SketchUp 2013 ;)
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::Chiefwoodworker::
Hi,
I consider myself a hobbyists when it comes to programming since all I know is product of people like thomthom, TIG, Chris Fullmer, Dan Rathbun and many more that unselfishly decided to help me and many others.
I do agree with you that there should be a place where everyone can share code even if its not the prettiest but please understand that SketchUcation provide us already with this need. Not everything should be imposed to Trimble's Extension Warehouse I am totally fine with the verification process to avoid problems.
Cheers!
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@chiefwoodworker said:
If his or her script sometimes steps on someone else's code and I have to disable that code for a period of time, so be it. It's not convenient, and I will likely inform him or her of the problem. But at least I have a solution.
Problem here is that it's not easy to know which plugin is the culprit. We've got too many threads here where people, many people, have spend hours trying to pin-point what is wrong - only to find out some plugin modified some of the core methods or something of the likes. That's lots of hours that could have been spent on more productive things - like developing new plugins. And it's especially frustrating when avoiding these issues are so extremely simple - just keep your plugin isolated in your own namespace and don't run wild with observers.
I'm baffled of the notion that an attempt to prevent this unnecessary time-waste is a bad thing... ?
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Who needs the Trimble Extension Warehouse? (POOR choice of a name, given the results of the 3d Warehouse--for which there is NO news of a much needed purge.)
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@unknownuser said:
Not everything should be imposed to Trimble's Extension Warehouse
My point exactly, although I will go one step further. We had this capability with the SCF store. Trimble wasted good SketchUp developer resources by reinventing the wheel and called it a major feature addition to SketchUp when what they should have done with those resources is something else altogether, like give us the Developer tool, fix bugs in the API, fix compatibility problems between the Mac and Windows versions etc. Instead we got a crappy release and have to wait another year to see if SketchUp is going to evolve as the tool we had always loved.
I really am done ranting on this release now. It is a complete disappointment, but I will wait a year and see what Sana Claus brings. Off to do some real work.
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I used to use a big player architectural software package that was no where near as flexible as SU & LO, the upgrade cost per year was as much as new seat for SU and sometimes the upgrades didn't seem worth it with them either. Let's keep things in perspective on the cost of upgrade against improvements and be prepared to accept that SU is going to be adapted to fit Trimble's aspiration for a commercial user base.
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@pbacot said:
TT go take a look at SU on Mac. Toolbars and Windows are crap. If you use different monitors it is even worse. There is no program that takes such time rearranging toolbars and windows, even within sessions.
I suppose they did nothing on the appearance of SU on Retina Display. Really bad.
No, it's at least not that bad..The last maintenance update of SU 8 did already support Retina (or HiDPI) for the workspace. SU13 supports it now for all native toolbars as well (only most ruby plugins still look washed out..with a few exceptions though).
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@archheni said:
@pbacot said:
TT go take a look at SU on Mac. Toolbars and Windows are crap. If you use different monitors it is even worse. There is no program that takes such time rearranging toolbars and windows, even within sessions.
I suppose they did nothing on the appearance of SU on Retina Display. Really bad.
No, it's at least not that bad..The last maintenance update of SU 8 did already support Retina (or HiDPI) for the workspace. SU13 supports it now for all native toolbars as well (only most ruby plugins still look washed out..with a few exceptions though).
What I find in v. 8 is the selected entities are nearly invisible. Same with many things like axis and cursors, even with the display resolution turned down. Fredo's function bars are squashed and made useless (maybe nothing SU can do on that?).
The lines do look cleaner on Retinal Display on the other hand, a small thing since SU team apparently does not care to improve the AA in SU for Mac (or have they in 2013?). Add the poor materials window and I wonder if they intend to drop the Mac one of these days.
(I think icon resolution is up to the icon maker.)
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@chiefwoodworker said:
My point exactly, although I will go one step further. We had this capability with the SCF store. Trimble wasted good SketchUp developer resources by reinventing the wheel [...]
SCF Store was released a couple of weeks before SketchUp's release. Clearly they'd been developed in parallel. That's hardly reinventing the wheel. Should they have just cut the feature because SCF solution was released marginally earlier?
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I completely agree with Thomas; rogue scripts are a pain in the arse. I recently had SU begin bugsplatting every time I tried to apply certain materials (Iām talking plain colours, so no iffy image format or mapping to contend with). The culprit finally turned out to be a roof-builder plugin I was trialing, whichā¦as far as I can recallā¦didnāt even use materials, so the detective work can be pretty tricky and time-consuming.
As for the point about experts in a particular area coding scripts that get the specific job done, I think that is precisely what the devs are aiming for in this release. If you recall, the stated aim of Trimble acquiring SU was to use it as a platform across their range of applications. What better way to do that than to provide the plain vanilla program with an extension link built right into it? Iām pretty sure that all the coders resident on these boards will soon have all their scripts uploaded to the EWā¦but so will all the other 3rd party developers, be they involved in rendering solutions, landscape architecture, town planning or some aspect of interior design or straight architecture.
