-- ...it's rennovation time!!!

I have problem importing cvs into CutListPlus. When the names of the parts or materials have non english names they are not recognized properly in CutListPlus, but are okay in CutList.

!http://img26.imageshack.us/i/26471606.jpg/(http://img26.imageshack.us/i/26471606.jpg/)!:http://img26.imageshack.us/i/26471606.jpg/

-- M.A.N.

That’s probably something you’ll need to talk to the CutList Plus folks about. I would imagine you’d find the same issue if you manually created a CSV file with non-English names.

-- Until you spread your wings, you'll have no idea how far you can walk.

I checked already and CutListPlus recognized cyrillic names properly. The problem is with cvs from CutList. I had to disable ”.” as a separation symbol in the ruby code to use ”;” instead. I’m trying to adapt SketchUP for furniture design and here in East Europe things are different – we are using mainly MDF, MDF profiles, aluminum profiles and melamine faced boards. Profiles are charged per lineal meters not cubic meters and there is no way to set banding, different sheet goods sizes and profile sizes in CutList.

-- M.A.N.

For your profiles, you could use the Length dimension and quantity in a formula in Excel to get the total lineal feet/meters, then.

It may be that Steve will be able to add a section for profiles or moldings to get lineal dimensions for those things.

-- Until you spread your wings, you'll have no idea how far you can walk.

Thanks, but this is easy in CutListPlus – the problem is with the export of the cvs into the program. I need to use the same names of the materials, hardware and joinery as my suppliers to be easy to order.

-- M.A.N.

Hi dedov,

Thanks for the feedback.

I have made some changes to Cutlist to accommodate language issues already in the past.

The following rules are applied for cvs files:

If the sketchup language is british or american english, then the cvs separation character is ’,’
If the sketchup language is anything else, then the separation character is ’;’ This is to accommodate the use of the ’,’ to represent the decimal in languages other than English.

Note that I made these changes to accommodate sketchup decisions on what to display and to make it easier to import the cvs file. I key the decision on the language selected in sketchup.

As for the part name, I merely take what it received from Sketchup and write it to the file with no modifications.

Now, having said that. I feel your pain. There are improvements which can still be made which are more sensitive to the needs of CutListPlus specifically. I did not have a licensed copy of CutListPlus, only a very old version when some of the changes were made and I was flying ‘blind’ as it were. I rely on people like you to point out inconsistencies to make improvements.

I am happy to hear your suggestions and to incorporate them into the next version and have you as the guinea pig to try out a beta version in the meantime.

Contact me via PM using the LJ site and we can discuss what changes are required.

Now the other thing which I might add to reassure you a bit is that I have recently made contact with Todd Peterson, who is the author/owner of CutListPlus and he has provided me with a license for CutListPlus and I have arranged to have a closer cooperation with him to make sure CutList keep up to the capabilities of CutListPlus.

I am aware that the two tools are being used together and I can see why it is useful to do so and I hope to sort out any issue which you may have which might be under my control.

The last thing which is important to know is that i make no money off of Cutlist or my work on collaborating with CutListPlus. I do it in my spare time because I believe strongly that technology should help to save some wood if possible.

Your comment about including linear metres is loud and clear. I had intended to put an option in the next version which would then list in both metres and cu.m.
Also, the ability to customize sheet sizes in on the todo list. In any case if you are using CutListPlus, you need only to import the correct details of your parts and let CLP do the rest.

Feel free to contact me and we can discuss further the changes which you would like to see.

