SU 9 Wishlist
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I think SkechUcation is simply indispensable to any SU user, far more than the Models Warehouse or Google Earth. Those you can get to directly from within SU by their own toolbar Icon or menu item.
What would be nice is an Icon to get to SketchUcation directly from within SU, but as a bonus allow the direct share of the model being worked on to ferret out problems.
Make it part of the "Help" subset via "F1".I don't mean an auto upload of the whole model, that may be impractical, but it could be an option for smaller or non-proprietary models.
At least (multiple) screenshots should be directly uploadable, again as an option. That way a user could both explain and show exactly the error message or drawing problem as it happens, and from different angles in real time.
This would save valuable time and effort trying to explain a problem after the fact, or having to prepare the file (for various reasons) or photo exports to upload.
I realize SketchUcation is NOT part of the Google universe, so some reluctance will be expected.
However Google does have its own SU BBS, so they could go there as the default, but allow an alternate BBS (SketchUcation) as well. -
What I'd like to see is an option for automatically downsizing imported texture images.
Basically just a sort of function that would show you all of the images in your file with resolutions and how much memory they take. Then you could say you want a max dimension of 1000px with a jpg compression of 6 and it would run all of your images through a filter making sure they meet the dimension requirement and compressing the file.
Maybe you could even set a memory requirement as well and SU could decide what it thinks is the best way to get down to that requirement.
Currently I have to export the whole 3d model to a .kmz, change that to a .zip, and open it up just to see if I have any big textures. And if I do, I have to scrounge around through materials until I finally find those textures, then send it to open up in SU, downsize it, save it and do the same for the other textures that are too large. That's a lot of manual labor that could be automated.
-Brodie
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@jgb said:
Me thinks that is a GPU/CPU artifact with your PC, not SU code. Maybe your GPU memory is not big enough (you need a minimum of 512mb for SU to operate smoothly)
On my PC, when coming out of "sleep" my SU active working area stays black for as long as 15 seconds, while the toolbars etc. come up fast.
Mine doesn't stay black but flickers ... like I would minimize and maximize it very fast and it's white. The toolbars appera last ones. And menu windows (materials, components, entity info, and so on) flicker as well, like I would select and deselect them very fast.
Is this behavior caused by not enough video RAM? -
@unknownuser said:
@jgb said:
Me thinks that is a GPU/CPU artifact with your PC, not SU code. Maybe your GPU memory is not big enough (you need a minimum of 512mb for SU to operate smoothly)
On my PC, when coming out of "sleep" my SU active working area stays black for as long as 15 seconds, while the toolbars etc. come up fast.
Mine doesn't stay black but flickers ... like I would minimize and maximize it very fast and it's white. The toolbars appera last ones. And menu windows (materials, components, entity info, and so on) flicker as well, like I would select and deselect them very fast.
Is this behavior caused by not enough video RAM?This flickering gets worse if your registry is filled with deadweight toolbar settings. Some times SU gets the toolbar settings messed up and end up creating more and more registry items. It seems to get worse as you restore and save positions once you gotten a few invalid entries. I ended up with about 2000 entries at one point. And I only had a few toolbars. But it caused the SU window to flicker and drag to a slow crawling snail. See this thread: http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=37990&p=335586#p335586
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I have a simple one...
Please allow the hidden edges to be given a thickness in the style settings as with the profile lines.
When exporting large images the thin default setting and small dash scale given to the hidden edges makes them almost invisible...That's all for now...
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Don't know if anyone's suggested this, but grouping layers.
eg I could put all "Frame-Left-Assembly-01, 02, 03" Layers under "Left Side Framing"
you know like we do in Photoshop, where you can group layers together
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native sub-D modeling with quads
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snap toggle (on/off)
(and - as usual - better texturing/unwrapping features, multicore support, faster save times or save in background, fixed toolbars)
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@khai said:
Don't know if anyone's suggested this, but grouping layers.
eg I could put all "Frame-Left-Assembly-01, 02, 03" Layers under "Left Side Framing"
you know like we do in Photoshop, where you can group layers together
Have you tried "Layer Manager" rb yet??
Not quite the layer grouping/nesting several users including myself suggested long ago, but pretty good.
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buy all these plugins and install them for us!!!!!!!
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@sixingno1 said:
buy all these plugins and install them for us!!!!!!!
wtf ?? you don't know how to copy a file in C:\Program Files\Google\Google Sketchup X\Plugins ??
Any financial investment made by somebody (eg, Google) asks for recovering... maybe a not-so-free Free version of SU
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@sixingno1 said:
buy all these plugins and install them for us!!!!!!!
Google, like so many other companies with paid creative help have a syndrome called the "NIH Factor" or better known as "Not Invented Here". Almost any "outside" idea cannot possibly be as good as what the paid help came up with.
Witness the countless good ideas made in this forum and in others over the years that are simply ignored or at best feebly explained away. Even the ones that WILL counter some obvious poorly thought out omissions and errors, and even some bugs.So the Ruby magicians fill the void, thank you.
