Google is Listening!
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@unknownuser said:
So a plugin blows away the toolbar positions. I can accept that. But then what is the function of "Save toolbar locations" and "Restore toolbar locations" in V8? They simply do not work.
It has always worked for me when I do need to use it.
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@jgb said:
Thanks for explaining away just about everything.
Not sure what you're hoping to achieve here, but I am trying to answer your questions. I think I'm going to stop for a bit and show your post to some other folks to see if they can help me understand what you're trying to do. It isn't at all clear to me what work you're doing with SketchUp.
john
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@jgb said:
Yeah, SU supports Decimal Inch as I always input dimensions to the VCB using feet, inch and decimal inch. SU just does NOT display Feet AND inch AND Decimal-inch. It displays Feet Inch and Fractions of an inch, and others as well, none of which I want to use.
do any apps actually support this and/or does anyone/industry use that? if i understand correctly, you want to see 27' - 3 5/8" written as 27' 3.625"?
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In aviation you'd use/see these type of dimensions in detailed/fabrication drawings. Not the feet part though. Just something like - 101.385"
Or in machine shops for close tolerance manufacture/rework.
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Right, I see decimal inches and decimal feet used often enough. Just can't recall seeing them in this particular requested format.
(not that I'm saying there's anything wrong with it. I'm just wondering if there's any real world use) -
Never seen it either. It seems jgb uses it for concept design of aircraft and hangars.
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Re: Alan Fraser
Yep the(Beta) plugin is about as close to an inside Sketchup workflow as you are going to get -- and it makes my point for me that Sketchup itself would need hardly any changes to make this work. However the issue is this is a Pro version software I am talking about -- We should have access to a Sketchup-based UV workspace that allows for basic mapping types and unwrapping in a Pro software.
As I said I can use ZBrush for this very well, but as was pointed out once I go to ZBrush I'm not going back into Sketchup because it's just too much of a painful workflow. If there is a missing feature that drives me away from Sketchup and into the arms of another app (like Modo) it will be this UV issue -- which is a complete dealbreaker for my models. Here's an example: http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=333&t=34508 -- right now I have to take this model into ZBrush for the sole reason of applying textures/decals.
Bottom line, this limits the usefulness of Sketchup to large percentage of users... many of whom have paid to be "Pro" users. I really fail to see how it is logical to expect a user who simply wants to model a object in Sketchup and render a professional looking presentation in Layout purchase a 3rd party UV mapper. This is a basic function and if they are selling texturing/rendering capability then support for getting textures properly mapped to the geometry should just be part of the package.
BTW there is a very fast compiled free OBJ importer here: http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=80&t=35936 -- since you don't mind using 3rd party apps/plugins for basic functions this should answer your feature request perfectly...
Yes, I'm very happy to have generous coders giving us free tools, but it does tend to highlight how easy it could be for the Sketchup dev team to add them if they chose to.
Best,
Jason. -
Exciting discussion going on here. Almost a shame I'm on vacation - hard to follow.
Anyways - John - here's my thoughts:
I'd be very good to see some plugin manager - repository for SketchUp. Being able to install plugins is really what has made me stay with SketchUp and not any other modeller.
When I hear other people claim that SketchUp can only do very simple basic things they seem to have completely missed out on all the powerful plugins there is available. (Plus that they seem to be fooled by SU's simple interface which makes them think the application is also too simple.)
But I've always felt that plugins really haven't been marketed well enough for SketchUp. The selection of tools that let you tailor SketchUp to fit your own need is really great - and powerful. And with a simple scripting language such as Ruby it makes the entry level really low for making plugins. (as oppose to other apps where you need to compile plugins etc.)
Having written quite a few plugins for a few years now, the most common questions I get is how to install and uninstall plugins - or update. It's management. I've thought often of making a management system - but it's something that quickly becomes complicated - and I don't feel I have the time.
I think that a plugin manager within SketchUp, where people can browse repositories, quickly installing plugins (and dependencies) would be a great boost for SketchUp.
