Who said SketchUp doesn't need to be 64 bit?
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@jeff hammond said:
i'm pretty sure if there were a magic button which the suTeam could press and sketchup were suddenly 64bit, they'd all push it.. without hesitation.
Winner, winner, chicken dinner. You're 100% right; we'd have hit it a while ago, no hesitation. Look, there's no ideological argument here that's causing us to say, "no, never!" There are just real technical hurdles and other priorities competing with each other all the time. We have to do our best to work it all out.
@jeff hammond said:
so if that is in fact true, everything which comes afterwards "benefits are minimal" and/or "performance may actually suffer" etc.. it just comes off as excusey sounding ...
Exactly. There's an inverse relationship between the length of time someone wants something and their ability to be satisfied by the reasons why they can't have it. After a while, anger and pessimism win over, no matter how accurate, true, or reasonable the explanations may be.
Andrew
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Hey everybody,
This is my last response to this thread. The discussion of 64-bit has once again completely exhausted me. Don't expect any more updates on this topic from me.
After reading back through the whole thread though--and actually, not as much this thread as several others--there's something I think is very important to get off my chest.
While not directing this at any one poster, I want to make it clear how fed up I am with the finger-pointing and brow-beating that's been allowed to happen way too much on some of these threads. Sure, I'm a fan of free speech. I'm also a big fan of grace and civility in a professional setting.
In particular, I'm just tired of how often people post negative, derogatory, or otherwise inappropriate messages about the people involved in the engineering or decision-making processes of the SketchUp team. I don't think users have taken to doing this to each other, but trust me I'd be just as disgusted about that if it were the case.
Just like all of you, those of us on the SketchUp team who participate in these forums do so on our own time and don't find it motivating, fulfilling or helpful to put up with child-like outbursts or general incivility, particularly in what I'd consider to be a community that was created for the express purpose of professional exchange, and especially not in a context where people behave that way while simultaneously trying to get me or my team to listen to or help them in some way.
If you've ever wondered why so many of us continue to work on the SketchUp team through transitions from @Last to Google and now to Trimble, the reason is because of the people. I'd trust my teammates with my life, let alone with guiding and nurturing a software product. Can you say the same abut your coworkers?
Regardless of whether you believe me--and if you don't have coworkers like this, then you probably don't believe me--please hear this.
Levying personal criticisms--those that are aimed at people instead of the product--is a sure-fire way to make me and the rest of my team ignore anything else you have to say.
Those of us on the SketchUp team want to make the best product we can. We also want our users to have the best experiences they can, and to have a fair bit to do with guiding the future direction of the product, within the realistic constraints of us needing to balance the desires of a great many different stakeholders in this endeavor.
Concerns, suggestions, bugs, problems, and questions about SketchUp? Keep them coming all day long. That's how we get better.
Implications, complaints, criticisms and commentary about the character of the individual people on the other end of your keyboard? Keep them to yourself.
If you wonder why so few of us still actively post on SketchUcation, look no further than this. Too many of my friends got tired of having to sort through character assassinations and tirades questioning the motivations of their coworkers, which they took as a sign that their participation was no longer desired. If it keeps up, I'll assume the same.
Let's all be better to each other. Thanks for your consideration.
Andrew
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@pixero said:
Why is it that if I have some heavy geometry in SU all of a sudden some soft edges become hard edges?
Yea, that one - that's one of my pet peevs and I looked into it. It's a very bizarre bug. I would like to see that fixed myself.
@pixero said:
Why is loading and saving big scenes take forever?
In Photoshop you can press save and immediately continue to work. All saving is in the background.Our file handling routings could do with improvements - it's well known. As to why? The initial implementation hasn't scaled along with the complexity of the models 14 years later. It's certainly on our radar - one of the nth number of things to address.
@pixero said:
I could go on ...
These are good things to report and have discussions around.
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@pixero said:
It's like he doesn't care for our needs. I feel I was a fool to believe that quads was one of the reasons he hired Thomthom.
For whatever reasons I ended up here, do remember that I've only been at SketchUp for a little over half a year...
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Thanks for your posts. Very informative. See, doesn't it feel great to "open up" a bit?
