anyway to script some sketchup features in max?

Rhinokey

i use sketchup for some of my layouts for enviro pieces but when i take it into max for detailing and unwraping i find my self missing some of the basic sketchup tools

1. in sketchup when moving a vert or drawing in an edge if you hover your curser along another edge that is at an angle, sketchup will add that angle as one of the snap planes for your current movement, this is more usefull than you could imagine.

thats the big one at the momment,,

MoP

Can you describe this with an image? I've never used SketchUp and I don't fully understand your description.

Rhinokey

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDvwHon6-zY[/ame] around 2:20
tho all the infer stuff would be killer in max you can do some infer stuff with snaps but its a bit more clumsy

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGVUI2AeMOc&feature=channel[/ame] more use of it

SyncViewS

I could be wrong, but sketchUp seems to be a very friendly nurbs modeler. The feature you're talking about is quite old in AutoCad, don't know how it's called, it is a Rhinoceros 3D feature as well from version 4 called SmartTrack, and quite a standard for every 2D technical drawing application.

Coding something like that for 3ds Max for polygonal modeling looks like a big effort even with the sdk low level access, not impossible though, but quite demanding.

Doesn't Modo have something similar just out of the box?

CrazyButcher

CAD software uses "smarter" representation of a model, so that it has all those intelligent lines, measures, constraints... completely different from classic "dumb" poly models. and therefore not applicable as Sync suggested...

I've worked with high-end CAD stuff and some features there are sooo lovely (look for solidworks and alike videos), but it's quite a different workflow.

Michael Knubben

If only verse ( http://www.uni-verse.org/ ) was universally supported, then you could just leave Sketchup open in the background and do these things whenever you needed to, as it'd auto-update back and forth between whichever programs you'd want to use.
Actually, I think I'd prefer a few great focussed applications working together in this way over 3d suites like Max.

Edit: for those new to this, here's a good link that explains it all in detail: http://www.quelsolaar.com/verse/pipeline.html

Calabi

Wings3d has it as well. In Wings you can transform according to any vector/direction that is indicated with the geometry and a few more. I've been looking for something like this in max for ages. There's only kind of edge straighen scripts nothing thats as good as that.