Steve

-- Steve, New Zealand, www.steveracz.com

Hi daltxguy,
And thanks for your help.
I thought that the choice of the cvs separation character is based on the locale of the Windows, not SketchUP.
I replaced ’,’ with ’;’ in the code to always use it because in my country we are using ’,’ as a decimal symbol.
For the profiles (moldings) maybe another check mark Include-Profiles, field for Profile Word and option to give length in lineal meters. For the banding I can include in the name of the component banding abbreviation as in CutListPlus, separeted with the cvs separation character – Nameofthecomponent;1W-2L.
If you can somehow use this to put additional column in the cvs for import in CutListPlus. I see a lot of potential for SketchUP and CutListPlus here in East Europe in furniture design. Most of the specialized software is based on AutoCAD – it costs around 4500 euro in my country. SketchUP is easy, free, flexsible and perfect for our type of work – 80% melamine faced boards here in Bulgaria. The most used low cost program here and in Russia is Pro 100 – http://www.pro100usa.com/
But it is closed – no import-export and no longer in development. I have program that translates text files produced by Pro 100 into format to import in CutListPlus and it works perfectly with cyrillic names. Sory, but i don’t have 5 messages to send you PM. And sorry for my english !

-- M.A.N.

You may have answered this in previous posts, but has the problem with displaying the layout using Safari on a Mac been solved, other than using SVG output then opening the file in Firefox? I’m sorry is this is an old question.

-- Tim, New York

Hi formerflyer/Tim. Thanks for your question. I’ve answered your question below along with some related questions that may arise from my answer.

Q. Does the Cutlist plugin layout work with Mac with the Safari browser?
The short answer is no. The only option is to generate the svg file and view it in a svg capable browser like Firefox or with an open source program like Inkscape

Q.Will the layout in a web browser window be fixed for a Mac?
Unfortunately, there is no real solution without a redesign. The utilities I use to draw the layout creates an html script which must then be executed by the browser. Safari doesn’t allow it to be executed. It’s a security thing because this method is a common and very simple way that viruses sometimes use to infect your computer.

Q. Can I select the browser to use for Sketchup?
A. No. Sketchup doesn’t allow this, otherwise that might have been a solution, though I think Google Sketchup people have received an earful about this already. I think it should use the default browser for your computer or at best be settable to the browser of your choice. It’s not there yet, however.

-- Steve, New Zealand, www.steveracz.com

Steve,

Thank you so much for your reply. The plug-in is excellent even with this glitch. I go the route of generating the .svg file then opening with Firefox or Safari (both seem to open the file O.K.) then print it out from there. Your work surely saves all of us a great deal of effort. It is greatly appreciated.

Tim

-- Tim, New York

Thanks for the link. I downloaded the file and I will install it in a few days.

-- Whether You Think You Can or You Think You Can't, YOU ARE RIGHT!!!

Thanks for your comments formerflyer(Tim) and Innovator
The svg format turned out better than I thought it would. It’s quite easy to generate and it gives you many options for printing etc.

Another idea that has been suggested by several people is to generate the layout inside the sketchup model putting the actual parts inside the board/sheet and creating a view. This is something I’d really like to try but it’s going to take some work, so feel free to encourage me if you think this is a good option, but also be patient!

-- Steve, New Zealand, www.steveracz.com

Hi daltxguy,
I meant no offense – it is just really hard to me writing in english. I also would like to thank you for this wonderful tool and your effort helping us!

-- M.A.N.

Hi dedov,

No offense taken. My apologies for not getting back to the discussion yet. Your comments covered a lot of ground and I haven’t had a chance to get through it yet to see what might be changed as a result. I was away for several days on business. I promise I will comment in greater detail within a few days.
Your English is very good, btw and just as a note, English was not my first language either as I grew up in French-Canada with Hungarian parents but then eventually went to an English school!

-- Steve, New Zealand, www.steveracz.com

Has anyone been able to get this to work sucessfully on a mac?

I can open the html but when i try to run it it crashes. Any installation advice for us mac users

I see. Thanks again!

-- M.A.N.

CanadaJeff,
Apologies for the late reply. Yes, absolutely, it works with the Mac and there are many people using the plugin successfully.
There is a known issue ( as discussed above) regarding the output of the layout in the html format. This simply does not work on a Mac. Read the Q+A above for a more detailed explanation why and the workaround.
Everything else should work the same on both Windows and Mac OS systems.

