SimLab 3D PDF plugin adds Sketchup 8 support

ashraf

SimLab Soft released today the new version of SimLab 3D PDF plugin for Google SketchUp. The new version adds support for Google SketchUp 8, in addition to that it adds the following new features:

Exporting component names to the model tree

The model tree in the generated 3D PDF file now shows the components names used in the SketchUp model, which makes it easy for the user to Hide/Show different parts of the model.

Control camera transition

The user now has the ability to determine the static time and effect time, and the type of effect used when switching between cameras in the automatic camera mode.

Select cameras to be included in the 3D PDF file

The new camera dialog allows the user to select the set of scenes to be included in the 3D PDF file, the user can changes the names of the cameras and to select their order.

New Documentation

The Mac version will be available soon; we are currently waiting for Google to fix an issue with the Mac version of the SDK to release the new plugin on Mac.

More information about the plugin is available at http://www.simlab-soft.com/3d-plugins/3D-PDF-from-sketchup-main.aspx

ken

Looked at the upgrade page, no where can I find an upgrade section. If I am a registered owner, are you requiring me to pay $95 to upgrade to Ver 2.2 so my copy will work with Sketchup V8?

Ken

ashraf

@unknownuser said:

Looked at the upgrade page, no where can I find an upgrade section. If I am a registered owner, are you requiring me to pay $95 to upgrade to Ver 2.2 so my copy will work with Sketchup V8?
Ken

Sorry for not clarifying this point, This is a free upgrade to all registered owners of the plugin
All what you need to do is to install the plugin, and send an email to license@simlab-soft.com and we will send you the key.

Gaieus

Hi Ashraf and thanks for the new upgrade.

One question for the time being; the last version did not support UTF-8 characters - does this new version support them?

Anssi

I just tried the earlier version. In Windows 7-64, from SU 7.1, whatever settings I saved, the resulted file had Auto Camera on, which is very irritating. Is this fixed? Or, was this only a feature of the Free version (that seems to have disappeared in the newest one)? The earlier version had no documentation about enabled/disabled features between the paid/free versions.

Anssi

ashraf

@gaieus said:

Hi Ashraf and thanks for the new upgrade.
One question for the time being; the last version did not support UTF-8 characters - does this new version support them?

Gaieus,

I was expecting this question, this verison does not included Unicode support, but the development team already has Unicode capable version of the plugin, tested with many European and Asian languages.

Because we had many requests from current users to provide a version that works with SketchUp 8, we decided to go ahead and keep the Unicode for the next update which is coming soon, this update and the next one with Unicode support are free for all registered users of the plugin.

ashraf

@anssi said:

was this only a feature of the Free version (that seems to have disappeared in the newest one)? The earlier version had no documentation about enabled/disabled features between the paid/free versions.

Anssi, you are right, the free version was stopped in this release, the reason for that is that many users did not understand the intension of the free version, which was intended only for students and hobbyists, we had a large number of commercial users using the free version, the support needed for the free version was larger than what we were able to handle.
We still hope to be able to offer a free version in the future, but we need to rethink the subject really well.

The good part is that fewer people will be annoyed with un stoppable rotating camera.

Gaieus

Thanks Ashraf for the heads-up!

Any chance I could put my hand on that unicode beta? We (Hungarians) have two special characters that even broke LayOut's dwg/dxf exporter (although full unicode support should fix it)!

One more question if I may...

When I set the "size" of the pdf export, there are some numbers that I never understand (what they are).
Would it be possible to include standard paper sizes instead? This is mainly important when I "attach" (or add) the 3D PDF output to an existing document (say that I exported from LayOut) and I can never get it to display at the same size as the rest of the PDF pages (or at least explain to me how I should scale/size the output).

The current update has some extremely useful features now however so congrats!

Gaieus

Ah, pixels... No chance for "paper size" (at least when added to an existing document that is adjusted to paper size)?

As for the Hungarian translation; sure.

ashraf

@gaieus said:

Any chance I could put my hand on that unicode beta? We (Hungarians) have two special characters that even broke LayOut's dwg/dxf exporter (although full unicode support should fix it)!

Sure, I will be glad to send you the new version, we should have it ready in the coming two weeks, as soon as it is ready I will send you an email.

You may also volunteer to create a Hungarian translation, the new version will not only support using Unicode in header and footer texts, it will support translating the interface to any language.

Regarding the margins and the size of the PDF, the values shown in the dialog are in pixels, and they are the values used when the view is set to 100%

pdonner

Hi. I downloaded the trial version of Simlab's plugin and activated it. Successfully exported a model which can be viewed in Acrobat Reader 9. Tried to open the file in the Acrobat 8.1 editor, but it repeatedly crashed. The trial version also seems to limit the number of exports to 15.

Are there any solutions to these shortcomings?
How does Simlab's software compare to the PDF export function of the SU 8 Pro version?

ashraf

@pdonner said:

Are there any solutions to these shortcomings?

SimLab Composer and 3D PDF plugin only supports Acrobat reader 9.0 or newer on Windows and Mac.
Version 9.0 introduced new features that we are using in Automatic Camera mode, and has better support for animation, which are working on.
So we decided instead of limiting the functionality, to support Acrobat reader 9.0 or newer.
Upgrading Acrobat reader is a free, fast, and simple process that can be performed from inside acrobat reader itself, which by default will encourage the user to upgrade to the latest version.

With this version we discontinued the free version as we described in the previous post.

@pdonner said:

How does Simlab's software compare to the PDF export function of the SU 8 Pro version?

In addition to the 3D PDF creation capability available in the plugin, SimLab Composer adds Rendering, supports many file formats including SketchUp, has 3D Scene building, and exoirts 3D scenes to different file formats.

Users who use SketchUp as their main Design application will feel more comfortable with the plugin, while users who need the additional functionality and use different design applications in addition to SketchUp will prefer SimLab Composer.

SimLab Composer at this point only support importing SketchUp 7 files and prior, only the plugin supports version 8.
support for version 8 will be added in the next update of SimLab Composer