Why use Sketchup?
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@johnsid said:
So I ask You, Sketchup fans, why do You choose Sketchup?
I began using it because it was the 3d app of choice at the architectural office I now work at. Though, I wish I'd known about it when I went to uni as it's so quick to do mesh models. The learning curve is really shallow in SU, so it's easy to just get started, then you learn the tricks that make you even faster.
And being a former webdeveloper I found the Ruby API very inte3resting as it allowed me to make plugins, macros very quickly to automate repeatability tasks. This turned into an obsession...
I'm now doing more than just automating tasks.And I've also been a fan of applications with plugins, which let you choose the features you want. Being able to adapt the application to your need and avoid all the stuff you never use. (I've used 3dsmax, but only a fraction of the tools available.) Firefox is my browser of choice, due to its plugins, even though other browsers have some really nice features and some times better HTML5 and CSS3 support.
But I also have Rhino and Bonzai3d. My choice SketchUp doesn't exclude other tools. It's just the main tool due to the work I do.
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In my industry the internal NPR render engine of Sketchup and the fact that it is free and easy to use has made it ubiquitous for generating perspective backgrounds for illustration purposes.
I've taken that much further than most of my peers, and also if someone were in need of complex animation capabilities and could tolerate the learning curve then certainly Blender would be the next logical choice.
Best,
Jason. -
Bloody easy to use.
I used ACAD since version 2a. I really wanted a 3D app for ages, and I tried as many (free ones) as I could find and load. NONE got me further than a few days sweating their learning curves. Then ACAD came out with their "2 1/2 D" abomination. I spent 2 full weeks trying to draw a 3D fuselage of my big airplane project, and never got it right, or even close.
Then I came across SU. No BS...
In less than 2 hours (including install) I had the fuselage drawn as I wanted.One of the really brilliant SU design features is as simple as the red/green/blue axis representation. Compare that to ACAD's dumb arrow.
I have not touched ACAD since that day.
Yeah, I have bitches with SU, but nothing that would push me away from it.
One of the main beauties with SU is the very point you rail against.... Plugins.
The way SU is written is a major advantage over any other 3D CAD. If you have a problem doing something the chances are someone else had it too, and wrote a Ruby plugin to fix it. Or you can too. Try fixing a problem in ACAD. Wait and pay for the next version please, and maybe it will be fixed.
However, if everything that needed "fixing" by anybody using SU were to be incorporated into SU, rather than as optional plugins, you will end up with a monster app (like ACAD) that does everything, but MOST of which you will never ever use.
There is a lot in SU I have never touched in the 3 years using it, but there are several SU plugins I now cannot live without. Some plugins simply correct an operational fault, like Startup.rb, others are indispensable to me like TT-selection-tools. You simply load what you need.
NO OTHER CAD can do this as easily as SU.
And it is free with a very expert help community to boot. -
I sometimes ask the same question myself. I agree that the requirement to add plugins to do many common tasks is a big minus. That said, I do find it useful for what it does. I would go to a different app in a heart beat if the price was right. I've been looking at ViaCAD.
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Kids of 5 years can use it without problem!
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@david. said:
I sometimes ask the same question myself. I agree that the requirement to add plugins to do many common tasks is a big minus.
But that's the thing "common task" - very subjective. What you do commonly might not be what I do commonly. If you added all the commonly features used by the common user you'd end up with common bloat.
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I started using it, and it became an instant love affair, hard to put into words exactly even with all the problems with it. I still dabble with Maya, but SU is my preference for most of what I need in my work, and all the plugins help a lot.
Not much of an answer for you, but just getting my 2 cents in.
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It's intuitive, flexible, robust and elegant.
It's also the perfect introduction to 3D.
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The stand-out feature of sketchup, to me, is the inference-engine and it's snapping. I realize that this also puts limits on what (due to size) you can work on, but This is why it's still my modeling program of choice.
Several times I've thought to switch to blender or some other program, but I can't get over how easily something could have been done in SU that I've spent forever on the new program.
I do agree that the modularity of plugins are very nice. Still, at a certain point other tools can simply do something better than sketchup and it's easier to use those than fight sketchup to get it to do what you want. -
I use Sketchup because it orbits like no other app, I get to pick and choose my plug-ins, tons of render apps plug in or studio out, I can create pretty much anything I need for my day to day work, inferencing rocks (sure it comes at a price)
I spend my time modeling, not scrolling and hunting for tools.
But most of all Sketchup is fun, I get paid to play.
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@thomthom said:
And I've also been a fan of applications with plugins, which let you choose the features you want. Being able to adapt the application to your need and avoid all the stuff you never use. (I've used 3dsmax, but only a fraction of the tools available.) Firefox is my browser of choice, due to its plugins, even though other browsers have some really nice features and some times better HTML5 and CSS3 support.
