My Newest Plugin: A Shiny Ruby Code Editor for SketchUp

I always found Ruby code editing and testing for SketchUp a bit tedious. First I write code in my preferred text editor: PSPad. Then I load it into SketchUp using my plugin loader. And then I run it from the menu. Although there are better ways to handle this (e.g. the SketchUp bridge), I wanted something more “in-house”. Enter Jim Folz’s Web Console.

Jim’s plugin has been a tremendous tool for testing multiline code right within SketchUp. Nevertheless, it was lacking the code-editor functionality that external editors offer.

While my plugin does not provide a full code-editor for SketchUp Ruby files (with e.g. syntax highlighting), it is pretty good at making it easier to edit code. At this point, it features font-size, tabulation and snippet support. On top of that, it contains a nicely usable reference web browser. Finish that off with some jQuery UI shinyness and there you have it – a whole new way to edit code in SketchUp. Enjoy!

You can find more information and download the plugin here:

http://www.alexschreyer.net/projects/sketchup-ruby-code-editor

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