I think these posts are some of the best from the SketchUp team ever.
I'm still worried and confused by some things John B says and the way he's saying it though.I believe getting the users on the train is important for our understanding.
That's why a more open dialog is so important.I wouldn't ask you to reveal every secret with us but a better understanding comes from knowing where we're heading.
Not saying anything because of all "unfriendly ears" just seems ridiculous when no ground breaking things is released.
There are many different ways other companies are communicating this with their users, with labs or technology previews.
If they can do it, surely you can too? -
@numerobis said:
@jason_maranto said:
The idea that 64-bit is relevant to why SketchUp high poly performance is so poor is just misdirection. The real culprit there is primarily the video card and openGL...
Processes like import, explode, copy, save/autosave(!), etc. are not opengl related. And this is what really annoys me - simple operations that can take forever.
Yes, explode is dead slow. It's the SketchUp stickyness in works. It's one of them things where when it was first made it was fast enough, but as models have grown due to other improvements this one hasn't been able to keep up. This is one of them algorithms-solutions. But it's deep into the core of SketchUp so any modification is risky and need extensive testing and research.
You mention import, of which file types? SKP or other formats?@numerobis said:
And things like beveling should work in realtime (maybe not for 1 million polys, but for normal models) - watching this process bar is really laughable.
Beveling? We're talking about a plugin here, right? Performance for the Ruby API is high up there on my personal list. I've been spending a great deal of time poking into the performance of Ruby extensions and it's clear we need to improve this area as well. We have some ideas that we are exploring. On top of improving the API we also need to improve how we provide guidelines back to the developers of our API so they can utilize best practices that we've discovered over the year.
@numerobis said:
But... if SU would be able to deal with bigger models, then 64bit would be needed very quickly. I'm currently working in Max on models with 20-30 million polys that need 10-15GB RAM. Applying a turbosmooth i can easily max out my 32 gigs...
Sure, but to get there we need to fix a bunch of other things before the memory cap is an issue. When faces with a long list of things to do one need to pick the most imminent ones.
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@pixero said:
I wouldn't ask you to reveal every secret with us but a better understanding comes from knowing where we're heading.
Consider that third party developers are also part of this train - and their vision for what they want to make with SketchUp also greatly affect the possibilities of SketchUp. The direction of Trimble isn't the only concern in play here. With more professional developers using the platform the directions would be endless. A good ecosystem of third party developers is in total capable of responding to a much larger range of users than each individually.
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Yeah, that's all kool and everything but, we can haz 64bit?
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I am using al lot of different software packages, but SketchUp is the only one for which I know severals persons in the developer team by name. So, thank you for beeing here and listening. I think the (sometimes frustrating?) discussion is a great way to put together a well prioritized "what"-list... (sorry, no how from me)
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@andrews said:
@jeff hammond said:
i'm pretty sure if there were a magic button which the suTeam could press and sketchup were suddenly 64bit, they'd all push it.. without hesitation.
Winner, winner, chicken dinner. You're 100% right; we'd have hit it a while ago, no hesitation. Look, there's no ideological argument here that's causing us to say, "no, never!" There are just real technical hurdles and other priorities competing with each other all the time. We have to do our best to work it all out.
@jeff hammond said:
so if that is in fact true, everything which comes afterwards "benefits are minimal" and/or "performance may actually suffer" etc.. it just comes off as excusey sounding ...
Exactly. There's an inverse relationship between the length of time someone wants something and their ability to be satisfied by the reasons why they can't have it. After a while, anger and pessimism win over, no matter how accurate, true, or reasonable the explanations may be.
Andrew
well, to be honest andrew, what you're saying in this thread is pretty much opposite of the jab i was taking in that post..
generally speaking- when these conversations would come up in the past, i've always been left with the feeling that good communication never occurred.. there's way too much of an us_VS_them type of vibe which seems unnecessary and unproductive.
people would say "we want to see sketchup go 64bit" but the responses were of a tone of "you're wrong" or "your idea is bad because..."
