"How does Tinkercad differ from Sketchup?"

jason_maranto

According to wikipedia:

CAD refers to a specific type of drawing and modeling software application that:

Is designed for creating technical drawings for distribution electronically and on paper

Uses the accuracy inherent in a floating point, as opposed to fixed-point drawing database

Great, so I have some answers... does the SketchUp/Layout combo not meet these requirements?

Best,
Jason.

jeff hammond

meh… my images wouldn't attach in the comments section.. they uploaded and the post looked fine but they don't show in the actual post.. oh well..

tim

@jason_maranto said:

According to wikipedia:

@unknownuser said:

CAD refers to a specific type of drawing and modeling software application that:

Is designed for creating technical drawings for distribution electronically and on paper

Uses the accuracy inherent in a floating point, as opposed to fixed-point drawing database

Well someone in wikipedia-land is an idiot. Two reasons (limiting ourselves to this one clause)

CAD could easily be done with scaled integer arithmetic on suitable machines. Like say using a 64bit integer where each increment represents one Angstrom (seems small enough to cope with important details. That would allow +/- 9 billion metres maximum range, which is plenty for anything up to a RingWorld.
Floating point is not accurate; there are a mere 53 bits of significand, 1/1000th of the number (roughly, I used floating point maths here) in a 64bit integer.
If you want actual accuracy you need flexible length integers.

jason_maranto

I work with single precision 32-bit floating point data all the time (audio) -- so I was not automatically thinking they were referring strictly to 64-bit... since many "true CAD" packages offer 32-bit versions as well.

Here is the wikipedia page I got the quote from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_computer-aided_design_editors

Still, this does not answer the question of "why is SketchUp not a true CAD application?" Obviously the free version lacks Layout, which means it is not optimized for paper output -- but SketchUp Pro can create create technical drawings using Layout quite well. Aside from accurate arcs and circles I'm not sure where the perceived problem might be.

I think many people simply ignore the plugins when they talk about SketchUp -- which for me is a joke because I think SketchUp is virtually unusable without the plugins... whenever I teach I always point people to these forums and give them a full rundown on how to install plugins, because SketchUp is simply not complete without them.

I was helping a local landscape design specialist (a couple doors down from my office) get up to speed with SketchUp the other day -- they were getting bogged down in performance issues. As part of that conversation I made this statement: "The mistake most people make when first trying SketchUp is they think it is a complete program in itself. But it is really more like a platform -- you really need the plugins to make it worthwhile for much of anything".

They were coming from AutoCAD I think -- so I showed them how to make 2D face-me components, optimize component use and library, set up layers properly, optimize the viewport for navigation of heavy scenes, etc... But I felt the most important thing I did was give them directions here and showed them how to install and use a plugin (ThomThoms CleanUp).

Best,
Jason.

Mike Lucey

Mr Backman is so 'off the mark' that I think very few will take what he is saying seriously. Now, if he studied SketchUp a little, which he obviously hasn't, he could have possibly made a case of sorts but as it stands, his blanket statement is for the 'birds'

Mike

pilou

I tried : very more difficult than SU!
And some less powerful!

thomthom

@mike lucey said:

Mr Backman is so 'off the mark' that I think very few will take what he is saying seriously.

...by any SketchUp user. But people with no experience keep hearing these statements and thinks SketchUp is not a serious tool Which is why you keep hearing comments like this.

Mike Lucey

That used to bug me also Thomas but I came to the conclusion that most sensible people 'see through' this silly 'SketchUp Knocking' and the people that don't initially I imagine eventually check it out for themselves ..... hence the 30M downloads.

numerobis

@thomthom said:

http://www.wired.com/design/2012/06/interview-with-tinkercad-founder-kai-backman/

@unknownuser said:

How does Tinkercad differ from Sketchup?

Both Tinkercad and Sketchup are 3-D design tools. The main difference is that Sketchup is a desktop sketching tool that isn’t suited for designing physical objects while Tinkercad is a web app that is actually a real Computer Aided Design program suitable for real design.

I believe he hasn't really observed what SketchUp is capable of. Any suggestions of some nice examples to put him to shame?

I think he means that Sketchup doesn't support curves.

But other than that it really looks like it is made for idiots...
and it looks like a cheap copy of autodesk's 123D (cloud based, 3d-printing, sharing)

sketch3d.de

@numerobis said:

I think he means that Sketchup doesn't support curves.

assume this too (w/o reading the article), NURBS modeling and analytic entities are of course more exact than mesh-based modeling and polylines... but at the end of the day, when it comes to machining, all the exact NRUBS curves need to be converted to polys anyhow because machine tools are driven by stepper motors (max. res. ~1/1000mm).

with 'CAD' = 'Computer Aided Design' SU is of course CAD, what else.

Norbert