Time to stick a fork in it?
-
Cooks will stick a fork into a baked potato to see it is done. Is it time to stick one into SU?
Seems to me that other than changes to further integrate it into products used in Trimble's chosen markets, yeah, it's probably pretty close to finished -- at least by Trimble.
Sure, everybody has a long list of missing features, myself included, but from Trimble's POV, why bother about what Make users want? Pro users are either already using other Trimble products or are in closely related industries, like Architects, that are part of Trimble's market.
All software gets to the point of it does almost all of what is really needed. SU is close and Trimble doesn't need to pay for adding stuff it's real customers don't need it to do.
Development cost for commercial products development (as opposed to open source) going into ever more arcane features will increasingly look like a bad investment. Trimble doesn't need to add burning in ambient occlusion to materials for use on models in games, it doesn't need to provide it's own raytracing software, it's never going to change materials to be managed like geometric objects nor add true circles.
So is it done yet?
I think it might be, so hand me a fork. <stab> What do you think?
-
I do hope you are wrong.
)
What about VR and AR, they need to make some progress in those areas.
Thing is that plugin developers are plugin those holes where Trimble do not goes.
SubD, WrapR, VertexTools, Artisan, Skatter etc.
There is so many plugins for SU that no one can say that something is not possible to be done inside SU, and i did not see community more active like it is this one around SU.
I think Trimble should adopt those plugins and make as easy possible for coders to do they work and get us more and more things that we could not imagine in past revisions of SU. -
I'm trying to think about a software that did stick a fork in it...and survived.
My guess would be; the moment they stop developing, stop adding features the current market (and always changing market) needs, some competitor will come by and blow them out of the water.
Adding new API options to enable/help developers create new features would be welcome.
-
@genma saotome said:
Pro users are either already using other Trimble products or are in closely related industries, like Architects, that are part of Trimble's market.
Since I don't even know what any of the other Trimble products are, and I'm not an architect, I can't agree with this.
In many ways, the basic SU product is a marvelously powerful tool with an exceptionally friendly learning curve. Once you add in the Ruby extensions which range all the way from making productivity easier to amazingly powerful additional capabilities, I, for one, will be using SU for a long time. -
Oh I expect to be using SU for a long, long time too. I just think that from Trimble's perspective the Make Potato must be fully baked by now.
-
yeah, stick a fork in it
eat the whale
one bite at a time
-
I'd give them another version or two to open the kimono. If there's anything good under the hood we can run it up the flagpole and see how it flies.
You never know, they may keep drip-feeding new stuff into Make to keep whetting the appetite of potential new Pro users...wouldn't want to wrongside the demographic.Where the heck did I put that fork?
-
@alan fraser said:
I'd give them another version or two to open the kimono. If there's anything good under the hood we can run it up the flagpole and see how it flies.
You never know, they may keep drip-feeding new stuff into Make to keep whetting the appetite of potential new Pro users...wouldn't want to wrongside the demographic.Where the heck did I put that fork?
Wow. You buried the mixed metaphor needle with that last post
-
I don't know if SU itself has a fork in it's future, but I do know that these forums are not what they used to be. For several years it seems member participation has pretty much died down to just a predictable few. Sad
-
@hellnbak said:
I don't know if SU itself has a fork in it's future, but I do know that these forums are not what they used to be. For several years it seems member participation has pretty much died down to just a predictable few. Sad
Can't argue with that. I joined the SketchUp forum only fairly recently, so I'm barely past newbie status yet...but I'm spending far more time over there now.
Advertisement