(-or- team A was 'we want 64' -- team B was 'we want 32' ...the disagreements happened right from the very beginning)so the rest of the conversation is the user's trying to convince why their idea isn't bad.. then the developers or those defending the developers get more annoyed etc.. then someone says something overboard mean and the 'conversation' ends until the next go-a-round 4 months later.
but really, this is the first time someone from the team is so openly saying "hey, we want sketchup to be 64bit too.. sketchup will be better off down the line if we can get it to 64bit.. if it were super easy to do, we'd be thrilled to release a 64bit version tomorrow.. your want isn't stupid" etc.
and if it really is true that the devs (in magic button land) would really like to see sketchup go 64bit then it gives the us_VS_them somewhat of a common ground to stand on.. which in turn should lessen the battle mentality of people simply defending their ideas to more of a listening/understanding mentality..
i don't necessarily think this type of shift speeds up any development processes or leads to a user working in a more fluid manner (or whatever) but at least the communication can be better with less of a battle vibe.
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@pixero said:
it seems they haven't even started converting to 64 bit to future proof SU. ... I would have thought that this process would be ongoing at some low level at least.
We're doing tons of work to try to shore-up and future-proof SketchUp. I just can't confirm or deny any specifics. See my previous point re: lawyers and Wall St.
@pixero said:
The first thing that I thought about when I heard Trimble had bought it was that they really have to ...
Good, more of that kind of thinking. Certain members of our team have been made into whipping boys because of the decisions people think they've made. Not all of the decisions come from the bottom like we sometimes wish. And luckily, not all of them come down to us from the top, either.
@pixero said:
I know J. Bacus have said that: "Access to memory is not the bottleneck in SketchUp where 'more geometry' is concerned."
If it isn't then please tell us what the bottleneck is and fix it.OK, I'll tell you what it is. Ready?
Surprise, it's not just one thing. Certainly, not even a whole set of things we could very easily explain to our user community.
The biggest problem SketchUp faces is that it's an incredibly complex, legacy codebase. Having spent the last 13 years of my career working on legacy code, I can tell you that it's a whole lot harder and less glamorous than the preceding several years I spent working on brand-new code before that. Legacy code suffers from all sorts of problems you might expect with anything that ages. Sometimes you're dealing with cleaning up short-sighted decisions that should have never been made. Other times you're putting out fires caused by essentially random and unpredictable problems that no one can foresee at the time the offending elements are created.
As far as performance is concerned, just as with the 64-bit transition itself, you'll just have to trust me when I say, if there were a magic button, we'd have pushed it already.
Those who have used SketchUp a long time will remember the big performance boost we gave SketchUp with version 7.1. Well I'll tell you it wasn't for nothing. The gains we got there came from exchanging the entirety of our rendering engine for what we still use today--Intrinsic Alchemy. It was a massive, time-consuming insanely complicated integration to make that happen.
Some number of the big performance improvements will require really big investments like Alchemy did. As I think Thomthom mentioned, some other number of improvements, such as the increased zoom capacity of LayOut, faster vector rendering in LayOut, and 10x faster shadow rendering in SketchUp, will be realized by improved algorithms--getting something done in a new way that is fundamentally superior to the old method, which either wasn't available, or wasn't thought of, at the time the original element was written.
We continue to invest in both of those things. Unfortunately, they take time just like everything else, plus we just don't always get to predict the amount of improvement we'll be able to achieve before we begin.
@pixero said:
By the way, how many developers are they? Does anyone know?
I'm not sure if we're formally allowed to talk about this or not. At Google we were prohibited from revealing these details. I'll ask and see what our management says.
In the meantime, please consider something perhaps nobody on our team has stated clearly before: that there's a lot more going on in the "SketchUp Team" than just the SketchUp client app. I'm not listing everything or going into detail, but I think our resources are spread out across a lot more areas than people might have previously expected. Here are some examples:
- SketchUp desktop app
- LayOut desktop app
- Core platform
- Import/Export/Interoperability
- 3rd Party Dev: API/SDK/Ruby/EW Reviews
- Infrastructure/Tools/Build/Release/Installers
- Internationalization/Localization
- 3D Warehouse
- Extension Warehouse
- Mobile Viewer
- Intra-company Collaborations
- Trimble's DBO Platform
- Skunkworks/Secret Badassery/Mind Control
- QA for all of the above
@pixero said:
Is there anyway to run some diagnostics in the background that if SU runs out of memory makes a dump of all running processes and memory used at that point?
