Bonzai 1.0 is released
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You're right Edson, but there was a time Su was not free ( no one forced them to do so ). The point is, with all these useful plugins, SU is not really cheap, easy, intuitive... If you can need such a function like this plugin, would you buy it as a double feature for SU just to have a better functionality? Or should we wait till Google came out with improvements? ( there is a great silence ) If not, they can delete this function in two years for professionals. (it is just that SU is not more the easy to use, clean interface and intuitive software it had been )If improvements are taken too long, there is always a better solution by time and Google have to take care not to be overrun.
Otherwise if SU is just a platform for third party developers and plugin maniacs, it will overload SU ( there is no way to bundle and the costs will grow up - and thats not free of charge!) I call it - throw dust into the eyes!It's just I feel sad about to see what others can do. It is not really open source and it is not really Google. Long lead and no visible track.
Sad not ranting...
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that is a pretty good idea Coen!
I'd like to add these options though:
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All scripts should be modified so that they appear both in the '/view/toolbars/' and '/plugins/' menu with a representative name
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Under the '/help/about plugins... ' There should be info on the script popping up in a new window expaining how to work with it; giving info on the author; maybe link to Sketchucation for more info?
These option should make it look more like one Sketchup 7.x overhaul instead of some software installing several scripts.
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Nice idea, but unless SU is released under GNU Public License, it's never likely to happen.
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brilliant idea. why not suggest it to the google people?
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@alan fraser said:
Nice idea, but unless SU is released under GNU Public License, it's never likely to happen.
I had a quick browse trough the SU EULA and couldnt see anything stopping your from redistributing it, i may well have missed something, though.
Other than that i imagine the only problem would be a technical one, i.e. finding an installer that can install SU and the plugins at the same time.
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Actually, it states exactly that under Proprietary Rights.
What would be much more easily doable would be to install SU then have a ‘Bumper Plugins Pack’ which would install all the most popular (and free) Rubies in one fell swoop…maybe even with checklist boxes for which ones you actually want (if someone's feeling really ambitious)...having had a team check them out for compatibility problems first. Most could simply have the .rb file copied to Plugins, but obviously there are several others which require dlls and other system files to be installed elsewhere. -
So it does, my mistake.
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As a new Sketchup user, I love the idea of being able to download all of the most popular free rubies at one time and in one place. Maybe there could be one free package, and one package with the most popular rubies for sale. I also like the idea of choosing exactly which ones to install.
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you can load in one time all free ruby at CRAI Ruby Depot
Thx Didier Bur for that
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Nice intermediate solution idea Coen.
Alan's suggested ‘Bumper Plugins Pack’ idea with 'tick boxes' for the various rubies sounds like a doable idea.
I wonder could Jim's Extensions Index be further developed into somethings along these lines.
On the other hand we all know what is REALLY needed in SU, speed and ability to handle those BIG files.
Mike
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Back on track:
Bonzai3D: Components. Cut. Walls. With. Thickness.
That's all I wanted to say...
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Oh, and by the way...
Anyone used Bonzai's 'Keyboard Shortcuts...' feature? (Under the Edit menu). All shortcuts are completely configurable, and you can load in a set that duplicates most of SU's... (Go to 'Keyboard Shortcuts' > 'Load Defaults' and choose Preset 2). It's much easier to use Bonzai when all your familiar navigation kit is in place.
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@unknownuser said:
... by recognizing one common (product) name 'Community SketchUp' (or whatever). We take development into our own hands with this....
Brilliant idea Coen. Another good argument for Sketchup to be open sourced, although I'm sure Google will never do this but it would be nice to know what their SU business plan is.
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I am from Iran and also an architect that teaches at the university and (3d application as private). here 3dsMAX and Autocad and also Archiad are known apps, and rarely some students use SU (also rhino or other less-known apps..)
also they usually use it just for NPR rendering (and not modeling). I've tried to teach SU and make weblog or topics over webpages to inform architects about SU and make it more popular,by the way ... in my sight SU is veeeeeeeerrrrrrrrrry good for begginers (or let me say every one- and it is hard for me to migrate from it), but it is hard to say it is suite enough at the professional jobs, and one question remains that "which app. is the best solution for my architectural jobs?" (oneday I thought that su is the answer)... or even student jobs when they start curvieous froms? or mainly question: "how many software do I must know for my life to be fit enough
) ? "also rendering (PR rendering ) is the next timportant topic...
....at the field of modeling ,we need lots of plugins to do more advanced modeling and texturing ( that is still the real trouble)
at the same time we love our beloved sketchup, our community and also brave generous scripters....
but maybe instead of plugins ( or paralell to it) we need a more poerful core , and more native tools in sketchup... so:
is there anyone to awakenes googlies please?
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dear Coen; other mates
I thought that standardizing plugin user interface would be a great step tward your idea ( and also going out of this puzzle space of plugins) so i started this topic, and it would be nice if participate:
http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=180&t=20121 -
i have been watching a number of videos on bonzai, both the support ones and some that i found on youtube. my impression so far is that bonzai is very similar to sketchup with one difference: instead of being a core app to which one can add plugins it already comes with the plugins as native features. it is as if someone thought: let's make an app which is skp + all the available plugins for it.
of course, there is a good and a bad side to this approach, the latter being an apparent ban on outside development, like most apps we know.
so far i have not been able to judge how it handles high-poly models. perhaps to know that i will have to use it.
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SU rubies are a great improvement for the program as a whole, however, as someone who uses them a lot, I have a love/hate relationship with them. It's not uncommon to wait 10-20 minutes for certain rubies to calculate a large amount of geometry. SU is fast with lines, but compared to other programs, it's ability to crunch data is way behind the curve. For example, today I had to extrude a bunch of faces, which were all painted with the same material. I thought, easy, I'll just select by material and run JPP and it will save me a ton of time. I sat for almost 15 minutes of down time while JPP calculated 800 faces. In 5 minutes I could've exported to Max and back, selected all the faces by material and did a Edit Poly>Extrude and every face would've moved instantly, with no thinking, no lag, no calculation. When you rely on a program to make your living, down time is expensive. It feels like I am constantly waiting for Shape Bender, or JPP, or SSB, or SDS in excess of 10 minutes or upwards of 30 minutes sometimes. No fault of the programmers.....Ruby is just slow in general! A program whose major functionality (thanks to Google) are community plugins built in a slow language, will never be a program that will outgrow the competition.
Just an observation. I love SU....I'm just impatient with it sometimes.
I also really like Coen's idea of a community SU pack. It would really help a lot of the people I teach.
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I wonder if its worth doing a very simple multi push pull script? i just did a quick test and 800 faces was about 5 seconds to push/pull, i imagine jpp is doing a fair bit of extra work to find out whether it needs to do its curvy face thing ponder
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I was pulling up mortar joints around a pool coping, and they were rounded in the front, so JPP was needed. I was trying to make the point that the calculation speed of the Ruby language should be something that Google would want to sit back and have the bulk of the programs growing functionality dictated by. Only by integrating the most powerful rubies into the main programming and native toolset, will SU be fast enough to meet the demands of a visualization professional and keep up with the looming competition.
I say Fredo, Chris, Whaat, TIG and Didier get together and start a software company......for the people, by the people.
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Seems you have forgotten Thomthom and some others
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