If you export 2 cubes named + colorised in skp format from Moi
one separated (explosed) and one not separated
Now result in Sketchup will be the same ;)
all cubes will be similar, and they will be not a group!

Now make the same but export as 3DS format from Moi!!!
Import it in Sketchup as 3ds format
result appears as a general group : explode it one time
You will have perfect result ;)
(except colors, no colors in sketchup from Moi till now) maybe V3 :)
And name are replaced by OBJ1, OBJ2...OBJ6, OBJ


you will obtain
first cube = 6 groups!
second cube = one group!

It's not so bad is not it? :)

Hi Felix, yup I do have some plans to update MoI's SKP export in the future to use groups, specifically because of that "2 adjacent touching objects" problem, since SketchUp likes to fuse the points of 2 objects that touch unless they are in separate groups.

I've got both that and also translating Style information in MoI into materials in SketchUp on my "todo" list.

The main focus initially for SKP export was just to get geometry transferring well, because that's kind of the most fundamental thing.


> It seems like MOI provide its own version of the default material
> and SU doesn't seem to like it, if you try to select (1 click) the front
> face on the left box from the box file, nothing seems to happen but
> the face is selected (entity info).

Hmmm, I can't seem to repeat this problem over here - I went ahead and installed the latest SketchUp v8 and when I do 1 click on the left box from your box.skp file, it gets selected and changes color. Note that the color shift is very subtle because the face happened to be brightly lit by the light source and the default selection appearance of little light yellow dots is not too far off from that.

Is it just that similarity in colors from the non-selected brightly lit face to the selected one that is difficult to see?

What about if you click on the top or right-side faces that happen to be darker, is it easier for you to see the selection happen in those cases?

MoI does not currently try to set any kind of material information in the skp file, so it just ends up using whatever they decided should be the default.

- Michael

Michael,

you're right, the front face change color but it's very very subtle, maybe it's my old eyes but I don't see any dots on the front face and for other faces I can see a bit more the dotted selected surface. Where is that yellowish color comes from if not from MOI? I'm just curious.

Regards,
Felix

Hi Pilou,

I just have the free version of SU which mean no access to 3ds format unless of course there is a free import plugin for that I haven't found yet.

But I have found an obj import script and using it give me 1 group per solid object, then I have to soften every thing to get "normal" looking SU objects which is a lot easier to do then recomposing groups. On closer inspection though, we can see that some curved surfaced mostly are not 100% neat, some normals are reversed and I wouldn't be surprised to find holes as well but I didn't check that.

As I said earlier, the exporting and importing process as given me more work then I would have like most of the time.

Regards,
Felix

P.S. Je n'ai pas accès au format 3ds avec ma version de SU, désolé. Merci

Hi Felix,

> Where is that yellowish color comes from if not
> from MOI? I'm just curious.

In order to write the SKP file, MoI uses a library that comes from SketchUp called SkpWriter.dll - you can get the current version of it in the SketchUp C++ SDK here:
http://code.google.com/apis/sketchup/docs/downloadsdksubmit.html

MoI actually uses the SkpWriter.dll from SketchUp v6.

The selection color seems to be a default value that is stored in the SKP file by the SkpWriter.dll library automatically when the file is created.

In previous versions of SketchUp prior to v8, that was the regular selection color used by SketchUp, but I guess that changed for v8 templates to be a darker color, maybe because of this issue that it's difficult to see yellow dots on a bright white face.

This post here explains how you can set the selection color in the SketchUp UI:
http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/sketchup/thread?tid=67328c0db610eda1&hl=en

You go to Window > Styles to show the Styles dialog, then under the Edit tab, click the 5th little cube to go to the Modeling settings, and there is a "Selected" color available there and you can click on the yellow swatch to set it to a darker color. That seems to be a per file setting and not something that you can override to just always be a particular color no matter what file is loaded though. Maybe a script in SketchUp could help with setting it, if there is any way to set up a Ruby script to run after a file has been opened.

- Michael

you can download SU free 6 here ;)
http://www.brothersoft.com/downloads/sketchup.html
Advantage of the SU 6 : No need Internet Connection for load Components
And some formats as importation 3DS, DWG, DXF etc...
And as SU 6 is compatible SU 7, SU 8
it's very cool :)

Michael,

thanks for all this info,

This note is from the Google site you gave me:

>Before you begin, we have one word of caution. Both the SkpReader and SkpWriter APIs were written prior to SketchUp's >acquisition by Google. Neither API is under active development. However, we do make bug fixes and provide limited support >through the Google SketchUp Developers discussion group.

I've downloaded the files just to see if they where different and it seems they are, at least in size. I even tried it, I renamed the existing one in the MOI directory and put the newer one at the same place. Then I saved my MOI box3 file to skp format again and it basically look the same as before in SU.

My conclusion of this little experiment is that even if MOI can export to SU which may be very convenient and appreciated by some, for my own use it's not very useful as I'll most likely have models composed of many connected parts. If I still want to use SU I'll use obj format at this time.

Regards,
Felix

Hi Pilou,

thanks for the info, I appreciate it a lot.

Thanks,
Felix

Hi Felix,


> This note is from the Google site you gave me:
> <....>

Yes, they haven't really done much new work on the SkpWriter API. But the existing library works - is there any reason why this notice is of particular concern for you?

As far as I know, there is not any actual documentation for just the low level structure of SKP files, so using the SkpWriter.dll mechanism is really the only feasible way to write those particular kinds of files.


> I even tried it, I renamed the existing one in the MOI
> directory and put the newer one at the same place. Then
> I saved my MOI box3 file to skp format again and it basically
> look the same as before in SU.

That sounds like they have not changed the default selection color in their newest SkpWriter library. But I think it is something that I could set directly myself though for MoI's exports. Right now MoI does not set it, but it does not have to stay that way forever.

I guess it could be some kind of optional setting in MoI, because some people might want to have the current color which is the one that was used in versions of SketchUp prior to v8.

- Michael

Michael,

I cited the noted only because it makes me better understand the difficulties you are face with, trying to export skp file format.

From when I first pointed out this selection color thing and from what (little) I know now, I would think the selection color is always the same whatever the color of the object. I've "painted" rectangles in various colors and when I try to select them it seem to always turn out to dotted blue. With a blue face, there is nothing visible happening at all.

Though it could be more or less useful to change the default color provided by the library, I'm not sure it is worth all the effort this would require especially when Google itself doesn't seem to care that much.

Regards,
Felix

Hi Felix,

> From when I first pointed out this selection color
> thing and from what (little) I know now, I would
> think the selection color is always the same whatever
> the color of the object.

Yup, as far as I know that's the way the way that SketchUp works to display selection...

- Michael

Michael,

MOI seems to display objects in some kind of semi transparent mode, do we have some control over this? For example, the red edge below.

Hi Felix, that kind of bleed through of edges in thin areas is a display artifact - it's a side effect of the process that makes edges not get drawn submerged and partially obscured within their surfaces. There currently isn't any way to control it, it's just a display glitch to ignore.

Some more detailed info in this post here:
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=4061.6

- Michael

Micheal,

I'll follow your advice and just ignore this.

Thanks,
Felix