Google Sketchup Pro 7 is out

ScottPara

NICE Pete!

Scott

linea

A quick maybe stupid question, I want to upgrade to SU7 to check it out for myself, will this overwrite my SU6? Will I have to buy a full license to SU7 if I want to keep SU6 and SU7? Thanks.

alpro wrote:
A quick maybe stupid question, I want to upgrade to SU7 to check it out for myself, will this overwrite my SU6? Will I have to buy a full license to SU7 if I want to keep SU6 and SU7? Thanks.
No, the two versions will peacefully coexist - better than some forum members, even

With the trial of 7pro I found this not to be the case on Vista (home edition). Maybe the actual upgrade is different or it might just be unique to my machine but installing the trial of SU7 pro totally locked me out of SU Pro6, I couldn't get into it at all. I uninstalled the 7Pro trial and installed 7 Free, this does co-exist fine with SU6. The Google guys are watching this thread, they have pm'd me about it and are looking into it.

fakircho

@rickw said:

Brad Schell once commented that the intent of @Last was to develop the core product and let third-party ruby authors create peripheral capabilities. That intent is apparently still the driving force with Google now, since SU7 has improved the core significantly. No, it's not all bells and whistles (that's what ruby is for, in part), it's a more stable, more versatile platform. It's also still called SketchUp. It seems we have all just gotten so used to pushing it so far beyond its intended capabilities that we want/expect the combined capability of Rhino/Modo/Maya/Max/fill-in-the-blank wrapped in the familiar SU interface, and we want it last year.

Even though i agree with core product pitch, i have to say that @Last always gave us new modeling tools
with every release up to version 5, Follow Me, Sandbox. Since Google took it over we have not had a single new modeling tool added. 3D text and lines intersecting themselves does no count as modeling tools. At least one new modeling tool would have made a lot of people happy. Or at least add a new functionality to an existing tool. This just an observation.

Have to agree that 7 is a move forward. It has better feel to it. Hopefully this new core is ready for new tools.

@rickw said:

Bottom line:
Was it everything that everyone wanted? No. Clearly no.
Is it an improvement over 6? Yes. Tremendous. And (as yet) unappreciated.

Even though i did not get stuff i was hopping for, i did upgrade i am happily using it

Hazza

@unknownuser said:

If Autodesk had been able to bought sketchup at least nowdays we would have

..... never had a free version.

@alan fraser said:

I had problems with this during the beta. I guess that many more people are now on Vista than 2 years ago, so you may also find problems in re-installing some of the Plugins. I did, until I wrestled control of the Plugins folder back off my darned OS....even with admin priviliges.

2 years on and people are still struggling to wrest control of their "experience" with Vista

Gaieus

@unknownuser said:

great,.. we got the new hyper-announcement promoting Sketchup 7 blatantly, and guess what,.. we can't post to disagree with things...

So Herodes explain me, please, what is "blatant promoting" in my announcement. What do I "promote" there? That is a plain announcement so that people on the board are ALL notified. And the post clearly directs everybody to this topic we are in right now.

wmanning

The Autodesk speculation is amusing. Especially when last week they introduced AutoSketch v10 4 years after v9. It's $190 and can't touch the free version of SketchUp.

As far as v7, I think it will age well as we use it, like a fine wine... More people will create Dynamic Components than create Ruby scripts, and if manufacturers get into the act in a big way we'll all benefit over time from real-world parts.

I believe Google also thinks more holistically about the offering: SketchUp, Layout, StyleBuilder, and the 3D Warehouse. Maybe with v7.000 the balance feels wrong, but under the hood if feels good -- faster modeling, more stability, and exciting potential.

SketchUp is what it is, and does it well. Comparing it one minute with a subsurface modeler, the next with a Solid Modeler, and then with BIM or a full-on 2D CAD package seems a bit unfair. There's no one-size-fits-all for modeling apps.

-- William

Alan Fraser

I think that is the problem, William. SketchUp is such an easy modeller that it attracts a very broad church of users, each of whom want to pull it in their own particular direction.
I'm not complacent; I would like to have seen higher-poly support, decent UV mapping and some improvements to the UI, but I also am aware that they are still working on a raft of features which were simply not ready for this release.

