Public Beta for Obj, SolidWorks, STEP, and FBX importers

jsteacy

Ashraf, I just sent you a PM

jsteacy

tfdesign

Oooh! A Solidworks importer??

How about a Solidworks exporter??!

Or even just SAT?

ashraf

@jsteacy said:

Ashraf, I just sent you a PM
jsteacy

I saw the file, the problem is due to the fact that the file uses negative indexes for the faces.
This is something that we should address before the release.

Thanks for the models

thomthom

@ashraf said:

@fletch said:

Impressive. How long, exactly, did it take to import the dragon object? Can SU even handlethat dragon file in all it's high-poly glory?

The operation almost took 15 minutes, 5 of which where consumed by SketchUp after importing the object, my guess is that SU works on building a detailed bounding box and verifies the object is correct.
After that the object is usable is SU, it is not very responsive, you need to wait for your actions to be executed, but you still can work with it.

I think it's SU's auto-merge feature that takes time. The more entities already in the entities collection the holder it takes to add the next entities. What method are you using to build the geometry? Entities.fill_from_mesh is by far the quickest.
http://code.google.com/apis/sketchup/docs/ourdoc/entities.html#fill_from_mesh

@unknownuser said:

The fill_from_mesh method is used to add faces and edges to the collection of entities from a PolygonMesh. It requires that the entities collection to be filled is empty. It has higher performance than add_faces_from_mesh, but does less error checking as it builds the geometry.

ashraf

Yes we are using fill, not add. We noticed that opening a file in SketchUp is much faster than importing it. So the next version will add an open option, It is a good practice to use the open option with the largest model in the scene

thomthom

Open Option?

ashraf

try importing a large SkechUp file, and compare it to opening the same file.
Open takes much less time for the same file.
So we are planning to take a advantage of this in the next version of the importer.

jsteacy

Ashraf,

I tried the .fbx importer with the same models from that website, it brings in the geometry but does not import the textures.

jsteacy

ashraf

The problem with the obj file was already fixed, and it will be included in the release

paulower

Fantastic.

You have not thought about making a plugin to import of *.max to SketchUp?

I think there not is still an importe *.max to SU.

notareal

@paulower said:

Fantastic.

You have not thought about making a plugin to import of *.max to SketchUp?

I think there not is still an importe *.max to SU.

For that you would need installed Max... just like Deep Explorer needs. For my understanding a stand alone converter (without Max installed) is impossible to create.

ashraf

@notareal said:

For that you would need installed Max

Yes this is correct and I believe that this reduces the value of the solution, if you have MAX already installed, then you can convert the files to OBJ or FBX.

ashraf

SimLab team is really thankful for the great feedback and suggestions, for downloading and testing the importers.

We are working on finalizing the plugins based on this feedback. The beta period for the plugins will end by the end of the month, and we plan for a release early in September.

Frederik

I'm somehow surprised...
Does this mean that you're going to release the plugin with new features even before you've tested it in a second beta-test campaign...??

Can you please shed some lights about what new options you will have made with the final version...??

Thanks in advance...

thomthom

Yes - I'd like to know as well. I'm interested in the FBX plugins - been thinking of buying it, but thought I would have the chance to test another release with the feedback from this thread before I decided.

paulower

@ashraf said:

@notareal said:

For that you would need installed Max

Yes this is correct and I believe that this reduces the value of the solution, if you have MAX already installed, then you can convert the files to OBJ or FBX.

@ashraf said:

Yes this is correct and I believe that this reduces the value of the solution, if you have MAX already installed, then you can convert the files to OBJ or FBX.

So this is the problem. I do not have MAX installed on my PC. Is there any way to import files *.max to *.skp without having installed the MAX?

notareal

@paulower said:

@ashraf said:

@notareal said:

For that you would need installed Max

Yes this is correct and I believe that this reduces the value of the solution, if you have MAX already installed, then you can convert the files to OBJ or FBX.

@ashraf said:

Yes this is correct and I believe that this reduces the value of the solution, if you have MAX already installed, then you can convert the files to OBJ or FBX.

So this is the problem. I do not have MAX installed on my PC. Is there any way to import files *.max to *.skp without having installed the MAX?

As far as I know, there is no way.

ashraf

With the public beta we were looking for two main things:

1- Problematic models that the importer fails to import
2- Enactment suggestions

In the release coming after the public beta we will only address the import problems which were reported, the percentage of the problematic models compared to the number of installations was really low, and we are working on fixing those importing problems before the release.

Regarding enchantments, most of the requested enhancements will be available in the next minor releases which will be available free for all users (usually we provide 2 minor releases)

It is understandable that some users will not want to use the plugins until it meets their own requirements, the plugins will always support a trial license.

Encasements coming in the next minor release will include:

Upgrading FBX to 2011 (current FBX version in the plugin is 2010.2).
A new unit system that automatically scales imported models to SketchUp units automatically.
Progress Bar, giving the user an indication about the progress of the import process

Best Regards,

Ashraf

Frederik

Thanks, for the heads up, Ashraf...

@ashraf said:

A new unit system that automatically scales imported models to SketchUp units automatically.

I assume you mean the units the user is currently using...

@ashraf said:

Progress Bar, giving the user an indication about the progress of the import process

This is great news...

I'm looking forward to see the new plugins...

ashraf

Thanks for the great testing and feedback from all the beta testers, the plugins were released today, and the work on the first update release to incorporate the feedback and suggestions we received had already started.

In this release SimLab added progress bar to inform the user that importers are working, added support for OBJ files with negative index values, and updated the plugins to work with SketchUp 8.

The plugins are now supported to work with SketchUp 8, 7.1 and 7