Let's build a new 3D software!
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I think the post should be renamed to get wider attention. 'Lets build a new Sketchup?' perhaps.
Also a vote might be informative. ( I would vote no, I am happy with SU and the pace of development, although I can understand the frustrations of power users like Oli ).
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@olishea said:
I believe there is a niche for something that appears intuitive, easy to use, (dare I say it, fun) yet can be so powerful at the same time. A sketchup on steroids. A software that actually develops and evolves over time, taking full advantage of the power your computer can offer.
Ahhh.... PlusSpec?
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@utiler said:
@olishea said:
I believe there is a niche for something that appears intuitive, easy to use, (dare I say it, fun) yet can be so powerful at the same time. A sketchup on steroids. A software that actually develops and evolves over time, taking full advantage of the power your computer can offer.
Ahhh.... PlusSpec?
yeah, that is why I think we need "only" for now, is a better engine under the hood of sketchup. All the rest can be done with plugins.
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I believe the answer "(yes|no) we (can|cannot) achieve this with plugins in the current SketchUp" depends on how we understand each other's imagination how SketchUp should work.
Plugin developers have no influence on the "core", and the scope, flexibility and capabilities of the core decide what wishes plugins can solve.
Can tomorrows's core be the same today's just with infinite performance improvements?
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The new title is OK but aren't you really looking for "An Alternative to Sketchup"?
@olishea said:
I just have a vision of a completely different 3D app that remains approachable, easy to use, dynamic, simple and innovative. An app that becomes as complex as YOU want it to be. An app that evolves with the times, evolves with your computer power, evolves with trends in 3D modelling. Forget the jargon, forget the conventions, we need something fresh; a whole new way to model in 3D.
You would be really better off to forget about a single 3D app and think about a web operating system that describes the component or collection of components and their properties and methods, links in a library like three.js to generate 3D graphics and selects small apps to translate methods to direct the library's functionality. By breaking up the competences in this way development is distributed amongst interested parties to evolve over time in line with all the prerequisites of your vision.
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I didn't even change the title. Which rascal did that?
No I don't want a New SketchUp!
haha
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@utiler said:
@olishea said:
I believe there is a niche for something that appears intuitive, easy to use, (dare I say it, fun) yet can be so powerful at the same time. A sketchup on steroids. A software that actually develops and evolves over time, taking full advantage of the power your computer can offer.
Ahhh.... PlusSpec?
Ahhh, windows only...
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You have a new program!
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Personally I welcome the BIM movement mostly for parametric and smart object modelling. I have no desire to become a bean counter... Anything to make modeling more real-world and faster.
There is talk about the modelling process and continuing with the SU + plugin paradigm or not, but really what always gets me about SU is the performance. I don't do anything NEAR the fancy and extensive work others show here, but just trying to show my client a decent model or render of their house I run up against the ability of SU to perform on larger models. I must spend time on workarounds tiptoe-ing about this polygonal ceiling for my simple projects.
Still we all find it workable, but if there's if there's a movement on jumping ship, it's always performance that comes to my mind.
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@pbacot said:
Still we all find it workable, but if there's if there's a movement on jumping ship, it's always performance that comes to my mind.
THIS is the priority; performance, performance, performance!
Thanks for the share Pilou, looks very promising. Blender is truly excellent but hardly accessible for less advanced users. Now if we could cross sketchup with blender; that would be cool!
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@olishea said:
Blender is truly excellent but hardly accessible for less advanced users. Now if we could cross sketchup with blender; that would be cool!
There's so much to like with both. However, they operate in such different worlds, learning curve being one of the major differences. Now personally, if Blender could steal some of SU's inferencing, I'd be 
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Yup.
Forget all the VR, iPad, peripherals etc for the time being. This will come with time, so long as the core allows it from the beginning and can evolve to accommodate other peripherals.
The learning curve is the biggie, Andy. Blender is sometimes like a completely foreign language to me and others. Yes it can do everything but not without some headache.
