SketchUp 2013 ;)
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Phew - that all took some reading!
I've held off commenting thus far because I haven't really put 2013 through its paces - and as they say "the proof of the pudding is in the eating."
But I would like to make the observation, that whatever the merits of SU 2013, I think there is something seriously lacking - clear, concise and thorough communication from Trimble. To take just a couple of quick examples...-
Why do we need to ask what the policy is regarding "skipped" upgrades. While the programmers were busy refactoring their code, why was the marketing team not laying out a clear policy, determining price points, and creating documentation that would make this issue perfectly clear right from day one of their "new baby"? Simply saying that any "buy in" after a version skip will be "reasonable" is not good enough - for many of us, I'm sure, that just has the ring of the weasel words that we hear every day from spineless politicians.
(EDIT: NB - I'd just like to make clear, this is not a dig at the Trimble guys who have been brave enough to post here - such things are, of course, a collective responsibility, and there will be corporate rules about what any individual is allowed to say). -
"Many bug fixes and performance improvement made" - that's great, it's not always brand new features that bring the biggest workflow enhancements - software that works faster and crashes less is, for sure, a valuable thing in its own right.
But, where do I look to see these improvements - what exactly can I expect to be more stable? - roughly how much faster can I expect feature "X" to perform?
The coders will surely have tested these things in great detail before the release - so why are the release notes so vague, Trimble must surely have the requisite information to hand.
Much as a applaud ThomThom et al. doing some profiling etc., so that the less "tech-savvy" members of the forum can better understand the differences, why are end users having to do this? If these improvements are significant, Trimble should be shouting about them - and maybe the lack-lustre list of new features would not seem quite so underwhelming.
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If there are changes to the Ruby API, however small - why is the documentation for them not already in place? When I purchase a new gadget, I don't expect the instruction manual to follow along weeks or months later - I expect it right there from day one so that I can immediately reap the benefits of the new toys I have at my disposal.
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There may be differences under the hood to "re-build the foundations" - but, if so, what? I would be perfectly happy to accept this explanation for the lack of "visible" enhancements, were I given some indication of a "road-map".
Just some little sign of the anticipated future improvements that are intended to be built on the "new foundations" would go a long way to convince me that my upgrade fee is buying into a platform that has a fantastic future ahead of it.
I don't intend to imply that the lack of info means that we are somehow being ripped off - but come on, Trimble, you want my boss to sign off my purchase order - convince me!!
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I think we all must be patient with Sketchup. After all, marijuana has only been legal in Colorado for a short time. If any of you have ever smoked weed before you will know there is a period of "Enlightenment" before actual progress is made to the task at hand.
It does concern me when Jason Maranto is upset like this. That guy and some of the others know Sketchup frontwards and backwards.
Make Sketchup 64-bit already, puhleeze. I don't know or care what it will do. That's what the majority of the people want so like Nike says, "Just do it".
Please do make plugins like 3SKeng and PipeDraft for Sketchup. Except professional ones.
And finally, please continue with the development of Layout. A fellow must have a way to show off their masterpiece without relying on third-party software.
Thank You,
Paul
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@raineysky said:
Please do make plugins like 3SKeng and PipeDraft for Sketchup. Except professional ones.
Why do you say they are not professional?
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@unknownuser said:
Please do make plugins like 3SKeng and PipeDraft
Seems there is one
Pipe Tool by Builder Boy -
@arail1 said:
I''m not sure what the improvement in Zoom factor is - I'm not experiencing it.
I get clipping when I zoom to a line at about 1/64" long with SkechUp 8 / Layout 8. Same with SketchUp 2013 and Layout 2013. Right at the point that the line fills about half my screen I get clipped. I've never been convinced by the workaround of scaling the model so this is a big disappointment. Maybe I'm doing something wrong.I'm about 1/2 way through reading about this disaster (2013 Make)
when I saw this post, and a follow-on answer regarding FOV, which is not as effective as ......I had this problem in spades years ago, and Catamountain (where is she now???) offered a workable simple solution.
When you start seeing near field clipping, BACK off a lot, then TURN OFF Perspective. No need to monkey with FOV.
If you don't zoom out first, turning off perspective will zoom you out by a very large factor.
Now you can zoom back in as close as you want, and there is NO clipping no matter how close you zoom in. You can see a line segment or gap smaller than .001 inch fill the screen.
One tip though, if what you want to zoom in on is very small (natch, why else?) then select it or an adjoining entity (a face is best) so that when you are zoomed out you can find what you want easier.After, zoom back out again before turning perspective back on.
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As for 2013 Make, it seems to me that it will be a long time before I switch from V8 Free.
