SketchUp 2010 -> 2019
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After seeing a few 'best X of the past decade' topics on the internet, I wonder; what strikes me looking back on using SketchUp the past decade?
We went from SketchUp 8 to the current version. Many new and exciting possibilities by the plugin developers.
But how about SketchUp itself? Did it improve much? Can work now be done more easy / efficient compared to 2010?
I like you can name section planes, makes it more easy to select them in the Outliner. Also adding the filled section plane style was nice. Strange enough, I can't really think of anything else...What I can think of is that its really annoying you still have to use the same tricks / workarounds as a decade ago, wasting time day after day, just because some basic functions never have been fixed/improved; booleans, materials + UV, importing/working with large files, UI, layer management etc.
I must be missing a few improvements. Anyone?
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I'm sure this will turn into one of those threads with people slamming SketchUp and the development team but I'll offer some positives from my point of view.
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SketchUp is considerably less buggy now than it was in SU8.
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Toolbar management on Windows is much improved. I haven't had to reset toolbars after minimizing SketchUp since the release of SU2013.
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I like the tray feature for utility panel management.
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Huge improvements in extension installation and management. (We don't spend hours a week anymore helping people get extensions loaded properly.)
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Lots of improvements in LayOut since LO3. It's much faster than it used to be, the Dimension and other tools aremuch better, Scaled drawing is excellent.
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The Dashes feature is very usable. (Funny, though, that the dashes thing was requested, nay, demanded by users for years and when they finally got the feature many of those same people complained.)
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The welcome screen makes it easier to choose templates and recently opened files.
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Trimble Connect makes it easier to work on files with other people and access them from other computers.
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With the Subscription option comes SketchUp Shop. Although it's somewhat limited because there's no facility for using extensions, it is very usable. I like that I can access and work on my models from any computer with an internet connection without actually installing SketchUp.
I expect we'll see more improvements with the next version which I'm excited to see.
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The biggest developments in this time are probably the web based version and the subscription program. Those would be two of the top 10.
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x64 happened this decade, didn't it?
While on the one hand SU works better, the core program has not undergone any fundamental changes, so someone picking up SU2019 from having used SU8 would not find basically anything unfamiliar. Compare that to something like Blender - going from 2.7 to 2.8 and expecially things like Eevee. In some ways, I'm not sure it's good or bad, I still use Sketchup day in and day out to wrangle my polygons, and the many little things that are improved in the user experience from ten years ago do add up. Toolbar management, curves, better memory usage, I would not want to go back. I also haven't gone forward either...
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For me SU has not progressed at the pace of the other modeling apps out there, so I use it much less, only for quick easy stuff, C4D has pretty much taken the heavy lifting.
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@kaas said:
@DaveR & @Andybot I agree its many small improvements and I wouldn't go back to v8 either.
A decade ago I expected SketchUp would have improved much more now and especially that workarounds/annoyances (like temporary scaling small solids x1000 etc) would have been fixed already.I expect the small solids thing is still a fairly low priority thing for them considering that their primary market focus is still architectural. From experience I know that major changes take time to implement. They have to be done incrementally to ensure that nothing gets broken in the process. It can be very difficult to fix things if you make too many changes all at once.
It's interesting that two people have given my list a thumbs down.
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Different workflows. Especially for architecture (and vr) i mainly use solids. Makes clean models, better representation of actual building elements and no problems with lighting in unreal engine and vr.
I see no reason why fixing the algorithm should cause compatibility issues though - but there are more choices i dont onderstand.
I dont see downvotes, you're at 0 neutral in my browser.
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@kaas said:
I dont see downvotes, you're at 0 neutral in my browser.
There were two downvotes when I wrote that. Must be a couple of upvotes to counter them.
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Happy New Year to everybody!
All the best in 2020. -
Hi Dave R #1
For me as an Architect I have stopped the upgrade at SU 2018 and happy to pay for maintenance only.
The things that make SU so special are the add-ons that that actually make it a more complete and usable tool.
The important issue for me is to keep the Legacy plugins still working that are core to my long term use with SU.
As Trimble changes modes Sketchup just becomes a different program system but only marginally better in function
The good old bread and butter scripts just stop working and are only fixed at random.
Thanks for all your good and generous help for the walking wounded in Sketchup.
You are well remembered.
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