The first scripts to populate the EW were SketchUpās own. When the Trimble buy-out was breaking news, all manner of speculation arose here as to the future of SU. The doomsayers were predicting that it would veer away into a variety of new flavours, none of which would suit them. In fact, what it appears to be doing is staying exactly the same, but readying itself for a whole new raft of bolt-ons, dependent on what you want to use it for, including Trimbleās own. To me, that makes much more sense than bringing out half a dozen different flavoursā¦none of which might completely fit the bill.
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@thomthom said:
@chiefwoodworker said:
My point exactly, although I will go one step further. We had this capability with the SCF store. Trimble wasted good SketchUp developer resources by reinventing the wheel [...]
SCF Store was released a couple of weeks before SketchUp's release. Clearly they'd been developed in parallel. That's hardly reinventing the wheel. Should they have just cut the feature because SCF solution was released marginally earlier?
No, it should never have made number one or two priority of things that made the list to be included in the 2013 release in the first place. There were much more valuable ways to spend resources.
thomthom, I am really at a loss to understand why you and other "almost SketchUp development team members" are being so protective of this release. We stand no chance of getting real improvement in SketchUp if people like you aren't willing to push back on Trimble. You have my admiration for the help you have provided me and other developers over the years, but you and the influential others should be honest with Trimle. This release is a joke, and to increase the price of SketchUp in the face of this joke is the height of arrogance.
It is curious to me why you guys have to be out in front protecting Trimble when there seems to be no Trimble people (short of Chris who has been a member of the team for only a short while) here listening to users concerns. Are you really pleased with this release?
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I think that the problem with most of you is that you expect Sketchup will become like more "professional" modellers. So, like Cinema4d, and 3dsMax etc etc...These are parametric modellers with advanced tools and also more tools...Sketchup, now has a problem. What is the pilosophy behind Sketchup now and where does it goes to?. If they choose to have a modeller that is good for modelling and to create 'sketchy' renders with quite simple modelling tools..Sketchup is great now. But if they want to bring it to a higher lever they should choose another name(a new product) and use the same intuitive ui with deformer-tools etc etc...At this point, every release will be disapointing...believe me...
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@unknownuser said:
... I am really at a loss to understand why you and other "almost SketchUp development team members" are being so protective of this release. We stand no chance of getting real improvement in SketchUp if people like you aren't willing to push back on Trimble. You have my admiration for the help you have provided me and other developers over the years, but you and the influential others should be honest with Trimle. This release is a joke, and to increase the price of SketchUp in the face of this joke is the height of arrogance.
It is curious to me why you guys have to be out in front protecting Trimble when there seems to be no Trimble people (short of Chris who has been a member of the team for only a short while) here listening to users concerns. Are you really pleased with this release?
Joe, it's beginning of new era for coder market(situation does not same as 2 or more years later... like daz studio or poser, vue and etc. market)... they want stay on it.
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@gus r said:
@krisidious said:
@jpalm32 said:
@notareal said:
@bbrown said:
Sounds like "Zoom In More" is the thing for me... cannot remember how often I have been frustrated with the broken zoom. But if trimble will now release a new version yearly (as paid upgrade), maybe I'll wait the next one that actually offers more than some bug fixes. Sure, LayOut did get a proper update (or so it sounds), but I never use it... and with sketchucation plugin store, I hardly find Extension Warehouse interesting.
Not much here for free users, user that don't use layout or improvements. IMO
Think this is a new platform to start separating free & pro.I think the new toolbar system and the overall program development in the background of the software are all you get with Make and you can't use it for Professional use, a huge mistake in my opinion.
Ironically it was the free and open source Ruby programming language that helped increase Sketchup's usefulness and popularity. Imagine if you will if Yukihiro Matsumoto had decided to allow people to use his Ruby programming language with a footnote of "not for commercial use." Where would Sketchup be today? It was the free and open access of Ruby and Ruby developers that provided their work for free to the Sketchup community and continue to this day. It is their work that makes Sketchup and while there are many "payware" addons the majority and the most popular of these are free and those come with no limitations as to their use.
W/O Ruby & the talented people here., SU would have died a quick death.
Might still do that! -
So if I understand the theory correctly this is Sketchup "Pro" as "SketchUp Basic"(vanilla) -- which would then be extended via Trimble developed scripts put on the "warehouse"... and I suppose those extensions would all be free? If not, what extra costs are we talking here?
Because $95 per year already eclipses the upgrade costs for previous versions of SketchUp Pro by a margin of 2:1... any additional costs would sweeten the deal just that much more.
Best,
Jason. -
My profession: Set designer
User since SKP3I don't care for any changes but PERFORMANCE INCREASE!!!
I am severely limited by the measly 4gb of ram I can allocate to skp.
I have 32gb on my machine and want to put them to use!
PLEASE LET US BUILD BIGGER MORE DETAILED MODELS BY GIVING US MORE RAM!!!!
I push the limits of this program on almost every project I'm on and I do not like bounding boxes and waiting for the spinning beach ball of death. (Mac user)
...yes I am using layers, yes I purge unused components, yes I purge unused textures.
Please.
Swissmountain
Thank you Fredo for all the amazing plugins you wrote.
Thank you thomthom and Chris Fulmer you are my hope in guiding Trimble.
