Wishlist SU 8... Let's not !
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I like your analogy...
It looks a little different, sounds a little wilder, probably runs a little different, but it's still a Beetle.
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Maybe sounds a little silly and utopic....but I am wondering:
Is there anything we, as a community, can do to help Google spicing up the development of Sketchup? -
All I hope is that when we all migrate elsewhere, that we all go the same place.
You guys are great and I enjoy this forum a ton. While I spend a lot of time at other software's forums, I always go here first every morning.
It will be a shame when the SU community withers down to hobbyists, and I have no doubt that that is going to happen.
I voted for end of the line, and what I meant is that I will hold on for a little while longer, but if SU goes another 2 years before a paltry tweak (I can't even call SU 7 an upgrade) with no improvement to the core, I will have been long gone by then.
To jump on the analogy wagon, I feel like SU was the first leather ski boot that had a buckle or two attached to it. Soon, hard plastic boots start to become available. So, SU gets a couple more buckles, but you still have to lace up the liner and they still flex way too much. Of course, the "purists" insist that the plastic boots are too uncomfortable and heavy and clunky and that a "real" skier can still do amazing things in the leather boots. Fast forward a couple more years and there is no sight of a leather boot anywhere. Gone like the puffin. I don't want more buckles on my flappy, non-waterproof, sloppy leather boots! I want a cutting edge, injection molded F1 plastic boot, with camber and flex adjustment, custom molded footbeds, and thermomolded liners.
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@kwistenbiebel said:
Maybe sounds a little silly and utopic....but I am wondering:
Is there anything we, as a community, can do to help Google spicing up the development of Sketchup?Seriously, I think we all know the answer is no.
Remember when CraigD was our link to the SU google world? He was enthusiastic, super helpful, and fast tracked issues he could recreate straight to the coders. He obviously was passionate about the product and actively cared about the problems we were finding.
So, what did google do? They transfered him to a different department and snuffed out our only real link to google. Last I heard, he was populating google earth with buildings. Great job for him, I am sure, but very disheartening for me. At that moment, I felt that google had showed us their cards and we were the losers.
I have nothing to substantiate my suspicions, but it would not surprise me at all that Craig was transfered because he was sending a message to us, the users, that our issues where being worked on and were a priority for google when, in fact, google had no intention to address any of our problems.
Style maker was way more of a priority, apparently. For what it's worth, I have never even loaded Style maker or Layout, which right off the bat makes most of the development of SU for the last 3 years completely useless to me. I just want a SU that can handle even a few million polys, and not crash the 3 or 4 times a day that it does now. It would be nice if SU even kind of kept up with me and my development as an artist.
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@unknownuser said:
Style maker was more of a priority, apparently. For what it's worth, I have never even loaded Style maker or Layout, which right off the bat makes most of the development of SU for the last 3 years completely useless to me.
Same here. Never opened Layout and that other thing you mention.
Although, I must admit that Google was trying to please a crowd back then.
Remember the 'Grizzly' concept, already rumoured in the @Last period?
Google promised that Grizzly would be further developed when they took over from @Last.They kept on putting effort into it...
Making Layout/Stylebuilder is more comprehensible to develop than to make efforts to disect the sketchup core and improve it.Google is beating around the bush.....
They could at least play open book and communicate the situation : 'We can't do it'
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silence speaks volumes....
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Silence tells us about google policy.
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@unknownuser said:
Remember when CraigD was our link to the SU google world? He was enthusiastic, super helpful, and fast tracked issues he could recreate straight to the coders. He obviously was passionate about the product and actively cared about the problems we were finding.
This comes back to my point about a "community manager", can't we at least suggest this to Google before we decide whether or not they are bothered about SU anymore?
Incidentally I think I had 3 crashes today in quick succession SU7, so I opened SU6, no problems.
Also, Styles, I do sometimes use them for work (but probably, mainly, because after about 10 years of using 3d software my rendering still sucks). I think Google maybe saw Styles as a Piranesi style tool that they thought would be highly sort after.
I would have to agree that Layout is still a white elephant. DoubleCad has stepped up to be what Layout should have been; a proper cad program. So google have missed the boat there too.All in all, I don't think they see Sketchup as an architectural/design tool. I hope we don't see it get amalagamated into Google docs as a gimmick.
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Sorry to keep banging on, but in an effort to bring perspective to this topic, please consider:
The opening statement on Google's Corporate page:
@unknownuser said:
Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.
On Google's milestones page, there is no mention of Sketchup.
But also consider these quotes (italicised = my emphasis):
@unknownuser said:
Google's managers identified two initial opportunities for generating revenue: search services and advertising.
@unknownuser said:
However, no matter how distant Google's business model grows from its origins, the root remains providing useful and relevant information to those who are the most important part of the ecosystem – the millions of individuals around the world who rely on Google search to provide the answers they are seeking.
@unknownuser said:
As Google expands its development team, it continues to look for those who share an obsessive commitment to creating search perfection and having a great time doing it.
@unknownuser said:
Google continues to think about ways in which technology can improve upon existing ways of doing business. New areas are explored, ideas prototyped and budding services nurtured to make them more useful to advertisers and publishers.
@unknownuser said:
What's next from Google? It's hard to say. We don't talk much about what lies ahead, because we believe one of our chief competitive advantages is surprise.