I remember that it was a similar situation when V6 came out...people had been screaming for it for months, but when it did finally make an appearance other people then started moaning that they shouldn't have released it at all until certain bugs had been fixed. It's a fine line; and you are never going to please everybody.

I'm sure I'm not alone and that other beta testers were as surprised as I was at some of the speculation about possible new features. Expectations were running ridiculously high. @Last (when they were still @Last) made it absolutely clear that they were not at all interested in going down certain avenues...like NURBS or photoreal rendering. This is still the case. No matter how loud some people call for this stuff it's simply not on the agenda.

Regarding the shadow bug, I think it was John Bacus that told me it's a more complicated issue than Carmack's Reverse. So it's not just a question of Google coughing up the dough and making the problem go away.

Gaieus

Has anybody tried image export resolutions? Previously I had never been able to eport at the maximum 9999 pixl resolution (not to mention TIFF format )

Here is what I have been able to so far (formats with and without AA) The model has about 1.2 million+ edges and 300,000+ faces.

Mind you that these exports took 1-2 minutes only with my 2Gb RAM.

And again; this is not to "defend" anything. True that not everything has been improved significantly but there ARE areas where this release is much more superb than V 6.

Alan Fraser

I also think it is not insignificant that all of the tutorials on SCF that deal with animation...be it via hidden layers, travelling sections or Face Me components (some of those tuts by me) are all now totally redundant...at least for Pro Users. You can now animate directly with DCs...either along a simple vector, or by following a (hidden) path.

remus

I wouldnt say that alan, for some things doing it the old fashioned way would be faster than all this fancy new DC stuff.

remus

Scott, you wont be able to do a direct comparison though, because SU has inferencing which you cant turn off.

For a proof of sorts have a look at the file below, 1.7 million polys and orbitable Problem is all the edges are welded and hidden, so not really practical for day to day use.

high poly test.skp

high poly test_SU6.skp

Alan Fraser

@remus said:

I wouldnt say that alan, for some things doing it the old fashioned way would be faster than all this fancy new DC stuff.

Not if you can simply pull a DC off the shelf (or FF or the 3DW or here) which is what many people will do. There will soon be scores of ready-animated doors, windows and vehicles.

Richard

@whaat said:

@remus said:

Unless im mistaken, DCs arent ruby, theyre straight SU.

I think you're mistaken. Strange that they would use Ruby for this one. Oh well...
After a bit of initial disappointment, I am starting to get more excited about the new features of SU7. I think dynamic components will make things interesting. There's lots of potential there. I hope we'll get a detailed list of Ruby changes soon.

Hearing you say that gets everyone much more excited I think!

Richard

@unknownuser said:

Just a bit of clarification.

@unknownuser said:

@unknownuser said:

handle high poly count.

One of SketchUp's lead developers, John Bacus, has actually asked users at Basecamp exactly what this means. High poly support when orbiting, when modeling, with or without inference.
You see everybody whining about this feature but no one comes with any specifics and when they are asked for them no one replies. So by all means, SPECIFY what you mean with high poly support.

... huh? Coen doesn't know what we mean if we 'whine' about high poly support?

@unknownuser said:

@unknownuser said:

Every other modeler worth its weight is handling millions and millions of poly's and maybe choking, not SU........it chokes on hundreds of thousands! Come on!

Yes Scott, but the fact of the matter is that those applications don't support inferencing and/or not in such a superb way.
If I turn off Edges and Profiles I can easily handle 500.000 Faces as well. But I was earlier talking about a model with just 50K Faces in a normal inference enabled scene. When you turn off Edges and Profile the inference engine is likely to be switched off as well (though I'm not sure about this) and whatever be the case it DOES provide me with 10x higher framerate.

... well, whaddaya know ... he does know what it means. I'm sure John Bacus does as well.

Coen, I don't mind if you defend SU. Not at all even. But I would like you to do it without dodgy rhetorics. Pretty please?

Yeah have to agree with you here Stinkie - I've just read post after post of Coen sticking up for so many downfalls to the point I've actually got a bit cranky!

Some people (me included) aren't at all happy with the shear lack of poly support in SU.