For installation advice refer to my previous Cultist blog where someone was kind enough to share the instructions for the Mac. As I don’t have a current Mac, I rely on the kindness of others who have done this.

If you still have issues, detail them here or send me a PM and we’ll work through them.

-- Steve, New Zealand, www.steveracz.com

Hi again dedov.

Some comments on your comments.

I use sketchup.getlocale to determine the language and therefore which delimiter character to use for the cvs files.

Sketchup documentation says this about this method:

“The get_locale method returns the language code for the language SketchUp is running in.”

I assume that the language selected for sketchup is independent of the language selected for your OS and dependent on which version of Sketchup you’ve downloaded ( there is no way to change the language that i can see in Sketchup). So, I guess if you have downloaded an English version but running on a version of the OS which is other than English, you will still get the delimiters selected for the ‘English’ system.

A true choice of delimiter will be the final solution here, so you can put it to anything you want.

In any case, those adventurous like you can always change it by changing the ruby script. Look for this in the code:

    if ( locale  'en-US' || locale  ‘en-GB’ )
      # The following line, if uncommented, uses tab characters instead of ’,’ as the delimiter
      #@delimiter = ”\ci” 
      @delimiter = ”,” 
    else
      @delimiter = ”;” 
    end

As you can see, I’ve even inserted an option for using tab characters.

As for a better integration of CutList and CutListPlus, I totally agree and as I mentioned I have taken the first step by forged a relationship wuth Todd Peterson. Watch this space.

I like your suggestion for including profiles as another separate listing. This will make more sense when I have the option of customised boards lengths/widths and sheets because as you can imagine, profile/moldings are a whole other set of totally different and incompatible sizes from one country to the next.

I will take all these into consideration in a subsequent version but this will take some time. If there is anything quick and immediate I can do to make your life easier, I can consider making you a custom version for trial.
Please let me know.

-- Steve, New Zealand, www.steveracz.com

Hi daltxguy,
I already changed the delimiter to ”;” and it works fine. I appreciate your efforts, so take your time – we are grateful to have what we have now ! The main issue that bugs me is the problem with cyrilic characters and now it even stopped generating cvs – i didn’t change anything! Maybe something with Java or Internet Explorer – i’m on XP SP3 and updated to the latest Java and Internet Explorer 8.

-- M.A.N.

Got it working on one computer, but not the other. Anyways, how can I print the lists. If I click on print view it goes to some weird web page with just the print view button. Any suggestions?

Hi daltxguy,

I just loaded the plugin and was looking it over. It looks very good but I was wondering if there will be Layout support for baltic birch ply that comes in 5’x5’ sheets in the next release.

Thanks for the plugin and thanks for considering this inquiry.

-- Best regards, Jack, www.PixelsandSawdust.com

Hi tooldad,

Are you using Mac or Windows?
Are you trying to print the cutlist or the layout?
Check at the top of the window which pops up ( the one with the print button in it). There might be a banner which comes asking you to enable ActiveX. If it does, then answer yes.

Your other option is to generate the excel readable ‘CSV’ file ( CSV stands for ‘comma separated values’ and it’s just what it says. The data is written into a text file, each data column separated by a comma.) Excel is very happy to read these files and you can print it from there too).

Warning:Contains Technical content:

Q. Why would my browser prevent me from seeing the print screen? In order to print it creates a new window with html that must be executed. Browsers sometimes frown on this because it’s similar to how some viruses work.

Let me know if that helps. If not and you need more help, contain me on PM and we’ll work through it.

Steve

-- Steve, New Zealand, www.steveracz.com

Hi Jack ( Jack Barnhill ),

You’re in luck. I’ve already done this for the next version. If you want a pre-release version, contact me on PM and I’ll send you a very early copy of 4.1.0. It’s v4.0.7 with some tested new features – not nearly enough to be legitimately called v4.1.0 and not enough to release a v4.0.8.

