Architectural_Design_with_SketchUp

Architectural Design with SketchUp
This gets the job done, but it is not very efficient. We are creating geometry for each of
the many similar boxes. Ultimately, all these faces, edges, and vertices need to be stored in
the SketchUp file that you save to your hard disk. The next section shows you how to improve
on this using components and transformations.
Lots of Boxes with Color
Let’s create a slight variation of the preceding code snippet. This time, we’ll put each of the
boxes into a group, and we’ll add color to them all!
Paste the following code into the Ruby Code Editor in SketchUp and click on Run Code:
# Creates a 3D grid of colored boxes
ent = Sketchup.active_model.entities
n = 5 # number of boxes
s = 100 # spacing
w = 50 # box width
(0..n-1).each { |i|
(0..n-1).each { |j|
(0..n-1).each { |k|
# create a group for each box
group = ent.add_group
# add the face to the group’s entities
face = group.entities.add_face [i*s,j*s,k*s],[i*s,j*s+w,k*s],
[i*s+w,j*s+w,k*s],[i*s+w,j*s,k*s]
# add a material (an RGB color)
face.back_material = [(255/n*i).round,(255/n*j).round,
(255/n*k).round]
# now extrude the box
face.pushpull -w
}
}
}
This should at least significantly improve the visuals of the previous example. Figure 6.9
shows what you will see.
What did we do differently this time? We didn’t just add the faces to the Entities collection
as before; this time, we first added a group to that collection using the add_group
method. Because we assigned a variable to the group (group), we were able to add geometry
to the Entities collection of that group. That is all you need to create grouped geometry
using Ruby.
The other trick we used was to add a material to the face before we extruded it. This
added the material to the entire box by way of extrusion.
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