Coen a 10% speed increase when we really need 100's isn't even on the measurement scale! To work even moderately efficiently in SU one must rely heavily on management. You mentioned in one post about Alan Fraser's trees and as amazing a job he has done on them and trust I've done many of my own as you would know they are still low poly!

Mate I suggest you drag one Xfrog or Onyx tree into a scene (where most apps will handle dozens or 100's) and SU will pretty much give up on you! Why do you think it is that most trees SU users use are billboards????

I must say that everytime somebody suggests a shortfall in SU somebody will offer a workaround - "workaround" is really a way of saying it doesn't work so here's some tape to hold it together! In regards to the issue of inferencing being a massive drag - one post I read recently and I think it was Whaat who replied suggested inferencing was infact not likely the drag given that the calcs to achieve this would be handled by the processor almost instantly!

Sure it well could be that high poly users are asking too much but mate if they are paying customers they can still ask!

In regards to DC's - if anyone counts on rendered output from SU they will soon find DC's have very limited application without the ability to make textures non-scaleable. Many manufacturers will also find that the lack of critical map placement will limit the quality reproduction of their product and find significant limits to there use!

Richard

@remus said:

Rick, although i agree with most of what youve said, i think SU has moved on form its sketched based origins. It is so easy to create hugely detailed models, if only SU was faster!

Larry, i have to agree. I cant help but think a huge amount of hassle could have been prevented if there was a good dialogue between developers and users.

Mate I think this happens well in testing - this is the one area where I must say the Googies shine!!!!

I will go out on a limb to say they listen, understand and interact far beyond what is normal to beta forums AND they even hear the same rants as we are reading here and take that weight on their shoulders well!!

Richard

In regards to Layout

I would really urge others to have a clean look at layout! I for one wrote it off completely in V1 and now it will become a big part of my daily workflow! Sure it won't right now replace even the most simple CAD app but I have real confidence it will become so quickly!!

It is now a very simple and effective page layout tool and a VERY good 2d design tool. I've currently been using it (during testing) to assist in the design of 16 individual dwellings to develop the floor plan layouts after massing in SU and now cant understand how I lived without a simple fast tool like this before!

Honestly I reckon I could bet each a carton of beer that Layout will develop toward something exciting as even incremental steps in functionality are realised!

Richard

@unknownuser said:

@unknownuser said:

It was said by someone else (sorry don't have the time to go through all the posts) that they have yet to see a truly professional presentation done in Layout that would change their mind into using it.....me either.

Scott I reckon I might prove you wrong there mate! Mind you I still have to finish it and I'm not sure of your expectations of course!

That said I still do have a lot of gripes with limited functionality though it really is a far better release this time around! And next time I reckon it will jump!

Stu

@richard said:

In regards to Layout

I would really urge others to have a clean look at layout! I for one wrote it off completely in V1 and now it will become a big part of my daily workflow! Sure it won't right now replace even the most simple CAD app but I have real confidence it will become so quickly!!

It is now a very simple and effective page layout tool and a VERY good 2d design tool. I've currently been using it (during testing) to assist in the design of 16 individual dwellings to develop the floor plan layouts after massing in SU and now cant understand how I lived without a simple fast tool like this before!

Honestly I reckon I could bet each a carton of beer that Layout will develop toward something exciting as even incremental steps in functionality are realised!

Woooo! If I can read between the lines....it looks like Richard is giving up MS Word as his prefered CAD app and moving on to Layout!!!

Mate, if anybody can make layout sing, it will be you .

Richard

@stu said:

Woooo! If I can read between the lines....it looks like Richard is giving up MS Word as his prefered CAD app and moving on to Layout!!!

Mate, if anybody can make layout sing, it will be you .

LOL - Yes mate MS Word is out the window now! Though I'm probably haunting the Googies now! Posted about 40 feature requests and you know where I would have got the ideas!

Yeah I actually developed a way to get LO to give SU style output with a sketchy style! Funny thing is it actually really speeds up the designing / drawing process in layout! I'll post some output and a tut soon as I get a chance!

Gaieus

Yeah, I remember those FR's - no-one could follow their own ones because you overwhelmed the place so much!

Actually they are good ones