Let me know if you want a copy.

Steve

-- Steve, New Zealand, www.steveracz.com

Great plugin, I appreciate your work.

It doesn’t play very well with Sketchup under Linux + wine, I find myself having to boot windows when I want to use it. I suspect there’s not a lot that can be done about that though.

-- http://blog.stephenashelton.com

Hi stephenashelton,

Thanks for your feedback and welcome to Lumberjocks!

I haven’t tried running the plugin in Sketchup on Linux/Wine. Do any other plugins work?

I found this on the wine site( http://wiki.winehq.org/GoogleSketchup ), it could be this:

”bug 16511, fixed as of wine-1.1.11: To use the Ruby scripts (sketchup.google.com/download/rubyscripts.html) you’ll need to convert them from DOS format to Unix format. (e.g. sudo apt-get install tofromdos; dos2unix -f parametric.rb windows.rb)”

There is only 1 ruby script for the plugin: CutListAndMaterials.rb
Maybe it needs to be converted, but if you have Wine 1.1.11, maybe it is ok now???

Steve

-- Steve, New Zealand, www.steveracz.com

daltxguy,

Thanks for the tip. I’m running wine 1.1.12, and I’ve tested other plugins which work just fine. I tried converting the line endings, but that didn’t get me anywhere.

The initial window shows up, with the Cut List banner and “Run,” “Close,” “Save Settings,” and “Help” buttons, nothing else. There is some console output that looks troublesome, but nothing looks particularly obvious.

I will create a bug report with Wine, as this probably has little to do with you :)

Edit: Someone beat me to it:
http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=17221

Thanks a lot

-- http://blog.stephenashelton.com

Hi Stephen (stephenashelton),

Indeed someone did. I will keep an eye on this though, in case there is something that I need to do differently. It may not so much my plugin but some part of Sketchup I am using as part of the plugin. I am invoking an html script from within the plugin which requires it to be opened using a browser.

I know sketchup uses its own default browser ( no matter what your browser default is set to). In the case of Windoze, it’s IE and for the Mac it’s Safari. I suppose if you don’t have IE installed on wine, it may do weird things. I don’t know if Sketchup installs its own version of the browsers or relies on you having it already installed.

When I get a chance I’ll get my linux system working again (I’ve had to switch to Windoze for compatibility with work since I now work remotely) and see if I can reproduce and add anything useful.

Thanks for taking the time to report this and to follow up to add a bug report ( even if someone did beat you to it!)

-- Steve, New Zealand, www.steveracz.com

Hi,

I’m seeing some weirdness with web page layout. Quite a few components laid out successfully on 7 6”x8’ boards. Then 10 or so components laid out successfully on 4×8 plywood.

However the text for the next 7 components were printed back up at the top of the web page, overlapping the 1st board’s efficiency. Down at the bottom, the gray background was drawn, and the cross hatches started, but they only covered the 1st 25% of the area, then stopped in the middle of a line.

I spent some time understanding the ruby & dynamically generated drawLayout javascript. I couldn’t find a bug. I’m now wondering if the problem is simply caused by some graphics limitation in the browser running in sketchup?

Since I wasn’t able to solve the problem, I worked around it by having the layout output to .SVG files. All the components laid out successfully in a series of 6 .svg files.

Finally, even though I have a workaround, I wanted to describe the problem while it’s fresh in my mind & see if this is a known problem and whether my guess about it being a problem at a lower level than the plugin is correct.

David

Hi David,

Welcome to Lumberjocks!

Good on ya, mate for working so hard to understand this so well. You’ve described the problem most accurately!

I’ve also searched for this bug for quite a long time and I’ve tried many things to try to mitigate it such as increasing the size of the display window and limiting the number of boards for layout. The first did not have any changed results, the second turned out not to be practical because it limited the results for the svg output as well and the limit has now been set very high.

