Are you ready for SketchUp 7 news?
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Tks for the newsletter Coen, great work! it was well worth the time you keept us in the dark.
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Congratulations Coen (and the other contributors involved) for the nice newsletter.
It is a joy to read. Thanks for that.I didn't find any useful news on the upcoming SU7 itself though (= none at all).....
The title of this thread is a bit misleading.
Sure it's about 'Sketchup news'...but not about the Seven.
Or did I miss something? -
Hi Coen, hi folks.
Excellent job.
Great informative newsletter.
Superb idea.
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@lewiswadsworth said:
@papyrus said:
A new compete will start with FormZ and their new programme : BonZai 3D
Read this :
http://architosh.com/news/2008-05/0513_aia_bonzai_3D.htmlIt's good for us.
FormZ is such a piece of 1990's foolishness. I have difficulty believing the company that produces it is capable of any innovation...not that we have been seeing much progress in that area anyway.
You will be surprised of Auto-ded-sys!
A friend of mine saw today the preview and he told that it will be a good competitor of SU.
Let's see...Ciao, Gio
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@gio said:
You will be surprised of Auto-ded-sys!
A friend of mine saw today the preview and he told that it will be a good competitor of SU.
Let's see...Oh, I'm sure they have some eye-candy. And devoted fanatics, like any other program.
But they also have a great reputation for producing expensive, cumbersome, "also-ran" software. I should know...I carried two licenses for their ridiculous flagship for six years. I have a key-chain's worth of those retarded hardware locks.
In any case, is this not a SketchUp forum, and a thread devoted to SU 7 news? There are others devoted to alternative modelers. Whole forums on other sites, in fact.
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@lewiswadsworth said:
Oh, I'm sure they have some eye-candy. And devoted fanatics, like any other program.
Wow!!!!
What a "devoted fanatic" you seem to be!
Peace!
Gio -
So the owner (!) of Auto-de-sys (maybe it should be "Auto-de-fé") was at the booth at the AIA convention today. He went on and on about people were always sending him SketchUp models that couldn't be 3D printed, and that they ended up completely rebuilding the models and SketchUp was a primitive toy and so forth.
I interrupted him and pointed out that I've never had any problem with getting my SU files made into STL for printing, and that I've helped various firms win major RCP's with SketchUp models and renderings, and even done fairly well myself in a few. He insisted this was not possible; I suggested that I was simply very lucky. He insisted I couldn't turn SketchUp files into STLs. I said I used a script, or if it was too complex I simply imported the file into Rhino and used their STL exporter. I suggested again that perhaps I was just really, really lucky.
He became really, really angry. I thought he might hit me.
I mentioned this to...ahem...another SCF regular in attendance, and she suggested it was because SketchUp is eating away at his retirement fund, and he knows it.
(I did see the demo for their SketchUp-challenger, which is about 80% of the old FormZ tools minus any of the cool NURBS capabilities and with a warmed over SU interface. Yawn.)
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Rock on, Lewis, rock on.
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@lewiswadsworth said:
So the owner (!) of Auto-de-sys (maybe it should be "Auto-de-fé") was at the booth at the AIA convention today. He went on and on about people were always sending him SketchUp models that couldn't be 3D printed, and that they ended up completely rebuilding the models and SketchUp was a primitive toy and so forth.
I interrupted him and pointed out that I've never had any problem with getting my SU files made into STL for printing, and that I've helped various firms win major RCP's with SketchUp models and renderings, and even done fairly well myself in a few. He insisted this was not possible; I suggested that I was simply very lucky. He insisted I couldn't turn SketchUp files into STLs. I said I used a script, or if it was too complex I simply imported the file into Rhino and used their STL exporter. I suggested again that perhaps I was just really, really lucky.
He became really, really angry. I thought he might hit me.
I mentioned this to...ahem...another SCF regular in attendance, and she suggested it was because SketchUp is eating away at his retirement fund, and he knows it.
(I did see the demo for their SketchUp-challenger, which is about 80% of the old FormZ tools minus any of the cool NURBS capabilities and with a warmed over SU interface. Yawn.)
I'm hoping that you're wrong. I want their Sketchup challenger to wipe the floor with Sketchup. If that happens then Google will have serious motivation to improve SU. If SU's challengers are nowhere near as good as SU then they don't need to improve.
I know nothing about STL's and 3D printing. Is the script you used your own creation or one that is widely available? If you are one of the few people who can create STL's with SU and the new A-d-s system does it easily I can understand him getting pissed off with you.
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You're a great source of underground info, Lewis.
Very interesting, very interesting
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@lewiswadsworth said:
On a completely different note: I mentioned this in the Ruby forum, but to repeat it here: Elsewhen at the convention, while discussing running SU on Linux, I was asked by a certainly Googler if I had tried the new SU7 beta in Linux under WINE yet. When I did a double-take, he said, "Oh, wait, we haven't let that one out yet, have we?"
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There was a big print of that bathroom rendering of yours (the one with the square sinks and water coming out of the faucet), KB, at the Podium booth. I hadn't realized you did that with Podium.
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Actually, to get the 3D printing goodness you have to shell out for the full FormZ package, $3750 a seat, as I understood them...what a deal for all that early nineties "MAC system 7 interface" glory! The SketchUp clone is $500.
I pulled one of the SU stl Ruby scripts off here:
(Edit: I think it is the same script here. Didier would know:
http://www.crai.archi.fr/rubylibrarydepot/ruby/ )
It doesn't always work, but then Rhino's will. Actually, much of the trick to getting a good STL is disciplined modeling...you have to make sure you don't leave naked edges in your model. SU doesn't have a tool for finding them (if you've been careless) that I know of, but Rhino does.
Even Blender writes STL files. I used it the other day to extract a Blender mesh for reworking in Rhino.
STL export is not a big deal, certainly not worth three grand. A basic 3D printer from Zcorp is only ten grand, and it comes with shelling software. I'll tweak scripts and save my money for the hardware.
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On a completely different note: I mentioned this in the Ruby forum, but to repeat it here: Elsewhen at the convention, while discussing running SU on Linux, I was asked by a certain Googler if I had tried the new SU7 beta in Linux under WINE yet. When I did a double-take, he said, "Oh, wait, we haven't let that one out yet, have we?"
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@lewiswadsworth said:
...asked by a certain Googler if I had tried the new SU7 beta in Linux under WINE yet. When I did a double-take, he said, "Oh, wait, we haven't let that one out yet, have we?"
Bah! Humbug!
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Cool, I'm ready for Sketchup 7.
Wishlist:
- Import / Export gif animated images for use in textures on a model.
- The clipping / slicing bug to be fixed.
- More Speed rendering, especially when the shadows are turned on, in hidden geometry mode and in textures.
- Visual Basic Script functionality along with ruby.
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I did talk about scripting languages with John Bacus. I would have preferred Python to Ruby, personally. Ruby always feels oddly like a debased mark-up language to me, on a grammatical level.
That ain't going to change, it seems, though. They are very happy with the way the Ruby scripting is working out.
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lewiswadsworth: any pics from AIA ? want to see how the big Podium renders came out
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@unknownuser said:
lewiswadsworth: any pics from AIA ? want to see how the big Podium renders came out
Me too
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Cool, I'm looking forward in using the new Sketchup 7.
I may design a 2000 acre maze with it soon. -
Spent the morning of the last day at the AIA meeting in the exhibit hall...sorry I didn't check SCF earlier, or I would have taken a photo of the Podium booth. Your rendering looked pretty good blown up, KB. They said they had some issues with their printer, and couldn't get it as large as they would like.
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