A community chat about SketchUp's future

jeff hammond

@unknownuser said:

is mountain time 1 or 2 hours behind the real time ?

Real time - like UTM?

I was just joking as we barely ever see nationwide (much less worldwide) things listed in mountain time.. but I'm in mountain time zone quite often.. (though usually at 37,000ft! )

Mark H.

@brooksl said:

I look forward to the discussion! Will you be able to publish it in audio - podcast kind of format?

We won't be recording audio; on the flip side, Reddit keeps a transcript of the entire chat, so it will be immortalized on the interwebs all the same. Thanks for the rest of those thoughts, Brooks. For the purposes of this chat, we're hoping to have a conversation about some specific features of SketchUp that you'd like to see, or some specific use cases for which you think SketchUp can be better. For example, we are definitely hoping to have a discussion around SketchUp's API/SDK ecosystem and how it can be improved. Plenty has been offered here on SketchUcation about that, so we're looking forward to addressing some of those issues live tomorrow.

pbacot

I missed the note somehow: what do we do to join the chat? a URL? Do you go to reddit and search?

dbalex

everyone can attend? even from europe?

TIG

@dbalex said:

everyone can attend? even from europe?
If you can stay awake !

thomthom

@tig said:

@dbalex said:

everyone can attend? even from europe?
If you can stay awake !

GMT 18:30 - 22:30 ... not too bad.

thomthom

I've started to write down some notes on the SketchUp Ruby API.
Google Docs document - read only to public with ability to comment.

JClements

So how do we participate Will there be login link to this Reddit session?

thomthom

@jclements said:

So how do we participate Will there be login link to this Reddit session?

They will announce the link when the session begins. Keep an eye on this thread, twitter or G+.

JClements

So it is only thru Twitter or G+. Rats, can't use them at work.

Rich O Brien

@jclements said:

So it is only thru Twitter or G+. Rats, can't use them at work.

Can you view the Reddit page in work?

thomthom

@jclements said:

So it is only thru Twitter or G+. Rats, can't use them at work.

No - that's some of the channels they'll use to publish the link. I expect the link to be published here at SCF. If not, we (the mods) will update the first post.

Mark H.

I will definitely be posting the link to the Reddit chat when we start it up, John. In the meantime, you may want to visitReddit.com and register a username (which you'll need to participate) -- it takes 30 seconds.

tbd

**Mark:**unless it replies with "reddit is under heavy load right now, sorry. Try again in a few minutes."

Mark H.

Hey all,

We're now live on Reddit; hope you can join us!

Mark

thomthom

So much for a chat... one has to wait about 5 minutes between each post...

thomthom

Now I have to wait 8 minutes...

BrooksL

Some SketchUp significant priority wishes off the top of my head...

make Layout dimension precision options match SketchUp's precision capabilities; layout looks like a very helpful application but it's not nearly as useful when it can't dimension with the same units and number of decimal places as our SketchUp models -- needs to at least do hundreths of a millimeter and thousandths of an inch, but would be best to simply match SketchUp's capabilities.
make the plane tools also respond to the arrow keys by forcing the plane orientation (because the point and line tools respond, I see new users [and myself] intuitively expected similar behavior from the plane tools -- and it would be very helpful!
make the plane tools capable of quick compound angle alignment similar to the protractor tool by holding down the left mouse button. When it was pointed out to me that the protractor can do this, I can see how it would be very helpful (and make for intuitive consistency) if all the native plane tools responded like that.
fix the errors in and clarify the documentation - especially for lowering frustrations of new users.
provide a couple of ways that the user can quickly kick or influence the inference engine to look for another inference or a specific inference in the same view vacinity - because it's really frustrating when a user (especially a newbie) frequently needs to zoom in very close or turn off a bunch of geometry just to get the engine to make the desired selection.

5a) some kind of selection filter influence for the selection tool could also be useful - sometimes (often) it's a royal pain to get a construction point selected by itself among a bunch of other geometry.

solo

I got distracted by the drying paint on my wall, far more interesting.

Mark H.

@Thom Thom -- we're experiencing that annoying delay as well. We are on 3 different networks and have set-up 3 different wi-fi hot spots to get off the same IP!