SketchUP 8
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I've been reading the thread and find it interesting and somewhat informative.
We use sketchup as a tool in our office not a religion. As a tool, it works incredibly well and the dollar to value gained is extremely high.
I know more and more firms in this area for sure are using sketchup as a regular part of their design process. Some of these firms are the celebrity types in Manhattan that can afford to buy any hammer in the hardware store they choose and have many hammers.
We don't use all the abilities of sketchup. just the ones we need and for that, it works incredibly well.
For $95 I get the upgrade or, if I choose, I can pass and not buy it. The cost is not going to change my life and for those not in my situation, they can elect to freely download or not download the free version.
Ok, it didnt come out with everything everyone hoped for and whether its a point upgrade or a whole number upgrade is a matter of symantics. Photoshop rarely if ever changes its interface which I appreciate. I have the latest version and everything I know how to use and existed in a previous version is still right there. I hate when Microsoft rearranges the toolbars and work flow with each new update so I dont update. Last I checked, I was free to do so.
If Google stops developing sketchup today, I would still have a great tool. I also still use pencil 1.0 and pen 2.0.
Its going to be a sunny day so I'm going outside. Later.
Allen
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SketchUp is at our office our mean tool and not only for visualization. We model all our buildings with SU and make real hatched sections through it which are exported to Vectorworks with a ruby and a vectorscript. We use Vectorworks only for layout. I tried layout 2, because it does almost the same what we do in Vectorworks but it is just not good enough. We even use SU for our bill of materials.
This is why i'm very happy with v8 because now SU knows the volume of objects. In v7 i had written my own ruby to calculate the volumes, it worked very good, but it was sometimes a bit slow. I have a ruby and a VBA to export and import my bill of materials to excel and it works perfect.
I use SU as a real BIM and for our office it works better than revit or any other software. And the price less than 10% of revit!
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I use sketchup since its version number 4, and soon came to me that version 5 is now the most robust and flexible version of sketchup. Both still use it for modeling and only I finish some things in version 7.1.
In itself, the version 5 to 8 were almost four new versions in four versions I just saw the program insert text in 3D which I easily solved with CAD or COREL in version 5, photomatch for me not for my work , are possibilities to edit the textures and now a tool that bool tools already offered before .... or 4 versions just for that?? It is rather disappointing!
I do not want to become a sketchup 3dmax, it only takes three things in it TODAY, a UV mapping tool, easily read many polygons giving the opportunity to work with models heavier and better while the file weighing 200 megs and perhaps what not very necessary, an organic modeling tool ....
In four versions I only needed two of those tools I listed and yet Google considers us as worker ants to model the 3D world for the GE ..... but google, me, GE is nonexistent in my work.
And it is my criticism of the Google team trying to fight with several major softs market and fairly with sketchup, she steps back and laughs at us ....
--> Google, please, be professional because we are not amateurs to play house in the GE! <--
Forgive my English ... use an online translator!
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@tfdesign said:
As for BIM intelligence, go get Archicad, Revit or Vectorworks for that (and shell out the rest!).
The point is I don't want to go to another software. As I wrote SU is a good modeler that is showing it's age in many areas. Polycount, UV tools missing and animation rudimentary at best just to name a few.
If it was all up to me I would continue using SketchUp but I work in a 500+ architecture company that is moving fast forward towards doing everything in Revit (and 3dsMax for viz work).
We still use SketchUp in early stages but I can only guess for how long that will be allowed.Now what am I to say to my boss when I ask that we should upgrade x-number of licenses to SketchUp 8?
-Well...they have now fixed the exploding toolbar problem. And wait, we got scene thumbnails. Wow! Must be worth the upgrade cost alone? Probably not. (Layout and GE is not used by us and booleans or solids very rarely if ever.)
I would get a laugh in my face.@tfdesign said:
and btw, "yoke" is something that comes from an egg.
Sorry, I'm not nativly english speaking.
Maybe I'm just a grumpy old man, but I love SketchUp too much to let it just wither away.
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@unknownuser said:
Once SketchUp was seen as a threat to Autodesk but now its withered away into a dusty corner where almost no one take it seriously anymore....
.... I no longer believe SketchUp will be a major player in the professional architecture industry.
While my gut reaction about SU8 is one of dissapointment, in my little world up north I personally haven't seen a drop in professionals using Sketchup, perhaps the reverse actually. All day Thursday and Friday just gone, I sat through several presentations about 8 new major developments. 7 of the 8 different architects practices that presented were using Sketchup often for very detailed work. These weren't small local practices either, they were all well known national firms.
Without wanting to go over old ground, Sketchup, for me and others I'm sure, really was/is a threat to Autodesk because it convinced people there was a world beyond Autodesk. However, with Autodesks new found generosity with free online apps such as Project Butterfly perhaps there will be some migration back towards the depths of Autodesk as Sketchup stays in the shallow-end with (some might say) armbands on
@unknownuser said:
SketchUp has to be a child of it's time and work together with other software ... Kind of how the Adobe CS suite works together or Autodesk's software for that matter.
