Collaborative Sketchup

[Scienthsine]

So, from what I can see... sketchup has enough observer classes, and scripting power to be able to detect almost any change, and replicate it... and ruby has a full featured networking library... (Or javascript could be used, or a combination of both.)

So, one of the script ideas I've had is 'Collaborative Sketchup'. Allow to computers running sketchup to connect via tcp, and on a change, replicate this change on the other.

A few ideas regarding this:
-WebDialog chat window for communication.
-Some sort of graphical representation of the other users view, and current selection.

Going off on a tangent... Using this idea, and a similar idea to the 'game in sketchup' thing, a mini Sketchup-Life could be created...

Anyway I think it'd be pretty easy to do, and could be useful. If using sketchup for game levels, or scenes, each person could be working on a different part of the 'world' at the same time, with realtime changes.

Anyway, this is one of my sketchup script ideas, but it's pretty far back on the list. I decided I'd post it and see what people think, maybe someone with more time could get a start on it.

[Marian]

This sounds very cool, if this is possibile it would be something that as far as know no other 3d application has, and it would be really usefull in many instances.
Hope you can do it.
GOOD LUCK!

[RickW]

Yep, I've been working on it off and on for a while. Nothing ready for prime-time, yet, though.

[Jim]

Have a look at this thread:

http://www.sketchucation.com/forums/scf/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=10713

plot-paris did a nice mock-up, and don't miss Gaieus' response.

[Phil Rader AIA]

http://www.sketchucation.com/forums/scf/viewtopic.php?f=180&t=10443

Watch the video and imagine that sketchup on both machines or multiple machines is getting data from a central location a server somewhere. Scott is downloading data sets and that data is then translated by ruby into geometry. It would appear that through ruby Sketchup can communicate bi-directional to a remote computer so the possibility of shared modeling does exist.

[Scienthsine]

Phil> That video was what I had in mind when I made the 'Sketchup-Life' statement.

I see we have some people working on it, and some older threads about it. I like the mock-up, but I would allow each user to have their own view, and just use an arrow to approximate other views for other users, also a color-based highlight showing who has what selected....

Just from my journeys through the documentation, I believe it's well doable with sketchup as it is now, to a great extent. Even things like the texture sharing can be done with ruby and javascript. Most of it can be done with just ruby, but the webdialog would give us a nice update timer, and an easy to do chat interface.

Anyway, it's after atleast 2 other scripts I gotta write.... so I can't work on it just yet

I hope one of you other guys gets something up soon, and open source is always nice If not, I'll get to it eventually