Will SketchUp Ever Wear Big Boy Pants?

Stinkie · 18 May 2018, 22:45

Times change. Products evolve. People's needs evolve.

Sure. But whatever companies do with their products, is their prerogative. The opposite is socialism, isn't it?

Sorry, Chipp. I couldn't resist.

chippwalters · 19 May 2018, 05:24

Stinkie, you need to review the difference between socialism and a free market capitalist society. There is no "law" that SU has to conform, other than the law of free people making up their own mind whether to use it or not. They are welcome to provide whatever product they want, just like Visicalc, Lotus 123, Kodak and many other companies who didn't shift with the times and customer needs.

Stinkie · 19 May 2018, 09:15

Joking, Chipp, joking.

unearthed · 22 May 2018, 10:55

The other day I needed to decide if a project was viable i.e. whether I could represent my client in a hearing. I needed to see if the site could be seen from a hilltop 15km away on another peninsula

so:
Quick download of DEM from Linz
Use QGIS to get some real contours
Import into sketchup and let it run,
5 mins later I had a decision that supports taking job to next level. It is called sketchup, it's the goto tool for thinking. While I still start with a pencil, if I want 3D my next stage is Sketchup.

Sketchup just needs a shp importer (and a DEM importer then I wouldn't need QGIS) - I understand 6 had a shp importer and they removed it. Why ever?

juju · 22 May 2018, 11:30

@unearthed said:

Sketchup just needs a shp importer (and a DEM importer then I wouldn't need QGIS) - I understand 6 had a shp importer and they removed it. Why ever?

halfway there...

screen grab from SU2018Pro import dropdown menu

Derek Edison · 22 May 2018, 11:46

I would qualify unearthed's request with a DEM importer that will deal with modern file formats. Most DEMs available these days are raster format. At least the ones I would use.

kwistenbiebel · 24 May 2018, 00:59

I had this question back in 2007 and it was a growing frustration going forwards. I relied my career on Sketchup as I felt it was the only tool that let me focus on the subject (architecture) and not on the tool itself (the complexity of other software).
Frankly, I felt not smart enough and not very willing to switch to the complex software (Revit, 3Dstudio, even Autocad).
In 2012 stepped out of the “industry” as I couldn’t catch up.
Mind you, I come from a time as a student in architecture that I experienced the transition from hand drawn to CAD only, which was already a tough nut and changed things from artistic/creative to more of a technical office job.

cuttingedge · 24 May 2018, 03:29

We all hoped that SU will one day transition to a "can do" to a "do it all" software. While other pro CG artists can smile at what SU have achieved so far (credits to independent plugin writers).Being realistic about it, SU has achieved what other had about decades ago. Expecting them to jump over will be a move backwards. Many of my colleage still thinks Sketchup is a joke...and wont fit their standards.

And so we were excited about SubD and UV unwrap unveiled in the recent years which has been there 15 or 20 years ago in many 3d platforms..

SU will always be here for the ease of use. But I agree that major overhaul is needed. Having said all this.. I still love SU and would like to hear the future plans..

Mike Amos · 24 May 2018, 08:56

Sketchup has a lot of potential but have come around to a viewpoint that there will always be a lot of things that just will not work within the original framework. Frustration is a hard task master that has led me to criticise Sketchup unfairly but the past is always 20/20. I doubt that the product will catch up with software alternatives any day soon, just too big an ask and the program shell too 'bastardised' to adapt much without a total rewrite from scratch. Perhaps that is already happening, or not.
A lot of years ago I got into computer gaming and in particular, 3d 'adventure' type games and there was a particular piece of badly written code that had five different timelines. The problem was it had more bugs than an ant farm, a cell in Colditz castle was supposed to be escapable but the hidden tool needed was no there. If you open the window leaf you ended up in another timeline. I talked to the programmers (Bullfrog in London) and the guy I spoke to said, "So? I stopped counting bugs at 200". So, the Sketchup team are way better than that approach.
I wish that Blender had a ui attachment like Sketchup so, I have to admit that Sketchup IS pretty good at what it does best, just a little too buggy from years of patching.

valerostudio · 24 May 2018, 14:24

I guess we wait for the day that Autodesk makes Trimble an offer they cant refuse and then we all die a little inside that day.

andybot · 25 May 2018, 13:54

@valerostudio said:

I guess we wait for the day that Autodesk makes Trimble an offer they cant refuse and then we all die a little inside that day.

