New adventures in Sketchup Snobbery
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@bigstick said:
Remember when people sneered at Japanese cars, digital cameras and CDs? You will have the last laugh.
But unfortunately the Japanese were of a mindset that they would continue to improve their products until they were better than the competition. Google clearly doesn't seem to think like that regarding SU.
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Sketchup is a different product compared to 3dsmax, maya etc. so shouldnt be expected to compete with these packages in my opinion.
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One of my fellow members of our Church council is an Architect. He has some very expensive software package that he uses at his office. A couple years ago I had just started playing around with SU as a tool to design furniture to make in my shop and asked him about it. He sort of scoffed and said he'd never heard of it, but that it couldn't be worth much if someone could get it for free.
Some time later I offered to build a prayer rail in the sanctuary and came in, took some measurements of the alter area and the wheel chair ramp up to the alter where we wanted to put the prayer rail. I then did up the plans in SU to use both to present to the council what it would look like and to use as measured working drawings. Keep in mind, I don't do renders, this was just the output of SU alone with some off the shelf textures. When I showed the JPG stills of a few angles of view, our architect member was impressed and asked what I had used for the drawings. He was still impressed after I told him it was the free Sketch program from Google.
Later he had occasion to use another drawing I did for some fencing we wanted to install, and again he was pretty impressed. Even more so when I told him it had only taken me about ten minutes to do a quick but accurate representation of the end of our building where the fencing was to be installed.
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Think of it this way:
Two men are at the airport and they are both going to the same hotel, man one sees a guy in a black suit holding a sign with his name on it, it’s his chauffer, he is being picked up in a limo. The ride is smooth with even drinks available and state of the art sound system playing soft classical music, very soothing.
When he reaches the hotel the chauffer helps him into the reception with his bags, let’s call this the ‘Max experience’.Man two collected his baggage and exited the airport, he raised his hand and a taxi screeched to a halt, the driver loaded his luggage and when he was given the destination details he promptly departed, using his savvy cabby skills he know a quicker way avoiding all lunchtime traffic. There were no drinks available but that did not bother him as he bought a Coke from the vending machine as well as a packet of crisps. There was no soothing classical music, but that too did not bother him as he has all his favorite tunes on his IPod which he listened to during the brief trip to the hotel that once he arrived the cab driver assisted him to the reception and due to his road knowledge and short cuts his tariff was very low and actually a darn bargain, let’s call man two ‘Sketchup’.
What’s the difference, they both got from point A to point B which was the whole point in the first place, sure the one was more luxurious with more bells and whistles, but those extras cost a lot more and took time to arrange, the other got to his destination quicker and with less effort to organize and setup. If the limo had been as swift as the cab and arrived at the same time I bet that man one would have looked down very condescendingly at man two as he was driving in a cab as opposed to a limo, but hey he didn’t and man two got checked in sooner.
Sketchup ain’t much to look at but it certainly is quick and easy, accessible to everyone at a reasonable price, very much like a cab. -
I would have thought the next generation was going to turn out smarter. That's what my father told me. But now that I'm older is clear that my Father lied to me
I remember AutoCad 2.5; it came on 6 - 5 1/4" floppy diskettes, it has not changed a bit over all these years, now I comes on a DVD. (LOL) and it still only does 2d drafting. WOW now that's change I can believe in....... yeah right!
I remember one day being asked to do a simple 3d plan of an existing Condo that I had measured up. The firm I was working for at that time, was using AutoDesk Architectural Desktop. I spend 4 hours trying to accomplish several simple tasks, without much success, inserting on opening into a wall, not never finding a floor entity, nor was I able to raise the elevation of a floor a floor without creating a box. I went home that night, used SU, finished the entire 3d plan in less than 1 hr, exported it to dwg, bought it back to the office the next day. I left that firm shortly thereafter. They could not see why the $12,000.00 dollars they had spent on Software and Seats was not producing the return they had hoped for. My explanation of the benefits of SU went right over the Well Aged Scotch drinking heads of the Principals of the firm.
AutoDesk has done a marvelous job, training the next generation of users with of its outdated Software. This has been accomplished by their AutoDesk University and by supporting their education products at most major Technical and Post Secondary Institutions. And while we are now in the 21st century the Architectureal/Engineering Profession has not asked one fundamental question "Why do we still need 2d drawing to produce 3 dimensional buildings in the 21st century" ?.
You can see why today graduates in Architecture are clones of the snobs that preceded them. They are being trained by the same old school thinking snobs, who were learned it from their predecessors.
@johnsenior1973 said:
But unfortunately the Japanese were of a mindset that they would continue to improve their products until they were better than the competition. Google clearly doesn't seem to think like that regarding SU.
Yes. I agree, It seems Google's objectives are not the same as the original owners of SU had in mind. Thats why we on the Architectural Design side have to be more vocal and make our concerns known.
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Nice comments, both.
@unknownuser said:
Architectural Design side have to be more vocal and make our concerns known.
And while we are waiting for change, we can just go enjoying the ever increasing (in quality and variety) range of user-made plugins by which Su continues to develop
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@solo said:
Think of it this way:
Two men are at the airport and they are both going to the same hotel, man one sees a guy in a black suit holding a sign with his name on it, it’s his chauffer, he is being picked up in a limo. The ride is smooth with even drinks available and state of the art sound system playing soft classical music, very soothing.
...
Man two collected his baggage and exited the airport, he raised his hand and a taxi screeched to a halt, the driver loaded his luggage and when he was given the destination details he promptly departed, using his savvy cabby skills he know a quicker way avoiding all lunchtime traffic. There were no drinks available but that did not bother him as he bought a Coke from the vending machine as well as a packet of crisps. There was no soothing classical music, but that too did not bother him as he has all his favorite tunes on his IPod which he listened to during the brief trip to the hotel that once he arrived the cab driver assisted him to the reception and due to his road knowledge and short cuts his tariff was very low and actually a darn bargain, let’s call man two ‘Sketchup’.
...Hehe... This reminds me of me arriving at SF Airport for 3D BaseCamp. I was awaited by a chauffeur in black suit and a limo. Me wearing my two-year old sandals (that I'd been using at excavations for field work), shorts (you saw allmy clothes I took to Mountain View, Pete) and a single carry on luggage. I felt a bit funny...
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Solo that is a great analogy.
Autodesk have the whole thing pretty well sewn up though as they have the education side of it so well controlled. In the UK the only industry recognised qualifications in CAD are City & Guilds courses that solely use AutoCAD and courseware written by Autodesk. You cannot teach the course unless you are trained and accredited by Autodesk. I did these courses in 1998, the courseware is still pretty much the same now. In my opinion these courses are purposefully slow moving as this instills the idea of the Autodesk "vertical product range": the "you'll always need to buy another extension and come on another course..." method. It convinced me that the Autocad gui and workflow was the defacto way of doing things. I can only think that making it all so complex and elitist helps to justify the cost of the software.
The system works though, since my autocad indoctrination, I have immediately looked for GUI similarities with any other cad or 3d software I have used since and find it alien to take on another way of working. I know of a college that prefers to run their own none accredited cad classes just so that they have more flexibility with the software. -
I liked the cab vs limo analogy and just wanted to add that for some people, they have gotten so used to the limo ride that they dont even want to consider taking a cab. Regardless of all the beneficial savings and ease of use, they still want that limo ride.
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Why not make a SU collaborative model that tells a story based on this kind of snobbery? It would be a cool 3D "exquisite corpse" told in several scenes.
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