I'm thinking of a software between SU and Blender in terms of simplicity and performance. There is nothing really like that at this moment in time.
Even if I had Blender performance with a SU style interface and inference option, I'd be much happier, although not completely satisfied.
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It's coming!
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SketchUp is now owned by Engineers, you can already tell, they removed all the color from the icons, whats up with that? Is that an important improvement for me to go out and buy 2014? There is no speed improvement. No x64 rewrite. All we have is more stringent enforcement of Ruby code..... Big deal! It may have helped to add a competing Python API, a much preferred API over Ruby which never should have been chosen in the first place.
I was also hoping my GPU graphics card would help with rendering tasks!
In the mean time I will try to keep the dream alive
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Engineers should never mess around with anything that Architects use...!
I share Oli's frustrations, and it has got to the point where I doubt I can trust SketchUp these days.
The latest in my frustrations hinges around the North tool, or the absence thereof, and before anyone suggests using the North Tool plugin, let me say that the plugin doesn't cover all my bases.
It is time consuming, annoying, frustrating and unnecessary to have to fart arse around with setting up a project for a Sun Study and apply textures that become disoriented under the current system and never be certain that the information I am providing is correct.
There are legal implications for those of us who get a Sun Study wrong. We simply need to be able to set the location, GMT, allow for changes in seasonal time adjustments, and the date and times we require to be able to do what we have to do. Geo locating should be a choice instead of the only option...!
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Hmmm...
I've been reading through this thread, and I don't share much of the pessimism. The only thing I share common ground is on the question of performance - which can be much improved on large models, as has been said many times.
My use of Sketchup is in Architecture. For small projects, I am even making construction drawings using SU and LO. I am actually very happy with the BIM direction that Sketchup seems to be moving in, as it promises to increase my productivity.
But the big strength about Sketchup is the ecosystem around it. Plugins and the 3D warehouse are the two big ones (although the organisation of the 3D Warehouse leaves much to be desired). I love how instead of moaning how your software doesn't so something you want, you can direct your energy into A. finding an existing plugin or B. making a plugin yourself to do what you want to do.
Can't we trust the Sketchup team to simply concentrate on improving the core in the little ways they can, extend the API, and even provide a different language API if we think that there will be speed improvements?
Are you sure you can't simply make a (big) plugin to fulfil those dreams? Or at least request extra API features from Sketchup?
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I don't feel there is enough interest for this to go ahead. Obviously people are happy waiting and waiting and waiting and....
The scale of time, money, collaboration, people, marketing is way too high for this to be achievable. Of course it can be done but there is no interest.
We've had talks of SketchUp "Ultimate" before and nothing ever happens. I can only try and rally people together but if there is no desire to change things, then we will just have to use other apps if we are looking for performance.
<Opens Blender>
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Maybe there's no will for it here Oli - I suppose there will always be a certain loyalty here to SU - but maybe you are simply appealing to the wrong audience?
I agree with you 100%, there's a huge gap in the market for something with SU's ease of use, but the power and scalability of Blender etc. - more so every day as 3D printing etc. become more available.
Maybe approaching the Blender community would be more beneficial..
- It is all open source, with a large, enthusiastic and committed developer base.
- Has API's for (IIRC) Python and C++.
- Has a mature, fast and reliable 3D engine behind the scenes.
- Easily extendable with plugins, C extensions etc.
Really, the only part of the brief that it doesn't match, is the SU like handling of regular solid shapes, push/pull etc. and the inferencing engine. But are those not something that would appeal to a large number of Blender users? - I think they'd all lap it up! I don't know any of the other alternatives well enough to comment, but I can't see any software community wanting to turn down something that makes what they do faster, simpler and more intuitive!
Obviously, there may be issues of intellectual property (Trimble considered SU valuable for some reason!) - but it seems to me that 'skinning' Blender to make it more intuitive would be less of a task than creating a whole new engine from scratch, or waiting for Trimble to do this to SU.
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