@linea said:
All in all, I don't think they see Sketchup as an architectural/design tool.
but maybe they could be persuaded that it could support their opening statement:
@unknownuser said:
Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.
in which case the onus is on SU aficionados to explain how Sketchup models can be incorporated into, say, building industry processes to make product images and data universally accessible and useful to owners, designers, installers and users. For the models to be useful they must be reusable in assemblies of larger models (building designs and so on). In return manufacturers benefit from cheap, automated advertising on the UI just when the user requests it. (Compare AdWords and AdSense).
If Sketchup can become part of the organisation of the world's information then many will benefit from use of its models and modelmakers in particular will benefit from a vastly increased market. I am sure "high poly count" will be provided immediately sufficient searchers demand it.
Che
edit - final quote
@unknownuser said:
Over time we've expanded our view of the range of services we can offer –- web search, for instance, isn't the only way for people to access or use information -– and products that then seemed unlikely are now key aspects of our portfolio. This doesn't mean we've changed our core mission; just that the farther we travel toward achieving it, the more those blurry objects on the horizon come into sharper focus (to be replaced, of course, by more blurry objects).
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how does one communicate with google about these issues?
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@l.frisken said:
how does one communicate with google about these issues?
I guess first there is a need to demonstrate a consensus within SCF ...
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As Alan Fraser has pointed out before, the SCF represents only a fraction of SU users. For us to have any leverage with Google surely we need to get the PushPullbar community, Google Sketchup group users and most importantly the silent majority onside too. Quite a task. But it might be that there is a very significant number of people who are perfectly happy with Sketchup because at their level of use they probably don't run into any problems.
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I heard the rumour that SU7 pro is selling badly. The uptake is apparently not as expected. That certainly does not help.
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@linea said:
... For us to have any leverage with Google surely we need to ...
.I have never said anything about leverage; what I am talking about is using whatever we can offer, however small, to help bring one of Google's "blurry objects on the horizon come into sharper focus" for mutual interest and eventual benefit of Society as a whole.
If that sounds a bit high-minded, how about: we introduce new ways to attract revenue from search and advertising; in return they upgrade the software to improve our SU model-based businesses.
The question is who is "we".
Chris
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@chrisglasier said:
@l.frisken said:
how does one communicate with google about these issues?
I guess first there is a need to demonstrate a consensus within SCF ...
Chris its hard to build a consensus now. The various users of SU have expanded to too many other areas, after it was bought by Google. I'm still one of the old Architectural type users. I don't need Webdialogs nor do I have a need to play games within SketchUp via Web dialogs, but perhaps a few need that option.
If you want to communicate with Google try: Scott Lininger, SketchUp Software Engineer you can PM him via:
http://www.sketchucation.com/forums/scf/viewtopic.php?f=180&t=13666 -
@tomot said:
Chris its hard to build a consensus now. The various users of SU have expanded to too many other areas, after it was bought by Google.
The consensus I am seeking is on an appropriate relationship with Google given the diversity of interests of Sketchup users (as you say) and the singularity of purpose of the Sketchup owner (recently emphasised by me in this topic).
@unknownuser said:
I don't need Webdialogs nor do I have a need to play games within SketchUp via Web dialogs, but perhaps a few need that option.
Yes I can understand you link webdialogs only with games, but similar links were made in the past with the introduction of personal computers - "just toys for hobbyists to play around with." If during the design process, you contact manufacturers or suppliers via phone, fax or website, then in the future webdialogs may well offer you a more direct and useful method to interact with them.
Thanks for the note about Scott Lininger. First I want to see if anything transpires in Mike Lucey's topic, to which I contributed something similar to here.
My regards
Chris
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@chrisglasier said:
Yes I can understand you link webdialogs only with games, but similar links were made in the past with the introduction of personal computers - "just toys for hobbyists to play around with." If during the design process, you contact manufacturers or suppliers via phone, fax or website, then in the future webdialogs may well offer you a more direct and useful method to interact with them.
ChrisI didn't link webdialogs to games. It was Scott's introduction of how webdialogs and Ruby will allow us to play games within SU. Its his example not mine.
However there seems to be a prevailing attitude today among programmers and large companies in the software industry that they think they can make life easier for users if they can link more and more features into their product. It reminds me of the shopping mall we visit instead of the corner store. Hence a simple product like Nero which burn CD/DVD's becomes Bloatware. Why Adobe Reader now has ballooned to take up 85MB of HDD space. Or why AutoCad that once came on 6 * 1.44 diskettes (remember what they were?) now comes on a DVD. To this date none of these products functions in any better than they did when they were first introduced, and just like SU the changes over time are barely preceptable. -
@tomot said:
I didn't link webdialogs to games. It was Scott's introduction of how webdialogs and Ruby will allow us to play games within SU. Its his example not mine.
Yes I first found out about them from his video almost a year ago. It was this that prompted me to look into Sketchup to provide 3d displays for my namesets project.
@tomot said:
However there seems to be a prevailing attitude today among programmers and large companies in the software industry that they think they can make life easier for users if they can link more and more features into their product ...
I agree but there needs to be an alternative to counteract that. My idea is to link the names of physical aspects of the real world in hierarchies; each name is linked to a tiny plain text file of name/value pairs defining its own parameters. So most of the 'features' (more like know-how) are provided by those experienced in various activities. The main point is that in this way IT moves into the province of us all, with practitioners structuring their own Information and Technology providing the mechanisms for its exchange.This might also provide a platform for consensus.
@tomot said:
... 1.44 diskettes (remember what they were?)
Can't resist fond memories! My first PC was a dual drive Apricot, boasting DOS 1.0 and SuperCalc 1.0 which unusual for that time came on 3.5in 250k stiffies (as opposed to 5.25in floppies)
Hope you find something here of interest.
Chris
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