What does SU mean to you?
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I come from a mechanical engineering background, and today I use SU for many things, mostly as hobby purpose.
To me it's first key feature is that it's fun and easy to use to put ideas on the screen (3D or 2D). I use it all the time to design parts, to create graphics illustration of countless topics that have nothing to do with either design or CAD or the like. I even use it for pure fun sometimes, just like doodling on a piece of paper.
I have been a user of CAD, even a maker of, for years, this is no CAD software, it's a design gem. It's simple, intuitive, progressive (you can start with few tools, then get more, then plugins, then even program your own if they don't exist), that is priceless. I went back to programming after more years than I'd like to share here and learned ruby, just for the fun of programming plugins, some I haven't even really used, just enjoyed creating the plugins (a lot still in the works
)just because I could and I had the idea.It's second key feature (or maybe even the first) is that it is sufficiently simple, free on the ground access and widely distributed that anyone can get it. that creates a community of creators, from things (3D warehouse) to enhancements (plugins, other software) to use (sketchyphysics anyone?).
There is not a month that I'm not astonished as to what someone came up with using SU, both in technical terms (plugins) or design, or ideas. That is only possible with SU and how it was distributed. I don't see that in solidworks. Sure solidworks can do great things, if you're rich and a specialized engineer, but that's beside the point.
I wrote about it before, but I know there are kids out there that played with SU, and the mere fact that they could put the fruit of their imagination on the screen, is the stuff of greatness. It empowers them, it makes them want to create, to think, to discover. That too is priceless, it's a tool that creates the future.All that is not happening with Atuodacd, is it?
So that is, part only, of what SU means to me. I have been pushing a lot of people around me, whether they are blacksmiths, machinists, physics teachers, kids, corporate businessmen and so on to open their mind to the empowerment that SU would give them, the ability to sharpen and solidify ideas, the ability to visualize and illustrate almost anything (static, 2D, 3D, animations, etc..)
To me SU is not CAD, it's a paradigm shift, like the transistor, the computer, the Macintosh (I couldn't resist), the Iphone, etc.. There is a before SU and an after SU. There was a time where design software was for professional experts, and now there is a time where anyone that can think, can create and show it. It's the first step, let it not be the last.
Could the paradigm (make it simple versus for technical specialists) be extended to FEA (Finite element analysis, ability to create structures and calculate their strength) and CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics, the ability to design shapes based on fluid interaction (air, wind, temperature, etc..)? Now that would be step 2 and 3, and what the general community would come up with in return would be even more astounding.
Sketchy physics went in that direction, an awesome thing and thus look how it was received. The dream lives on! -
Hi Michael, hi folks.
Great writing.
I feel exactly the same.
When I use SketchUp (SU) nearly nothing interposes between my idea and the result on the screen. I can focus on the model, not on fighting with complex menu structure and hidden settings and complex manipulations.
I often do, and did, demonstrations to some colleagues at work and friends and relatives at home of SU's capabilities and the WOW factor is always there when someone sees it for the first time. What mesmerize my work colleagues the most is the fluidity of SU when doing modeling while panning, orbitting and zooming all together.
As you wrote it, SU gives the power to produce great 3D model to anyone willing to spend a few hours of learning and this is great.
BTW, I am also a mechanical engineer in my 35th year of career.
Just ideas.
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Perhaps that group developing Euclideon are thinking about finite elements and fluid dynamics?
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@mitcorb said:
Perhaps that group developing Euclideon are thinking about finite elements and fluid dynamics?
I looked at that, very interesting. I doubt it though because of two reasons:
First they are focusing on detail and complexity displaying, not mechanical design issue.
Second because "voxelization" of a 3D world by comparison to polygonization is a much different conceptual direction. It increases the ability for level of detail/zoom level, but at the expense of reducing logical cohesion of the data. To be more clear:
A face is really a huge collection of points related to each other. Great when you want to see it small, or see all the individual particles of sand that constitute it, but not so good when what you want to know is just one face, with a normal vector (for which you can apply ONE coefficient of granularity if you really want to be picky for mathematical calculations).
I may be incorrect, but I believe that polygons modeling (or even a higher degree of surface integration and conceptualization if there were one) is better for already heavy non linear calculations such as FEA and CFD.Furthermore, my discourse was not about create those software, they already exists, but to find a way to make them simple and accessible to more and more people ala SU philosophy for CAD. I wish I could and I've looked into it, but at this point it's beyond my resources and competence alone.
But I could be wrong. Thanks for the suggestion though, it was interesting and new to me.
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Really nice words.
SketchUp + Sketchy-physics got my interest since I was 12.
My programming skills went up exponentially and it got my interests in space NASA -
In the mid 1990's. i had tried rhino3d and bryce. Got bored quick. While I was at Uni , I smoked alot of pot. My housemate, an arch student
showed me SU. It was fun to smoke and draw. SU became a hobby, not the smoking, but the drawing.
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