They need to make it (no pun intended) better than V8 by a lot, not just a tiny little bit.And that entails making/fixing stuff I use every day all the time, rather than setup tools I use very infrequently.
Realistically, how often do you play with your toolbars? Or get something from the warehouse? Or install a plugin? Versus, as an example, zooming into some entity till the screen breaks?
If they can fix the clipping issue in Layout, then there is no good reason it couldn't be fixed in SU proper.
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@thomthom said:
On my office computer (freshly formatted) I some times "feel" a lag I don't do on the same model in SU8. Especially when SU's window has been inactive a while.
But I'm not seeing this on my home computer. Not sure what to make of it.It probably has to do with foreground/background task allocation differences, and the fact that your office PC is probably on a LAN which introduces a lag on everything anyway.
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@mike lucey said:
@tig said:
And 50% wrong
I'll keep looking on the bright side
Never noticed the Mac custom icons ..... then again, I'm having difficulty discerning between red and yellow!
there's a difference ?
uh huh......now I understand why nobody has liked my interior colour schemes lately...!!
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A couple of things are worth mentioning. I'll admit it, I am cutting them some slack on this release...but am expecting solid progress in the next one. This makes me no worse than those at the other extreme, claiming there's nothing more than new icons after 3 years.
First thing: Galling or not, I guess we have to simply disregard the final 2 years with Google. That was then, this is now. It is likely that whatever was being worked on during that time is either now irrelevant to Trimble (hence not in this release) or remains the property of Google (hence not in this release) After all, some of the team actually stayed with Google, indicative of whatever it was they were up to, they are still working on it.
That leaves just one year with Trimble, during which the team has had to turn the entire program around 180°...from an increasing narrow focus on the needs of Google Earth to shaping it up ready to shoot off in myriad directions if it is to serve as the platform across the entire range of Trimble's GIS-based software...which was the stated aim of the purchase.
It's also been asked "What is the big deal regarding the Extensions Warehouse when we already have the Plugin Store here at SCF? We don't need it."
Well, much though I love it, SCF isn't the entire SU universe. It has close on 200,000 members; SU users number in the millions (as do Trimbles...even before its purchase). WE may not need the EW, but the vast majority of SU users do...because they ain't here. I come across users on a daily basis, some of whom seem unaware of features even as basic as Follow Me; and are presumably utterly ignorant that plugins even exist.But perhaps even more than this, the EW is indicative of a fundamental change in attitude. It's obvious that Corporate Google (as opposed to the dev team) couldn't have cared less about this kind of dedicated user base. Don't forget, they forcibly closed the old @Last forum,, upon which SCF is heavily based...despite the outcry of the users and the thinly-veiled reluctance of the @Lasters. SCF wouldn't even exist but for the disinterest of Google; it would probably still be Coen's tips and tutorials. They simply didn't care that a community arose here on SCF which resulted in plugins to hugely enhance the AEC (and general modeling) usability of SU. They didn't care, because they were only interested in its use as far as Google Earth was concerned. The simple fact that they tolerated a situation in which the major enhancements to their own baby were being made via a 3rd party website demonstrate that disinterest as clear as daylight.
Trimble appears to be a different animal. It would seem that they do actually care about the modelling aspects; and are therefore not content to let the extensions that facilitate real progress in that direction to be the sole preserve of such a 3rd party. If they are truly preparing to roll-out SU across the entire Trimble community (most of whom may never have come across it before) how else would they do that other than create the EW in order that they might download whatever extensions bend the basic program in their personal, required direction...send them all over to SCF? I don't think so.
If all this is going to work, though, we do need to see MAJOR improvements in the core program in terms of geometry handling. They need to listen. One small example...easily fixed; I've been asking for them to reinstate the face count into Entity Info ever since they removed in in V3 or V4. How hard can it be? This isn't rocket science. You have a program that is notoriously geometry-intolerant. You now have (thanks to Ruby) a wide choice of methods to achieve a particular end. Supposing for instance you need to model an organic-shaped chair seat...and there are 30 of these babies in the office you are designing. It's a matter of no small significance that you try a few different methods and are then quickly able to tell which is the most efficient, size-wise.
Having to copy all these trials into a completely different instance of SU, so you can read the face count in Model Info, rather than simply have it there...INSTANTLY...in Entity Info....LIKE YOU USED TO HAVE, isn't my idea of efficient.
Yes, I know there may be some workaround, like using Goldilocks to count the edges...but that's hardly the point. -
new icons
. why? -
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@kwistenbiebel said:
@jarynzlesa said:
new icons
. why?...cause the old ones were sooooooo 2012 .
So, back to 1999 ?
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jarynzlesa, have you tried LaunchUp and ToolbarEditor? Those plugins use icons from image files, and I haven't updated the images to be identical to the SU2013 icons. You could even edit or replace them by your favorite icons.