The solution is the svg file which was put in to get around this issue, the issue of printing the layout and having a layout option for people running the plugin on a Mac. My best guess at the problem is that the use of the dynamic drawing javascript hits some limitations of the browser or the javascript utility so the best advice is to use the window display for smallish projects and to use the svg output for large projects. You’ll find the performance of creating and drawing the html for large projects, even if it does display properly to be annoyingly slow.

Bottom line:

Q. Which layout output choice is best for my project? html window or svg ?
For small projects, you can use the html window ( or svg ) output
For large projects, use the svg output

Q. How do I decide if I have a small or a large project?
It’s not so black and white but if the html output is taking too long to produce/generate or if the html output seems messed up and starts overprinting at the top of the output, you should select the svg output instead as it will generate the correct result.

Q. Will the html output ever work for large projects? or for the Mac?
Not in the foreseeable future. A whole new method of drawing graphics to html is needed. The current tools were probably never meant for anything as complex as what Cutlist does. This method cannot be simply extended and it isn’t worth doing so because html layout in a window is already problematic for other reasons such as when running from a Mac (see previous posts) so it’s best to redesign this portion. In the meantime, svg output is actually quite handy for printing, zooming and export to other display software and tools.
One idea I’ve often mentioned and keep thinking might be cool is to draw the layout directly in sketchup as a new view (This was not actually my idea but it’s a good one!)

Steve

-- Steve, New Zealand, www.steveracz.com

Hi Steve,

first, let me thank you for your work, and making my life easier :)

I am an amateur, using GSU to model the peaces of the furniture that I (might) make – if the project get the “green light” from my command… my wife – that is ;)
The idea is to design it virtually, and then we could discuss if something should be changed, so I could make it just as my lady likes it – in the end… ;)

For now, the furniture is quite elementary, contained of 18mm wide plywood.
I’ll check what are the standard dimensions of the boards here in Serbia (I suppose that’ approx 2,5m x 3m).

I most definitely agree that it is important to know what will the cutting plan look like, and to add/subtract the part of two in order to maintain the better utilization of the wood plate… (Yap – I am also “thinking green” – it would really be pity to waist some parts when they could be used well… If we are cutting trees – then let us not waste it – right?)

But I am afraid there is a tiny problem there: your plug in allows the thickness of 4/4 to 8/4, and the predefined dimensions, if I understood well.
Can these dimensions be changed?
What if one use a part of the board, cut one project (lets say 48% of the surface) and then have another, smaller project – could the rest 52% be used for the next project?

I am really new to all this, so please forgive me for asking maybe some obvious questions. I might have waited to finalize one project, and then ask questions, but this way I can be prepared for potential issues… :)

Once again – thank you for this plug in!
Cheers,
Nenad

-- it is better to look stupid for 5 minutes and ask a question, then not to ask and be stupid for the rest of your life :)

if you have 2 projects that are going to share materials I copy both into a single sketchup file and then generate my cutlist…Is that what you mean?

If you want to define the actual sizes of the boards you have to use, I dont think that will work because of the above HTML layout issues, as well as the enormity of the coding calculations that would be needed. Even professional Cutlist programs dont let you do that(that I know of)

-- If you can't build it, code it. If you can't code it, build it. But always ALWAYS take a picture.

Hi Steve,

I changed the 4.07 version of cutlistui.html to uncomment the kerf size option. I made corresponding changes to the ruby script (LayoutBoard.insertPartInTree) to make the layout behave correctly. I’ve only tested with my current model, but it appears to be working so far.

Would you like a copy to review my changes and possibly fold them into the next version?

I also added quite a few log statements to help me understand the program and debug my changes. They are conditional based on additional $verboseN variables.

David

David,

You’re a brilliant and kind man! I’d be happy to take whatever mods you’ve made and incorporate them into the next version.That kerf thing, as you can see has been ‘almost’ there for quite some time – or at least a rudimentary version of it. I’ll contact you offlist so you know how to get it to me.

Thank you!