It is a good point. I also hate very big apps, which grow to be slow, and pain to use. Example of this is Nero, so I switched to ImgBurn, or big video editing tolls, which I replace with VirtualDub (1,6 MB instead of 1,6 GB
.Plugins is great stuff to, I agree. But Sketchup without plugins lacks same basic functions. Who dosent use Bevel? Who dosen't use subdivide? Instalation file of Wings3D, which contains functionality stored i dozens of Sketchup plugins, have size of 8,6 MB. Instalation file of sktechup weighs over 41 MB.
Sometimes plugins don't work properly, nobody guarantee quality of them, and so on. Some of them are commercial, and you have to pay for them, and there are other free programs which have these functionality by default.
I just wonder, why Sketchup do not have some of this basic functions in default instalation.
Despite this, I like the idea of plugins in Sketchup. It is just sad, if I want Subdivide and Smooth, I have to pay for it, but in WIngs it's free and work very well out of the box. So full feature SKetchup isn't free, it needs lot of stuff you have to buy extra. Like render engine.
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@johnsid said:
Who dosent use Bevel? Who dosen't use subdivide?
I don't. Very rarely. That said, I model architectural models at work, where I don't find the need for such functions.
I have used them for personal projects, doing product design.@johnsid said:
have size of 8,6 MB. Instalation file of sktechup weighs over 41 MB.
Are assets comparable? Graphical software often differ greatly in the file size, but often it's due to the assets they bundle with it, not necessarily the binary. And I don't find the file size to be a measurement of bloat, but rather the UI.
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@johnsid said:
Sometimes plugins don't work properly, nobody guarantee quality of them, and so on. Some of them are commercial, and you have to pay for them, and there are other free programs which have these functionality by default.
I just wonder, why Sketchup do not have some of this basic functions in default instalation.
Despite this, I like the idea of plugins in Sketchup. It is just sad, if I want Subdivide and Smooth, I have to pay for it, but in WIngs it's free and work very well out of the box. So full feature SKetchup isn't free, it needs lot of stuff you have to buy extra. Like render engine.
I'm sorry guy but this just comes across as you griping because you have to pay for something -- and that's just sad.
SDS (subdivide and smooth) plays absolutely no role in why Google bought and made Sketchup free in the first place. You don't use high poly modeling techniques when modeling for Google Earth... if the feature you want for free has no value to the developers as a feature they are interested in giving away, then why should they include it? Especially in the free version...
It is only logical that they will develop and release tools for the free version that serve their goals which may or may not align with yours... but free software is a gift and to complain about a gift not being as "full featured" as you would like it to be is ungrateful and poor etiquette.
If you want a right to complain then buy Sketchup Pro, or try to become a Super Modeler (Google Earth), or write some Ruby Plugins for the community -- until you contribute something of worth I would not expect the Sketchup dev team to see your complaint as anything more than white noise.
Best,
Jason. -
I use SU for all the reasons stated above, but even more so now that Google has Purchased it. So when they take over the world, I will be one of the chosen ones to be spared.
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In my neck of the woods that's called knob polishing
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Rich, I'd suggest you not polish knobs in Texas.
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I tried sometimes to work with blender too but now i can ask: why does anybody work with blender? I still think that blender is much complicated then SU for the basic work, and i do not have to create something difficult.
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I first used sketchup, because the modeling app I had been using went from $400.00 a station to $2,000.00.
I first liked it because it is easy to use, supported Dxf, and came with a user programing language. It is owned and supported by a big company, and has a large architectural user base. Later I found that there were a lot of "free", and inexpensive plugins to aid modeling.
Don't depend on Sketchup for production drawings. IMO, Layout has a ways to go before it can easily handle more then a small project. LO doesn't have a user programing language.
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@jason_maranto said:
I'm sorry guy but this just comes across as you griping because you have to pay for something -- and that's just sad.
No, if I can pick software, that gives me this and more for free, absolutly legal. And maybe, just maybe, better quality.
@jason_maranto said:
Google bought and made Sketchup free in the first place. [...] if the feature you want for free has no value to the developers as a feature they are interested in giving away, then why should they include it? Especially in the free version...
So Blender shouldn't exist? Once it was commercial too, and now it's free, because people bought it ang give it away free. What about Google Chrome. It's not only free, it's open source. Is it poor etiquette to criticize Chrome?
@jason_maranto said:
[...]but free software is a gift and to complain about a gift not being as "full featured" as you would like it to be is ungrateful and poor etiquette.
So nobody can criticize Firefox, or Thunderbird, or Blender, or millions of others? Why? Because they are free?
@jason_maranto said:
If you want a right to complain then buy Sketchup Pro, or try to become a Super Modeler (Google Earth), or write some Ruby Plugins for the community -- until you contribute something of worth I would not expect the Sketchup dev team to see your complaint as anything more than white noise.
You can't criticize bread and its taste, until you bake some for people? You can't choose different bakery?
I do not understand your approach. Sketchup is not my enemy. I like this software and I use it a lot. I'm just curious, why people pay for some plugins, they can have for free in different software, maybe even better implementation of this funcition which is commercial in Sketchup. In software that is also easy to use. And I want to know that reason. Thats all.
It can be just convenience, or it can be something else.
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