Google Sketchup contains an example Ruby class, Parametric, that allows a developer to specify a number of parameters to a program and lets the user enter these at runtime. However, the parameters can only be entered as text, and it requires a certain amount of effort to change the parameters and try out different combinations.

LiveParametric inherits from Parametric and makes it much easier to use parametric sketchup plugins while making almost no extra demands on the plugin writer. Rather than use Sketchup's built-in UI.inputbox, it creates a custom WebDialog which can contain Sliders, TextFields, RadioButtons, Dropdown menus, and whatever else we get around to adding.

It may turn out that the dynamic WebDialog creation code is more valuable to Sketchup developers than the LiveParametric code, and that the two are modularized. I'll see if there's any desire for this.

-- Evan Jones, 7 September 2007