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SketchUcam Version 1.2
Jul 2014

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HOWTO change the default Gcode plotter

SketchUcam 1.1 is provided with the Gplot program to visualize the Gcode that you have output from your drawing.

You can change the program to any Gcode plotter that takes a filename as command line parameter, such as NCPlot. NCPlot will be used as an example here, replace references to NCPlot with your Gcode plotter.

Follow these steps: screen image
  1. Close Sketchup
  2. Find your NCPlot icon or menu entry, and right click it
  3. Select 'Properties'
  4. Under 'Target', select all the text as in image at right
  5. Press CTRL-C to copy it to the clipboard
  6. Open the file 'gplot.rb' in the folder C:\Program Files\Google\Google SketchUp 8\Plugins or C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Google SketchUp 8\Plugins if you have 64bit Windows.
    For Sketchup 2014 the path will be something like
    C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\SketchUp\SketchUp 2014\SketchUp\Plugins
    You need to open it in Notepad or a similar plain text editor. NOT MSWord! (to open Notepad, Start|All Programs|Accessories|Notepad)

  7. The file open in Notepad should appear as at right.
  8. In front of the line
    @exe = Sketchup.find_support_file("GPlot.exe", "/Plugins")
    place a '#' like this
    #@exe = Sketchup.find_support_file("GPlot.exe", "/Plugins")
  9. add a line below that one
  10. in the blank line type
    @exe = ""
  11. now, between the "", paste the path to NCPLot.exe we copied to the clipboard earlier
    @exe = "D:\myapps\NCPlotv1.2\NCPlot.exe"
  12. for each \ character in the path, add another one next to it like this
    @exe = "D:\\myapps\\NCPlotv1.2\\NCPlot.exe"
  13. Save the file, which should look as in the image at right

Now let us test Sketchup

  1. Open Sketchup,
  2. open a drawing for which you have created Gcode,
  3. select Plugins|Plot Gcode
  4. NCPlot should open with the existing Gcode file