Does Trimble listen...?

ArCAD-UK

This whole forum is becoming a depressing read! It seems like every other thread is full of Trimble let me down posts. Looks like people's own expectations were set too high. SU is still a great tool and irrespective of the degree of disappointment it still works. You don't have to upgrade, you don't even have to use it, just stop with all the gripes. Some of us are very grateful that we have such a fun program to work with.

Mike Lucey

I take your point Trevor. Solution for you is not to read the posts that are a depressing read for you

cotty

@mike lucey said:

I take your point Trevor. Solution for you is not to read the posts that are a depressing read for you

I think he is right that this is a difficult task these days

jason_maranto

Who exactly is to blame for that?

Trimble.

If you are saying that we paying users have no right to complain when the company we are supporting financially is severely underperforming, then I would have to disagree.

However, I will say that you are correct. The best tactic to enforce change is to financially support a SketchUp competitor instead... which is exactly what I will do.

Best,
Jason.

JuanV.Soler

@jason_maranto said:

However, I will say that you are correct. The best tactic to enforce change is to financially support a SketchUp competitor instead... which is exactly what I will do.
Best,
Jason.

I can´t see your point in here Jason . SketchUp keeps running great and keeps improving . We are a great community here and we can keep together around this bit of magic software .
I think that the best tactic to enforce change would be to close the gap between Trimble SketchUp Team
and SketchUcation .

And I think we should talk about it .

best

jeff hammond

yeah. i think they listen.. (though maybe not so much in the past few months)

but i also feel they think most of the people here are a bunch of loony fanatics whose suggestions carry no weight so it's pretty easy to ignore us.

i'm not necessarily knocking them down for ignoring the user base..

the main problem i have with it all is that they actually encourage it.. they have a wishlist section at their own forum, the surveys, the live web sit-in (or whatever it was called), 'we are listening' , etc..

i mean, they do encourage us to feel as if we have some sort of say in the direction of the software.. to feel as if we are part of this thing.. so when we see that all of our involvement was just a hoax or a ruse or whatever.. it's going to piss a lot of people off.. like- "jeez.. what a freaking waste of time that was".. the trust is gone

jason_maranto

@juanv.soler said:

I think that the best tactic to enforce change would be to close the gap between Trimble SketchUp Team

If you think that "gap" is coming from the side of the community than you are very mistaken... If anything the community is far too forgiving of how they are being treated.

I've been talking about it for years -- with no results. The time for talking is rapidly expiring -- my wallet will be talking for me.

Best,
Jason.

jeff hammond

@juanv.soler said:

SketchUp keeps running great and keeps improving .

that is definitely open to argument... sketchup crashes more than any app i use.. (as in, most of the apps i use for work, never crash.. and the ones that do crash occasionally, have methods in place to save the work in an efficient manner.. but sketchup? it crashes a few times a day.. if i were to add up all the work i've lost with sketchup (10 mins worth here, 30 mins there, etc) we'd be in the thousands of dollars worth..

and maybe it is improving.. but at what rate? a snail's pace?
meanwhile, we're seeing competing software running laps around this thing. and it's hard to ignore these other packages.. especially when your livelyhood is vested in, at least partially, computer aided drawing

jason_maranto

@juanv.soler said:

I am no thinking that way . What I say is that the gap should be shortened .
I have no idea what has happened for you to say that SketchUcation Community has been badly treated .
But your saying brings the good path to explain and talk . Please go ahead .

I'm not just talking about SketchUcation, but we are here on SketchUcation, and the fact remains that this has been the de facto home of the SketchUp community since the @last forum was shut down.

I think Jeff outlined pretty well why I think the community has been poorly treated a few posts back... bait-and-switch tactics, promising a voice to the users, only to dismiss outright whatever they cannot argue away.

Have you ever seen a SketchUp or Trimble banner ad here? That alone tells you alot...

Best,
Jason.

JuanV.Soler

@jason_maranto said:

@juanv.soler said:

I think that the best tactic to enforce change would be to close the gap between Trimble SketchUp Team

If you think that "gap" is coming from the side of the community than you are very mistaken... If anything the community is far to forgiving of how they are being treated.
Best,
Jason.

I am not thinking that way . What I say is that the gap should be shortened .
I have no idea what has happened for you to say that SketchUcation Community has been badly treated .
But your saying brings the good path to explain and talk . Please go ahead .

best

arail1

@arcad-uk said:

... just stop with all the gripes. Some of us are very grateful that we have such a fun program to work with.

Not going to stop griping, complaining. I think we have a legitimate basis for these complaints considering the extraordinary gap between what we have come to expect from a paid 'upgrade' based on our experience with other programs and what we received from Trimble.

For many of us 'fun program to work with' translates as - 'a significant function of our day to day business structure' and if a company you do business with isn't treating you well - you should tell them so.

JuanV.Soler

@jason_maranto said:

Have you ever seen a SketchUp or Trimble banner ad here? That alone tells you alot...
Best,
Jason.

Ok , but what has happened as to have the complete silence we have today ?

@frederik said:

Remember the old Google is Listening! thread...?

I don´t understand . Is it that Skethucation has grown so powerful that it is really a competitor ?