Steve

-- Steve, New Zealand, www.steveracz.com

I’m glad I can help. Thanks for all the work you’ve obviously put into cutlist. I’ll get the files to you shortly.

David

Hello. The plug in looks like just what I need but am having trouble so I hope you can give troubleshooting advice.

I’m running it on the mac and all appear to be installed correctly as downloaded (looks like there were some Mac challenges earlier but were resolved by 4.0.7). I created a single-board component, select Cut List from the Plugins menu, and just get a small, blank window pop up titled Cut List v4.0.7:

I would appreciate any direction in troubleshooting.

Regards,
Robert

Hi Soulcrafter,
My apologies for taking a few days to answer your question.
Usually these type of issues have to do with the installation of the plugin.
I’ts important to unzip the entire contents of the plugin into the plugins directory. Most importantly there needs to be the cutlistui folder in there along with the ruby script.

The installation directory for a Mac is at
Macintosh HD/Library/Application Support/Google SketchUp 7/SketchUp/

How to install a plugin

and it should look like the equivalent of this ( sorry I don’t have a Mac screenshot and this shows installation for Sketchup 6, though Sketchup 7 would be similar):

If this is all as it should be and you are still having the issue, contact me on PM and we can sort this further.

PS. I now temporarily have a Mac at my disposal. I may be able to reproduce issues

Steve

-- Steve, New Zealand, www.steveracz.com

Hi Steve, I have been attempting to make a materials list for projects I create in SU. They are a bit larger than the typical wood working projects in which your cutlist works great.
My projects are small recreational cabins and larger residential structures. The materials I build with are commonly available sheet goods and dimensional lumber to 16’ lengths. Some dimensional materials are also thicker (4”-6”) for headers, beams etc.
I tried to use a componentreport .rb which worked great for component sizes lists except on those components that are not on a horizontal or vertical plane. Diagonally oriented instances are listed but their dimensions are inaccurate as the csv lists the model axis measument rather than the component axis.
Changing the axis of the component doesnt seem to help. Changing the orientation of the component works but is time consuming and defeats the purpose.

Now..for my question(s) :)
Would your cutlist script be easily modified to include the size(s) I use?
Is there a better way to address this need?
I assume your cutlist works with diagonally oriented components? Doesn’t it?
If it does..and the componentreport.rb+ doesn’t….any idea why?

-- Dan, Sterling Alaska, http://sullcon.homestead.com/ Before you criticise some one, walk a mile in their shoes...then you will be a mile away and you have their shoes!

“I assume your cutlist works with diagonally oriented components? Doesn’t it?”

I can answer this one. Yes, it works with diagonally oriented components as long as the component’s axes have been oriented to the geometry.

-- Until you spread your wings, you'll have no idea how far you can walk.

OK dave…here’s a another question on this topic.
Would the size of the bounding box effect the cutlist function.
Some of my components were made unique versions of other componenets. I noticed that even though the axis orientation of the component instance is aligned with the component geometry, that the bounding box reflects the size of the original component from which the new component was copied making the bounding box twice the size of the component. (a sheet of osb that was reduced to a half sheet) Are there other considerations in this regard?

-- Dan, Sterling Alaska, http://sullcon.homestead.com/ Before you criticise some one, walk a mile in their shoes...then you will be a mile away and you have their shoes!

The dimensions are derived from the bounding box so yes, that would an issue. How did you go about resizing after the Make Unique operation?

-- Until you spread your wings, you'll have no idea how far you can walk.

Hmm…as I recall..but not sure…I think I made unique, opened for editing then push/pulled the components edge surface. I supose I could have selected the edge and moved it but that doesnt seem likely. I guess I also could have disected geometry or done any number of methods but…I think I used the push pull. After that I don’t recall doing anything else which is probably why the component is still in the original bounding box. Should I have exploded and made another component?