When these crashes appeared I didn't get a bugsplat I simply got that popup and another with "The application has unexpectedly closed". And it was gone.This has a bit to do with the way BugSplat is integrated with SketchUp and also how the memory became exhausted. Lots of unpredictable behavior results when memory is severely fragmented or exhausted, whether just within a single process, or on a larger scale. I've opened a bug about your observation.
Andrew
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@airwindsolar said:
But you'll never need more than 640k, applications will never be too big for a handful of 720k floppies, or manage to fill up a 40MB hard drive, or...
Obviously these sorts of statements seem ridiculous in retrospect, but the thing is that one never really knows which assumptions will hold true and which ones won't back when the original decisions are made.
The people who wrote computer BIOSes 30 years ago assumed somebody would come along and eliminate their use of two-digit years before 1999, but then nobody showed up to do it.
A lot of people saw the explosion of CPU clock speed from 1990 to 2000 and thought it would continue forever, but then one day we suddenly hit a barrier.
I once got to speak in-person with Vint Cerf when he came to Boulder for a lecture. He told me a funny story about the use of IPv4 addressing on the internet, essentially saying that at the time the original specs were drawn up, although there were a few folks on the engineering team who wanted 64 or 128 bits of address space, when push came to shove, since not a single device had been built yet and the whole thing was experimental anyway, he decided there had been enough arguing and just put his foot down, saying 32 bits were plenty--especially since he didn't think anybody would take his research seriously if the proposals asked for anything greater. Of course, just like with Y2K, nobody came along to fix the shortcoming it until the last minute.
Like I've alluded to throughout this discussion, the squeaky wheel gets the grease.
Andrew
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My God...
This is early Saturday morning here in Europe and I'm completely blown away... (in a very positive sense)
I've only had a quick cup of coffee... Perhaps I need a few more to digest all the post and information written here within the past 24 hours... (keeping Pixero's note in mind about this thread having taken off 5 days ago - it seem that it gained momentum and reached warp speed during the past 24 hours...
)@andrews said:
I'm responding to Frederick's message directly, but I'd like to be clear about the fact that in no way should anyone perceive the following message as pointing fingers at him.
Don't worry, I don't perceive any of your answers like that you are pointing fingers directly at me... On the contrary... I really appreciate that you've taken all this time to post all these comments...
I only have a huge respect for that...!
@andrews said:
Believe it or not, trust me or not, WE DO LISTEN! We love SketchUp and want to put out the very best product we can.
I've never questioned this, but it's comfortable to have the confirmation...
@andrews said:
Something I think a lot of people need to be reminded is, "you are not our only customer." While we work diligently to make everyone as happy as possible, the simple fact is that we have too much going on to pursue every single thing requested of us, and many times, keeping one set of users happy means consciously making choices that dissatisfy another group. We do the best we can.
Great point, Andrew...
This is the nature within software development - and in many cases other kinds of development as well - for sure...
It's impossible to please everybody... That's a fact, it's understandable and pretty straight forward...@andrews said:
Also, I know it's easy to forget or not to notice, but if you take a look back over the years and years of SketchUp development, there are plenty of examples of huge things we have done in response to user feedback.
I know this isn't aimed at me, but I just want to let you know that I DO acknowledge and if you take a look at some of the posts I've made previously (not in this thread but on the board in general) you'll also notice that I continue to be very positive about the development of SU in general...
I don't want to point my finger at anyone in particular (it's kind of obvious who they are and I still don't understand why they bother posting anything here... IMO they should leave SketchUp and play somewhere else...), but I completely disagree with those claiming that development have come to a halt within the past 5 years...
It's simply not true and I do acknowledge the progress...Having said that... Whenever this 64 bit discussion arise, I do feel partly uncertain about the future of SU...
@andrews said:
We're also in agreement that SketchUp will have to go 64-bit someday.
I certainly appreciate this statement...
If you hadn't written anything else but this, I'd still be very happy...
@andrews said:
We've never said otherwise.
Sorry to say, but it's the first time I (personally) have seen such a clear statement... Perhaps I haven't paid enough attention previously, but it's the first time I see such a clear statement...
