Trimble is having SketchUp pay its way!

jgb · 3 Aug 2012, 15:16

I'm not in any way knocking Trimble's buyout of SU. But for anyone to say that the ability to use SKP's in Trimble's devices as a "direction" of their intent, is not logical.

You do not need to own the SU engine to use a drawing data file, which we call a SKP.
You only need to understand how SU structures its data, and any good Ruby magician knows that well.

It then becomes obvious that Trimble has some other strategic plan to either somehow use the engine in its products (royalty free) or upgrade SU to better suit the community's needs, as well as their own, again without paying royalties and navigating Google's political/bureaucratic landscape.

Hopefully, upgrading SU in the spirit it has been for a long time, and NOT relegating all of the good new stuff to only the Pro version is the better way. Maybe putting some older Pro only features into new free versions would be an act of good faith on Trimble's part.

Mike Lucey · 4 Aug 2012, 13:04

Hi Joel,

You may well be right, however its the first instance we are publicly aware of where Trimble are leveraging SketchUp and surely that could to some degree looked on as a direction

Mike

sonder · 4 Aug 2012, 16:07

@pbacot said:

@unknownuser said:

Agreed. I am in the process of going almost completely paperless. A couple of our local building departments are starting up the process of digital reviews.

Just hope by that they don't mean dwg or dwf. Will be nice. On some jobs we've just uploaded to print service and what people ordered (DL pdf or prints) was up to them. But no movement around here to go digital at the building dept. I am surprised it's more advanced up there on the "hill".

No, it will be PDF format. There are too many variations between acad users to make review of cad files work. It still needs to be a static output form that can be produced by different programs like old school paper.

jgb · 4 Aug 2012, 20:08

@unknownuser said:

Agreed. I am in the process of going almost completely paperless.

The "paperless office" has about as much chance of success as the paperless toilet!

chrisglasier · 4 Aug 2012, 21:35

[off:2a15cxe0][/off:2a15cxe0]
@jgb said:

@unknownuser said:

Agreed. I am in the process of going almost completely paperless.

The "paperless office" has about as much chance of success as the paperless toilet!

Think about getting cash without writing a cash cheque and stop being such a Luddite.

Mike Lucey · 4 Aug 2012, 23:21

...... good point. I write very few cheques these days ALSO very few letters, its nearly all email. So I think the paperless office is somewhat well over 50% here already!

Bob James · 5 Aug 2012, 03:29

@jgb said:

@unknownuser said:

Agreed. I am in the process of going almost completely paperless.

The "paperless office" has about as much chance of success as the paperless toilet!

We have four Toto toilets with Washlets (think Bidet). No paper. So you just never know

chrisglasier · 5 Aug 2012, 03:33

@mike lucey said:

...... good point. I write very few cheques these days ALSO very few letters, its nearly all email. So I think the paperless office is somewhat well over 50% here already!

Maybe not off topic after all.

I don't think you can claim "paperless" while paperwork processes persist. For example I remember seeing cheques being sorted by hand in long file boxes before being bundled and sent off to the clearing house. Later, cheques were coded so that the sorting was automated to a degree but the basic process was unchanged until real computerisation took over.

I think we are at the same basic stage with construction project documentation and it won't change until in simple terms every little thing becomes clickable. We may well be able to produce the finest drawings but really we need to be assembling pertinent self-organising networks.*

A good Sunday topic you may think needs its own space.

*After Toffler's well-worn: "Static competition may well produce the thoroughbred racehorse but would never produce the automobile."

Khai · 5 Aug 2012, 10:27

@bob james said:

@jgb said:

@unknownuser said:

Agreed. I am in the process of going almost completely paperless.

The "paperless office" has about as much chance of success as the paperless toilet!

We have four Toto toilets with Washlets (think Bidet). No paper. So you just never know

what? not the three seashells?

sonder · 6 Aug 2012, 17:28

@jgb said:

@unknownuser said:

Agreed. I am in the process of going almost completely paperless.

The "paperless office" has about as much chance of success as the paperless toilet!

This is why most offices cannot do it. They think like this. You just have to change your attitude and approach. You're probably still writing checks

I'm doing quite well at it right now - not a single roll of drawings in my office.

sonder · 6 Aug 2012, 17:30

@bob james said:

@jgb said:

@unknownuser said:

Agreed. I am in the process of going almost completely paperless.

The "paperless office" has about as much chance of success as the paperless toilet!

We have four Toto toilets with Washlets (think Bidet). No paper. So you just never know

I don't know, that might be one paper I'll keep. The thought of what that toilet may look like after a hard weekend scares me a little.

chrisglasier · 6 Aug 2012, 18:57

@unknownuser said:

I'm doing quite well at it right now - not a single roll of drawings in my office.

But are there still huge piles of drawings in your projects' site offices?

pbacot · 6 Aug 2012, 19:47

I am at a computer all day so accessing anything in my projects is second nature for me. However I have both digital and hardcopy code books. While I can search the digital, I still find the hardcopy better for studying an issue. I can move through more quickly and see related information (despite the dismal indexes).
Similarly the big issue will be making finding digital information more accessible to people on the jobsite. Will it require more standardization (never seems to work) or indexing and linking for this to catch on? Or maybe the pdf on an Ipad sort of interface is enough. I can thumb through an iPad set pretty quickly compared to handling E size sheets, myself. It's already clear that distribution of new issues is instantaneous compared to paper copies, (as long as there's an internet link).

aarondietzen · 6 Aug 2012, 21:03

I think that a big advantage that digital media has over print is right there. To get the needed detail in a set of plans, you end up with an E size roll of paper under your arm. I know someone was asking about bigger tablets (which would be nice) but the advantage with a tablet, even a small one, is the ability to zoom. You don;t need an E size tablet if you can zoom in to the section you need to see. With print media, the scale and paper size limit what you can put onto a page, digitally, the limits disappear (or shrink!).

sonder · 6 Aug 2012, 22:30

@chrisglasier said:

@unknownuser said:

I'm doing quite well at it right now - not a single roll of drawings in my office.

But are there still huge piles of drawings in your projects' site offices?

My personal site office is me and my ipad, so no.. The contractors generally keep a couple sets on site, but even they are walking around with ipads these days - not all of them, but more and more are primarily working off pdf's then hard copies.

chrisglasier · 7 Aug 2012, 04:15

@unknownuser said:

@jgb said:

The "paperless office" has about as much chance of success as the paperless toilet!

This is why most offices cannot do it. They think like this. You just have to change your attitude and approach. You're probably still writing checks

...

I just wonder how long it will be before the last part reads: "You're probably still drafting drawings".

Thanks for the info about the site office btw.