Lol! You want to pay all your subscription fees to AutoDesk, don't you

valerostudio · 30 May 2018, 11:30

@andybot said:

@valerostudio said:

I guess we wait for the day that Autodesk makes Trimble an offer they cant refuse and then we all die a little inside that day.

Lol! You want to pay all your subscription fees to Autodesk, don't you

I's prefer to pay fees to a company with a soul, like the SketchUp team. Just really need to push things to the next level and in order to do that, I need MORE POLYS!!!

JQL · 30 May 2018, 12:27

What people seem to fail to see in this thread is that Skechup already wears big boy pants.

Sketchup is probably the most widely used 3d software on earth. There isn't a bigger boy.

So, we could reverse all this discourse and say: why aren't the other 3d modellers intuitive like sketchup?

Blender, 3DS max, Autocad, Revit, Archicad, Rhino…

They all fail much more than sketchup.

andybot · 30 May 2018, 12:36

@jql said:

What people seem to fail to see in this thread is that Skechup already wears big boy pants.

Sketchup is probably the most widely used 3d software on earth. There isn't a bigger boy.

So, we could reverse all this discourse and say: why aren't the other 3d modellers intuitive like sketchup?

Blender, 3DS max, Autocad, Revit, Archicad, Rhino…

They all fail much more than sketchup.

Wide adoption is not equivalent to high performance. I like and appreciate the intuitive interface of SU, but it would be a lot more useful for me if it were the front end of Blender. I think the point here is that SU fails to match the performance standards of other current 3D software, not about how widely it's used.

chippwalters · 30 May 2018, 14:20

@jql said:

So, we could reverse all this discourse and say: why aren't the other 3d modellers intuitive like sketchup?

Having taught a few workshops lately in using SU with VR, I can tell you the interface, while "intuitive" to you, isn't for others. An example: just having to Group objects before creating new ones touching them is confusing.

I routinely watch a good friend model in Blender and he's lightning fast and believes it has a superb interface-- which of course it does not. Everyone's baby is the best looking one.

JQL · 30 May 2018, 16:00

There's always several ways of looking at things.

As an architect I can use sketchup while I could never use blender or Max.

As a gerneralist modeler I can use sketchup while I could hardly use Revit or archicad.

As a render artist I can use Sketchup I could hardly use autocad.

Rhino can probably be used for all this stuff… That shuts me up but it's still less intuitive than Sketchup (for me)

Glenn at home · 31 May 2018, 12:17

@andybot said:

@jql said:

... I like and appreciate the intuitive interface of SU, but it would be a lot more useful for me if it were the front end of Blender. ...

I would almost kill for a SU front end on Blender.

Glenn at home · 31 May 2018, 12:21

@jql said:

There's always several ways of looking at things.

As an architect I can use sketchup while I could never use blender or Max.

As a gerneralist modeler I can use sketchup while I could hardly use Revit or archicad.

As a render artist I can use Sketchup I could hardly use autocad.

Rhino can probably be used for all this stuff… That shuts me up but it's still less intuitive than Sketchup (for me)

Honestly sounds like you are using the wrong tools for those jobs.
For the architect I would use Revit or Archicad
For the render artist I would use Blender or Max
For the generalist modeler unless it very specific I would still use Max or Blender.
For mechanical models use Fusion360
Use AutoCAD for any 2D technical drawings.
My take on it anyway

Stinkie · 31 May 2018, 20:08

@jql said:

So, we could reverse all this discourse and say: why aren't the other 3d modellers intuitive like sketchup?

Because those are capable of doing complex stuff. Stuff that just isn't intuitive.

As per hipster law, I hereby include a picture that adds a certain ironic je ne sais quoi to my -obviously insightful- comment.

andybot · 4 Jun 2018, 14:01

Well Stinkie, I think you've jumped the lamprey on this thread.