I'm sure I'm not the only one feeling like this, cause why would we have this discussion in first place otherwise...!?!
Personally I feel that you (not you in personal, Andrew, but the SU Team in general, with John Bacus leading the crusade) have done an incredible job for not being particular clear in this matter...
Perhaps it's obvious that SketchUp eventually would need to port to 64 bit, but I have to admit that the smokescreen have worked and hidden a lot of the "obvious" parts - at least for me...@andrews said:
The reason a 64-bit version has not yet been released is a business decision that stems from careful consideration of the the costs of the endeavor and the true benefits to be had, in light of our other priorities. Those other priorities come from several sources, including not just customer suggestions and wish lists, but those tasks which are found to be of critical importance to growing our customer base and the promotion of Trimble's strategic vision for our product and the company.
I fully understand all of this...
Once again, THANK YOU SO MUCH for taking the time to write these comprehensive answers, Andrew...
Much appreciated...!! -
What a positive outcome.
The thoughts and comments posted on SketchUcation by some members don't reflect the common thought process of the community in general.
Trolls float in with negativity and both the mods and admin are desensitised to their negativity.
Policing such comments is fruitless.
I think what is evident here is that their seems to be 'situation' regards SketchUcation and SU staff that is entirely false. Or at least misunderstood.
I think it is fair to say all SU staff are very welcome here and anything negative said personally about SU staff by members doesn't reflect the true feelings of the community.
Thanks for taking time out of your day to address members concerns and suggestions.
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Is it just me or has a huge chunk of yesterday's discussion disappeared from this thread?
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I didn't notice it bit I'll checks the logs to see if post were deleted.
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Those were some of the most helpful responses I've ever seen from a SketchUp team member on the topic. I wouldn't say that I personally find the answers completely satisfying, but the reality of it is your reasons (as finally explained) are actually plausible. Whereas Bacus has always been combative and dismissive, particularly on this issue... which strikes me as a combination of arrogantly self-confident that he knows best, and at the same time equally ignorantly confident that SketchUp users are all idiots.
To me a good analogy for the situation is American football -- in football when things go bad, and a team is losing consistently, the head coach and the quarterback are the ones who take the heat. Right or wrong, they are the face of the franchise and the buck stops with them. Usually the end result is the head coach is fired, and a large amount to the team is replaced when a new head coach is hired. Alternately sometimes the head coach will replace the quarterback to save his own job. Sometimes this is for the best, and sometimes things don't work out -- however at the end of the day a change is always made when things go bad for too long... there is simply too much money at stake to allow the negativity to continue.
I have spent the better part of the last year working in an advisory role to another software that is converting their (much older) legacy codebase to 64-bit. I personally know the frustrations users have with them are somewhat unfounded from working closely with the developers. However, I also have to keep reminding them the ways the users are going to perceive the decisions they make, because they often get so lost in their situation that they loose sight of how the outside perceives the results. I'm sure they don't always like me raining on their parade -- but they are going to dislike the reactions of the general public even more when the results are released (if somebody honest doesn't speak up beforehand)... and unfortunately there do not appear to be many other people who are willing to endanger their position once they have achieved "insider" status. To me that may my best attribute... I will say what I really think no matter how unpopular, and no matter how personally unfavorable the outcome of that honesty may be.
I am a generally positive guy -- if you look back, almost all of my posts up to a certain point you would see that I was always trying to be helpful and positive. The way Bacus handled the issues (at least publicly) turned me from a good friend of SketchUp into a bitter enemy. And that is the issue more than the results -- the things he said and the way he said them turned me off -- and the lack of tangible results he delivered did not make up for his personality. (A good example of a football coach who has a similar off-putting personality, but manages to still be respected, because he actually gets results would be Bill Belichick).
Ultimately the bottom line is this: if you don't want the negative attention, then deliver results.
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Rich - I'm sure there were a batch of posts prior to Andrew's much appreciated input.....specifically talking about quads and UV mapping.
Maybe I've been Sketchuping in my sleep again (wouldn't be the first time) and simply imagined posting about why I think quads and proper UV mapping are essential to making SU competitive and standards compliment with other 3D software.
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