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Postby Alan Fraser » Mon, 27 May 2013 8:22 am
"A couple of things are worth mentioning........." A LOT of little things can be fixed in SU, as I made one example in a previous post, If they can fix the zoom-clipping in Layout, then why not in SU proper, or is it simply because we pay $$$ for Layout and $zip for Free?
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@jgb said:
When you start seeing near field clipping, BACK off a lot, then TURN OFF Perspective. No need to monkey with FOV.
If you don't zoom out first, turning off perspective will zoom you out by a very large factor.
Now you can zoom back in as close as you want, and there is NO clipping no matter how close you zoom in. You can see a line segment or gap smaller than .001 inch fill the screen.
One tip though, if what you want to zoom in on is very small (natch, why else?) then select it or an adjoining entity (a face is best) so that when you are zoomed out you can find what you want easier.After, zoom back out again before turning perspective back on.
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I know this is an aside from the real contest between those wanting to burn at the stake anyone who doubts this upgrade vs those of us who believe the upgrade signals The End of Civilization as We Know It but this is such a big deal for me! I should give you my $95 instead of Trimble. I go back and forth between AutoCAD LT and SketchUp all day and the clipping / zooming issue is a continual PITA. Wherever lines intersect arcs or circle coming from AC into SU is the source of the problem. Depending on where they fall on a chord they are either too short and need to be extended or they cross over the chord and need to be trimmed. Often these errant segments are very small and thus cause clipping problems.
Your solution works! Civilization is, temporarily, restored again.
Thanks, sincerely.
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But you know that the clipping problem is caused by geometry being placed very far away from the origin, yes?
Even if it is only an autocad block that has been created at great distance to the autocad zero point. -
@numerobis said:
But you know that the clipping problem is caused by geometry being placed very far away from the origin, yes?
Even if it is only an autocad block that has been created at great distance to the autocad zero point.That's not correct. Clipping issues are exacerbated by distance from origin but that's not the only clipping problem SketchUp has.
Draw a line 1/32" long at the origin and zoom into it. The clipping you'll experience is what's being discussed.
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@numerobis said:
But you know that the clipping problem is caused by geometry being placed very far away from the origin, yes?
Even if it is only an autocad block that has been created at great distance to the autocad zero point.What we were referring to is more correctly called "Near Field" clipping and is a direct result of the Field of View angles from the SU perceived camera (your eye) distance to the object. It has no direct relationship to the Su Origin point.
When the camera gets so close that the FOV angle becomes less than the angles to screen edge, the clipping occurs. SU has no "display computation" of any part of the drawing outside the FOV, so it disappears (clipping). Think of looking through a paper towel tube versus a cone.
Making the FOV very narrow alleviates this to a certain extent, but distorts the view when the camera/object increases to more normal distances, unless you keep changing FOV to suit.
A similar thing will happen if you zoom out from a very large object, you will also see clipping, but in this case you need to widen the FOV to avoid clipping.
Also this zoomed out clipping does have a relationship to the origin point as SU "assumes" a large distance equates to a very large model space.
Since AutoCAD has (or at least had, way back when I used it) no specific origin point, unless specified, it can fool SU into computing a very large model space and zoomed out clipping becomes more common with these imported drawings.
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I am a SU7free user. I plan to upgrade to the pro version. I installed SU2013 and wanted to buy SU2013pro but since there are so many problems at the moment, plugins that doesn't work properly and so on, I still use the stabile SU7 and wait for the solutions...
May be I come back in month or so to buy the full version.
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@jo-ke said:
I am a SU7free user. I plan to upgrade to the pro version. I installed SU2013 and wanted to buy SU2013pro but since there are so many problems at the moment, plugins that doesn't work properly and so on, I still use the stabile SU7 and wait for the solutions...
May be I come back in month or so to buy the full version.
My experience is that 2013 is rather more stable than V8. I'm still waiting for a bugsplat...no, I tell a lie; I had one yesterday when just playing around and undoing a Ruby action on heavy geometry for the umteenth time...something I've had in every version since Ruby was introduced.
Most of the Ruby issues seem to be connected to incorrect permissions on individual's systems...something that any maintenance release is not likely to fix.
Currently, I don't have any problems...and I'm using most of TIG's TT's, Fredo's, Chris Fulmer's, the new TreeMaker...as well as V-Ray and Twilight.You can run both versions side by side (or beta testers would be in a real mess, wouldn't they?) Together with their full complement of plugins.
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Sorry, just a quick question, does anybody know where the styles folder has gone, I usually keep one in my sidebar to add style and I cannot find it under the application support in users or on the hard drive. I am running OSX and have just installed 2013 pro.
many thanks
Dan
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