It's allow people to easier discover more power to SketchUp, and attract more developers to make more plugins. That in turn will reinforce the community around SketchUp to keep enhancing it.
It's a feature which I believe will give a lot back to you lot - as it'll make SketchUp much more attractive to developers.In addition there's the missing API features you asked for:
We recently got methods for renaming materials - and erasing material (though this had it's flaws where one has to be careful to manually remove the material from the model first.)
But there is still lots more to be desired:
Sections cuts - very frequently requested feature to manipulate around here. So is dimensions.
We'd also like to see methods to remove layers and set,get layer materials. All this to be able to develop better tools to automate tasks tailored to our needs.
And the WebDialog class really could do with cleanups to make it behave consistently between platforms. Many developers have expressed desire to make UI's for their plugins, but found learning HTML, CSS and JS a bit overwhelming - and on top of that finding a number of issues in communicating with webdialogs. For many of the issues in regards to webdialogs, check out this thread: http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=180&t=23445When it comes to UV mapping - it'd be good to see native UI for UV mapping, but also being able to get and set the Projected flag for faces. It's completely missing and makes developing UV tools harder.
As you can see - I focus mainly on the Ruby API end - and hope for improvements there. I believe that the community around SketchUp can fulfill many of the userbase's requests if we get the appropriate API access.
There are much more I can talk about in regard to this topic and I'll gladly get back to that if you want to make a further dialogue.
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@unknownuser said:
do any apps actually support this and/or does anyone/industry use that? if i understand correctly, you want to see 27' - 3 5/8" written as 27' 3.625"?
I don't know about other apps, I only use SU. I used to use ACAD, but so long ago, I don't recall what formats it used. I "grew up" in the aerospace industry, first as a field mechanic, then manufacturing inspection, then into aerospace project management. Then onto other fields, including programming, s/w development and s/w project management. That's over a 40+ year career in 3 separate fields.
Airplane parts were always measured in inch and decimal inch, even the big parts. (Now they are metric, but I don't think in metric, even in Canada) Very long parts such as wing spars were measured in feet - inch - dec.inch. So yes, I want to see 27 feet 3 5/8 inches as 27' 3.625. That is the way I type it into the VCB, but it always displays in Entity Info or Dimensions in the fractions format. And in most cases it shows as ~1/32 rather than 0.030 as I defined the dimension in the VCB.
In my mind it is not so big a deal for SU to show that format, so I cannot see why John and others before him are resisting so much, unless the NIH is a factor. (Not Invented Here)John,
You said "Not sure what you're hoping to achieve here, but I am trying to answer your questions. I think I'm going to stop for a bit and show your post to some other folks to see if they can help me understand what you're trying to do. It isn't at all clear to me what work you're doing with SketchUp."That is EXACTLY what I'm trying to achieve here. Instead of trying to explain away why some idea isn't being considered, without thinking it through, please get the "grunts" to mull it over and say that it is feasible, or, is not for a specific reason. You are not dealing with the general unwashed in these forums. In my experience, I've had managers attempt to "explain" why something could not be done, when, with my technical background I knew different. And any of the folks who have at least a few months working with SU can say the same.
The best answers I ever heard were "I'm not sure, but I will get back to you" and this is what you finally said. I will await your report.
As for what I'm doing with SU? Well I have had ideas in many fields formulate in my head over the years. Now in retirement I have the time to put them into 3D. I have a mountain of pencil on paper sketches of many things, based on my past experiences. I used ACAD for years but only in 2D, so I could never realize some ideas fully.
SU changed all that in incredible time and ease of use. I never touched ACAD from a week after I discovered SU-V6. As a result, I now have a patent in the mill, and 4 more in preparation. And because of those proprietary models, I cannot show them to the SU community.
However I have posted (a few years ago) an early rendition of my big freighter on the previous (now defunct) forum, and if anybody wants, I'll repost it here again.
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