I couldn't agree more.
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@unknownuser said:
2nd edit: It has taken me precisely 5 minutes to see that there is not much new there. Layout 3 looks very interesting though. Dwg export makes it worth buying.
I used the DWG Export in Layout3 and it seems to be kinda fake... it does export the layout lines to Auto-CAD and it converts text to actual Auto-CAD text, however the Sketchup model itself does not export out of layout as vector lines. it comes out as a referenced image in the dwg file.
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I too see SketchUp as a serious threat to Auto-CAD for Residential Architects like myself... Autocad does not consider us in the least... all of the new AutoDesk software is built around grid-dimensioning. if Layout could dimension precisely it would be a dream... I recently tried to use it for construction documents but dimensioning the floorplans was just too cumbersome and messy... the precision in the drawing was also insufficient at 24x36 with 1/4" scale.
why is there no Ruby in Layout?
I ache for the day when I can toss AutoCAD...
I'm not impressed enough with this version to upgrade from Pro 7.1 to 8... perhaps after I see more of where this thread goes.
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My SketchUP Pro 8 installation is not working. I can only see black command window for a second,
and nothing happens. Does someone have this kind of problem? -
@unknownuser said:
@pixero said:
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@tfdesign said:
and btw, "yoke" is something that comes from an egg.
Sorry, I'm not natively english speaking.
hey wait, a 'yoke' is that thing for chaining oxen together..
the stuff in an egg is 'yolk'
Yes, you are absolutely right!
No offence was intended, I was just poking a bit of 'English' fun. Anyway, Jan admits that he is a "grumpy old man"!
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@krisidious said:
I too see SketchUp as a serious threat to Auto-CAD for Residential Architects like myself... Autocad does not consider us in the least... all of the new AutoDesk software is built around grid-dimensioning. if Layout could dimension precisely it would be a dream... I recently tried to use it for construction documents but dimensioning the floorplans was just too cumbersome and messy... the precision in the drawing was also insufficient at 24x36 with 1/4" scale.
why is there no Ruby in Layout?
I ache for the day when I can toss AutoCAD...
I'm not impressed enough with this version to upgrade from Pro 7.1 to 8... perhaps after I see more of where this thread goes.
Kristoff, i totally agree with you. it would be great if we could get more from Layout if it only supported ruby, and the great developers that roam these forums. i too yearn for the day i don't have to dealt with Acad.
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@srx said:
My SketchUP Pro 8 installation is not working. I can only see black command window for a second,
and nothing happens. Does someone have this kind of problem?have you added any plugins yet?
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Hi,
I can currently see no advantage for me in Sketchup 8 Pro. I, like many others, had wished that the error with the toolbar in Sketchup 7 will be corrected.
Most of the additions or improvements seems to be in connection with Google Earth.
After I had copied all of my plugins, Materials and Styles into Sketchup8 it opened with an error and I had to remove five plugins.
Then I took a speed test with the two Rubies, Test.skp and SU framerate Test.skp through. The result was as follows:
Charly
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@charly2008 said:
Then I took a speed test with the two Rubies, Test.skp and SU framerate Test.skp through. The result was as follows:
Charly
meh, what exactly is that test telling you? i mean, it's spewing out some numbers and people just assume higher numbers = better sketchup performance.. i did that test last year and here's the results..
so, according to that, sketchup is 6x faster than windows on a mac and i'm having a very hard time believing that.. i'm calling bs.
stupid test
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@charly2008 said:
Hi Jeff,
I see the test results only as an index to compare the two versions on my PC system. If a performance increase would have occurred the tests would have to show the differences. Or I see this wrong?
Charly
my point was, what do those numbers mean? like if your su8 tests came back with 50fps, how would that benefit your workflow etc?
or to rephrase, what exactly are you testing with that test?
if the answer is 'performance' then you're obviously using the wrong OS for your sketchuping.. (but like i said, windows and mac sketchup run about the same from what i've seen so 'performance' is not what that test is testing)
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Hi Jeff,
The tests are not good to compare the versions on other PC systems. I see the test results only as an index to compare the two versions on one individual PC system. If a performance increase would have occurred the tests would have to show the differences. Or I see this wrong?
Can you repeat your Test with Sketchup 8 just to compare your values?
Charly
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Then let it tell me so. Subjectively, I find no difference when working with Sketchup 8, for example, with high poly models.
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@charly2008 said:
I find no difference when working with Sketchup 8, for example, with high poly models.
Unfortunately, neither do I.
/sad face -
Krisidious:
The installation doesn't start so there is no place to put plugins -
well plugins are installed in the folder structure manually. if you have not installed anything but SketchUp 8 and it does not work I would uninstall and then reinstall. what system are you running and what OS?
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