Suggestions for Surface Search enhancement

[iansabourin-somers]

Hello there,

Context:
I use the SketchUp plugin to create the geometry of the buildings I model in the OpenStudio Application. As it is already known, Match and Intersect functions still have many issues, so I usually need to correct the surface matching manually.

Issue:
When I select surfaces, sometimes after a few iterations of selections (spaces, surfaces or subsurfaces), the plugin fails (see image)

I then have to close it up and start over which can be tiresome.

Suggestion:
I understand that solving these issues (Sketchup Plugin : Intersect, Match and selections) could take a long time, therefore I suggest that the "Surface Search" tool should be upgraded as this can probably done faster than the rest. I think this would be beneficial on many levels and I think many users would find this useful. It would be amazing to be able to use conditions (AND, IF) and negations (NOT), maybe Regex ?
For instance, I would like to be able to search for everything that is not a ceiling (i.e. hide all ceilings of the model or in the selection). This does not seem possible at the moment, as I can only search for OS:Surface:Wall, but cannot search for [OS:Surface:Wall AND OS:Surface:Floor AND OS:Subsurfaces] or [NOT OS:Surface:RoofCeiling].
This could be done by multiple selections, checkboxes, I leave the execution to you !
Finally, I think that a button at the bottom of the UI which checks "Invert search" or something equivalent would be very practical !
[See next comment for another related enhancement request : https://github.com//issues/141#issuecomment-2271610566]
I really appreciate your work and thank you for your time,

Ian

[macumber]

Thanks Ian, it looks like you are using SketchUp 2023 on Windows, is that correct? Which version of the OpenStudio SketchUp Plug-in and OpenStudio Application are you using? I haven't seen the plug-in crash on the surface search dialog before, do you have any hints on how to reproduce it? Are you perhaps pressing the button quickly, so a new search starts before the last one completes?

Apart from the crash, your ideas for the enhancement seem worthwhile. I'll leave this issue for the enhancement request. If the crash is reproducible, we should open a separate issue for the crash.

[iansabourin-somers]

Ok I'll create a new issue ! Thanks !

I've had another little idea, so here it is : Also add a search by floors with those conditions (for example, hide all ceilings of 2nd floor)

:)