-- Dan, Sterling Alaska, http://sullcon.homestead.com/ Before you criticise some one, walk a mile in their shoes...then you will be a mile away and you have their shoes!

when you open the component for editing, is the component’s axis shown at a corner of the geometry or off in space? If the latter, move the axes to the corner.

-- Until you spread your wings, you'll have no idea how far you can walk.

well that was easy…are there other considerations in changing the axis re: cutlist? I think I read some information about materials orientation. I assume the cutlist optimization will orient sheet goods according to assigned grain orientation which is rather important in many respects. I read some posts you were having about it. I also assume that with long boards in cutlist it isn’t an issue.

-- Dan, Sterling Alaska, http://sullcon.homestead.com/ Before you criticise some one, walk a mile in their shoes...then you will be a mile away and you have their shoes!

Cutlist doesn’t read grain orientation. It assumes the longest dimension to be length and thinnest to be thickness.

Grain orientation when applying materials is impacted by the axis orientation but the direction the grain is initially applied depends also on the material’s original orientation.

Otherwise, I think you’ve got the axis part of it figured out.

-- Until you spread your wings, you'll have no idea how far you can walk.

Is that link shown in the first post still the right place to download the plugin? Every time I try I get an error message. I’m really looking forward to trying this out!

Thanks in advance,
Erik

I just clicked on the download link in the first post and had no trouble. What’s the error message?

-- Until you spread your wings, you'll have no idea how far you can walk.

It said…

———-
Connection Interrupted

The connection to the server was reset while the page was loading.

The network link was interrupted while negotiating a connection. Please try again.
———-

The first time I tried it my ZoneAlarm security software popped up. Not sure what it’s not liking.

Erik

ErikB,

If you really can’t get it though that link, send me a PM with your email address and I will get you a copy.

-- Steve, New Zealand, www.steveracz.com

Hi mics,

The cutlist plugin actually takes into account components which have been rotated to get the original size, rather than just using the the bounding box resulting after the rotation. It’s a bit of math wizardry to get the original dimensions knowing the rotation.

I actually put these notes in the ruby script itself in the ‘usage’ section:

”Ensure that the component axes are adjusted to the component to give the smallest bounding box to get accurate sizes. A component which has been thusly created and then rotated will be correctly calculated based on its original axes aligned bounding box. ( In other words, the best way to create a part which is not going to be axes aligned is to first create one which is and then rotate it )”

As for larger sizes, the script is should be able to handle any size for a cutlist. It is easily modifiable for larger sizes to do a layout. Not exactly sure which you were having trouble with. Contact me offline and I can walk you through the changes for layout or I can put these changes in the current version I am working on and let you have a go using it. If it is just to produce the cutlist, there are no changes required.

I’m actually quite interested in what you are doing.

I’ve tried applying cutlist to some designs for small buildings but I’ve found that people have lots of different ways of building up shapes with components which ends up with producing larger than necessary bounding boxes or, as you have found out, components not originally oriented to the axes or they don’t use components at all.

Unfortunately for Cutlist to work properly there has to be a consistent approach to producing components. I think DaveR’s approach is well thought out, makes life easier later when you want to change/add things and allows you to get the most benefit from plugins like Cutlist (as well as Sketchup). Because bounding boxes are largely invisible and for many, not a consideration for getting the visible end result, it’s easy to ignore this and then to have trouble later getting good results from Cutlist or doing anything further with the model in Sketchup.

I encourage everyone to follow Dave’s tutorials and develop some good habits when it comes to creating components. DaveR’s main hang out is at the Fine Woodworking blog Design.Click.Build

-- Steve, New Zealand, www.steveracz.com

I just ran cutlist after making some changes to my skp file component axis’ and making some selection changes to the cutlist and it works perfectly. Created a great csv file that apparently is complete and accurate.
I guess I was just confused as to how to operate the script.

Did I mention how this ROKS!

-- Dan, Sterling Alaska, http://sullcon.homestead.com/ Before you criticise some one, walk a mile in their shoes...then you will be a mile away and you have their shoes!