But that being said, and having been in the s/w development game a lot of years (but not recently) there is a valid reason for not just simply incorporating the best externally developed Rubies into SU, aside from the accreditation and compensation issues.
Any large s/w development department has certain written or accepted standards of code structure and documentation, whether good, bad or indifferent, they have to have them. I can state unequivocally none of the external Rubies written follow those standards, mainly because those standards are not publicly known, and more likely, the Ruby magician has his own standards, or quite often, has to deliberately get around some standard that may impede performance or the function needed to make the Ruby work.
So the better part of the reticence to incorporate a really good solution is that the paid creative help have to transform that external code into the acceptable form, and the paid creative help really hate mucking about in somebody else's code. I've been there.
And, the Ruby magician is reluctant to reform his code to the standard, assuming he will be privy to it, because he has better creative fish to fry, and the transformation job is too much like real work, even if he is subsequently paid
and acknowledged for it. 
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Here's an important argument against bundling plugins: SketchUp release cycles vs induvidual release cycles. Does anyone really want to sit waiting for a new SketchUp release to have their favourite bundles plugins updated?
And another; what plugins suits you, will not suit the next person. So end up with someone always being unhappy because their favorite plugin is not bundled, or you end up with bloat because every freakkin plugin out there is bundled. cough cough AutoCAD cough
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I would tend to agree with thomthom. Although I think some of the more obvious or basic plugins could be incorporated, it's nice to not be beholden to waiting for Google to come up with updates to each of these. It would be nice, however, since plugins are so crucial, if Google setup a centralized location which housed all of the plugins, allowed ranking, etc. Sort of like going to mozilla to find firefox plugins. And along with that should be the option to be notified when one of your plugins has been updated.
-Brodie
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@unknownuser said:
It would be nice, however, since plugins are so crucial, if Google setup a centralized location which housed all of the plugins, allowed ranking, etc. Sort of like going to mozilla to find firefox plugins. And along with that should be the option to be notified when one of your plugins has been updated.
-Brodie
Does it has to be Google?
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Ideally I would tend to say yes. They've got a model via the Chrome extensions page that would work well and it would be the most intuitive for new users to have a google run page (all things being equal the google warehouse wouldn't be as popular as it is today if it didn't have google's name attached).
This would also afford a better possibility to access this page and install scripts directly from within SU (not unlike the warehouse access or google earth).
Additionally this might help to make installing plugins a bit more intuitive. It's not a tricky process once you've done it, but most initial users have never had to actually paste something in a folder and manually restart the program (or delve into the ruby console) to install a plugin. People are used to that sort of thing happening automagically when they click an .exe file or similar. This may be a separate matter, but I think that if google housed all of the scripts it would be more likely that this process would be streamlined, as is the case when you add a chrome plugin, for example. 3ds Max doesn't have a single warehouse for their plugins and I find it very frustrating - moreso than SU even. I've no idea what's available, I end up not knowing what to do with the files when I download them, and when I do install it, I may never find out where it's at within the program. SU isn't that bad but could be much less clunky than it is now in terms of getting, installing, and using scripts.
-Brodie
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I think Google would maybe have done that already. But they haven't for what ever reasons.
@thomthom said:
Does it has to be Google?
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There's no control on the dross the Google 3dWarehouse offers - Google don not have any resources dedicated to filtering a submission's quality - unless it's GoogleEarth related etc...
If there was an equivalent Google "PluginsWarehouse" it would be the same again.
The danger of installing a script from an unknown author is that it could cause havoc - think of it as 'the virus you install yourself'...
At least when you get scripts from 'us' at SCF [or SMustard etc] you 'know' the authors and so you know it's likely to be kosher... and where to complain/feedback etc... Also most are free or inexpensive too.We are currently having some debates in the Mods' forum about what to do about certain 'already posted' scripts, that are known to cause clashes/problems - albeit inadvertently [we haven't yet has any that deliberately mess up !]
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The warehouse needs some improvements, certainly, but I'll again point to something like the chrome or firefox addon pages. There's sufficient quality control there, there's a rating system, you don't need to worry about installing a virus, and everything is in one easy to find location.
I would suggest it's the other way around regarding security. Currently, so far as I can tell, SU is safe for the same reason Macs are safe. It's not that there are any wonderful safe guards in place here preventing nefariousness, it's just that it's a small enough user base that it's not worth the trouble. I could post a virus on the plugins forum and probably get a couple suckers to download it before someone caught it and deleted the post. I believe there are better safeguards at the sites I mentioned above.
-Brodie
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So, do we have any idea when Sketchup 9 will be out or are we all just again subjected to the usual Google guessing game
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@paulside said:
So, do we have any idea when Sketchup 9 will be out or are we all just again subjected to the usual Google guessing game
We are not yet a year into v8 - so v9 will arrive when it's ready...
Remember that this is not driven by profit like AutoCAD or Revit, where I'll be upgrading masses of 3rd party code for Revit r2013 et al early in the new year [Revit r2012 was finished and launched months ago - I know that should logically that should make it r2011... but then AutoDesk are always ahead of themselves]
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