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@pbacot said:
@thomthom said:
@archheni said:
Yes, this used to be the workaround. However now it doesn't work anymore. To quote ThomThom: "It only works on native toolbars. Doesn't work on Ruby Toolbars unfortunately."
I was referring to the new toolbar system on Windows. Didn't realize that OSX ha toolbar problems as well. Though it was just us peecee guys...
TT go take a look at SU on Mac. Toolbars and Windows are crap. If you use different monitors it is even worse. There is no program that takes such time rearranging toolbars and windows, even within sessions.
I suppose they did nothing on the appearance of SU on Retina Display. Really bad.
the Mac toolbar is stupid from the beginning, whatever the application. A huge waste of space and once you've filled a row you have to use a scroll button to see more.
Sometimes SU (which, I think, began on Mac) makes me want to get a PC. No other apps do.
Yeah DITTO and most of the SU team uses Macs from what I've seen on base camp videos
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My proverbial 2 cents:
SU 2013 might not have much SU features on the outside but it certainly does have under the hood, I find it faster and more stable. It does take some getting used to the new icons as they are not instantly recognizable and dock different to the side (I got them to side dock double)
I'm content, sure everyone knows my wish list as it's been the same since @last owned SU and even Google never provided any solutions so no use flogging a dead horse.
The biggest improvement happened with Thea4SU, something I use daily, occasionally I'd get splats and hanging renders but so far it's cruising sweet and fast.
Another is I have not gotten any greyed out menu's but that may be because I do not have a kajillion plugins like with SU8 and will also contribute to SU 2013 opening in a second and not a minute.Had my say...carry on.
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@chiefwoodworker said:
No, it should never have made number one or two priority of things that made the list to be included in the 2013 release in the first place. There were much more valuable ways to spend resources.
That depends on point of view though. Personally I find a repository to be a very important feature in the SketchUp ecosystem. It's what is needed in order to mature the market of plugins and extensions. I've many times sketched up the design for a repository myself - but realising how huge a task it is. So I'm happy it's finally being realised - not even that, we now have two! The EW that ships with SU that will bring attention to the Plugin/Extension feature in SketchUp (free marketing) to every SketchUp user out there. Then we have SCF's shop which contains all the existing plugins out there and is even compatible with older SketchUp versions.
@chiefwoodworker said:
It is curious to me why you guys have to be out in front protecting Trimble when there seems to be no Trimble people (short of Chris who has been a member of the team for only a short while) here listening to users concerns. Are you really pleased with this release?
I fully understand that people can feel underwhelmed by SU2013. To be honest my initial gut reaction was "was that all?". I was particularly hoping for API improvements.
But none the less, I think the EW is a great feature - for the reason stated earlier of it's great marketing value for developers. Something I do think will attract more developers with more great ideas and tools. As I said - it's a feature I nearly developed myself. That's why I can say I like it even though there was no API improvements. From Basecamp 2012 they made it clear they aim to make SketchUp a platform - and I do believe that will be carried through. Yes, no Ruby API love this time, but a new C API that is supported in contrast to the unsupported C++ API.
And another thing - it was in April 2012 that SketchUp became part of Trimble. That just a little bit over a year from which they got new owners with new goals.
I see this release as turning around a big ship. Looking at it in a long term picture and I have good hopes of good things to come. I'm focusing on the positive things in this release even though it didn't include everything I'd hoped for.
It does also help when you get to talk to the SketchUp team like at BaseCamp - where one get the opportunity to have a face to face dialogue with them. I mean, we had many of the regular coders here at the forum in a great session on what we'd like to see introduced and improved. That was in October, just about half a year ago.I think the crux in our differences here is how we look at the time-scale and expectations.
But it's only so far we'll get by talking about what we expect etc. In one year's time when we see the second Trimble SketchUp release we'll get a much clearer picture of the direction SketchUp is heading.
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It looks like this release of SU is there to lay the foundations for the integration into the Trimble suite of products which makes complete sense.
Those not involved in the construction industry can't appreciate the need for SU (or similar tools) to take on the Autodesk high priced monopoly that is seriously hampering the evolution of IT in that sector and in education. That will come to an end somehow and SU just might do it.
I am patient with this release but will have high expectations for the next release to show real feature add-ons.
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Does anyone seriously believe that a Free version of anything should be available for Professional use ?
If you want to make money from it, pay for it.....it's quite simple....!
As for SU 2013, here is my 2 cents worth :
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I think we have lost perspective of how brilliant SU was when @last first introduced it, and sure, it needed (and still needs) a bit of a kick to get it to do more because us humans always want things to do more. And yes, if it wasn't for certain individual plugin developers SU wouldn't be as good as it is now. My point is this, SU is still pretty damn good.
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I'm with Thomtom, Solo and a few others who are looking at this a little more objectively
and...
- We will eventually discover whether or not Trimble fully understand exactly what the needs of the high end users of SU are....the question remains if they can deliver all those things and at a reasonable price point and within a reasonable time frame, because if not, the market will talk with their wallets, and competitors will seize on the opportunity to secure our business. Trimble have been around for long enough to understand that basic concept.
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