In any case I still cannot see any advantage in your proposal for trying other softwares
I keep thinking the best would be to improve relationships .

But ... freedom is freedom

Salud

jason_maranto

@juanv.soler said:

Ok , but what has happened as to have the complete silence we have today ?

What an excellent question. Not that I think their presence would result in any real changes, but personally I suspect a Trimble ordered blackout. It's pretty obvious they are trying to build their own community the "Trimble-way"... which is great as long as everybody thinks like a good little SketchUp zombie. A person like me would most definitely not be welcome -- but they'll still take my money!

@juanv.soler said:

[
In any case I still cannot see any advantage in your proposal for trying other softwares
I keep thinking the best would be to improve relationships .

There are 2 parts to that -- big companies only respect one thing: profit and loss. By removing money from their bottom line you are speaking in a language they understand. Secondly, many users actually have little understanding of the options currently available -- a better understanding would likely result in alot more people being vocally irrate with the product Trimble is releasing.

As far as improving relationships, it takes two to tango -- if your dance partner doesn't want to play along what can you do?

Best,
Jason.

Aerilius

Sorry, I come late to this thread, but reading it sounds like a monologue (between many and nobody).
I find it surprising that some blame Trimble exactly for the same what they previously blamed Google. I haven't heard anything from Trimble except Bryn Fosburgh's keynote. Apart from that they are not much publicly involved in SketchUp (maybe in the only long-term strategy behind the scenes). They did not replace the people who work on SketchUp, and support/marketing/communication is still done by the same people…

Maybe we just produce too much content here and they have not enough time to mention that they are alive and reading this?
Or it is already resignation about the situation that they know a lot (somewhat) of what the community thinks and what to improve in the software, but they are unable to implement more than a fraction, so is it worth to waste time listening for more of what they can't realize?

Frederik

@arcad-uk said:

This whole forum is becoming a depressing read! It seems like every other thread is full of Trimble let me down posts. Looks like people's own expectations were set too high. SU is still a great tool and irrespective of the degree of disappointment it still works. You don't have to upgrade, you don't even have to use it, just stop with all the gripes. Some of us are very grateful that we have such a fun program to work with.

I assume you don't get the point here, Trevor...

When Google acquired SU from @Last, the team was almost identical and they promised us to listen to what we were saying...
Let me remind you that the core team remain identical now that Trimble have acquired SU from Google...

As Jason already have mentioned, SCF was born because Google were shutting the previous forum down and converting everything into Google Groups...
Let's not forget that if Google had not done that, SCF would have remained a private tutorial web-site founded by (gosh... I can't remember his name... )...

I fully understand, acknowledge and respect the fact that we can't expect to see feature requests etc. being voiced and listed here, are going to be implemented in future releases, however, just a few years back the team and company behind SU valued the input coming from the user/customer base here at the SCF...
This seem no longer to be the case, which IMHO is extremely regrettable...!

Alan Fraser

@frederik said:

As Jason already have mentioned, SCF was born because Google were shutting the previous forum down and converting everything into Google Groups...
Let's not forget that if Google had not done that, SCF would have remained a private tutorial web-site founded by [i](gosh... I can't remember his name... )

Actually, that was me...and the name you are searching for is Coen Naninck.

Frederik

@alan fraser said:

Actually, that was me...

Cheers, Alan and sorry for not giving you the credit...

@alan fraser said:

and the name you are searching for is Coen Naninck.

Exactly, thanks for the reminder...

Frederik

@kwistenbiebel said:

The people that left back then have taken the key?

I admit that I know close to zip about programming, but I find it difficult to believe that they can't do much, because the core code key should be gone...
I'm sure they have access to the core code, but perhaps a big chunk of that core code needs to be re-written if lots of new features should get implemented... (i.e. 64-bit)

If this is the case, what have they been doing for the past 3 years...??

I've seen threads where the SU Team have told us that certain functions wouldn't be possible to make for XYZ reason (i.e. better UV-mapping)...
However, this isn't correct and today we do have some good tools through great ruby developers, making it possible to UV-map a sphere or cylinder...
Why don't they make it a native function and add a few more...??

I do acknowledge that improvements have been made and released during the past 3 years... It's not like SU haven't developed, it's just been at a very slow pace...

kwistenbiebel

My gut feeling says Aerilius has a point.
I have the feeling there are no people available (not in Google era, not in Trimble) that can actually recode the Sketchup core code of the software to meet the expectations of a speedier and better performing sketchup.
Since @Last ceased to exist, no real core code adaptations have been done.
The people that left back then have taken the key ?

arail1

@frederik said:

@kwistenbiebel said:

The people that left back then have taken the key?

... today we do have some good tools through great ruby developers ...

This is what I find most mystifying. 2D Tools and Vertex Tools changed the way I work in SketchUp, these two plugins changed the look of my drawings. Why is it that the independent ruby writers can do it but Trimble can't? SketchUp 2013 will change nothing about the way I work (I don't see using pattern fills in LO and curved leaders - well, they're nice but hardly 'fundamental'). I will be optimistic and hope that the effort of the last year has been focused on overhauling the foundation of SketchUp such that great improvements that might not have been possible in the past are possible now. Hopefully.