This is a really useful plugin - thanks!

One small request which many people might find useful - would it be possible to have a right-click menu to save an individual component as a previous version?

Yes, we recently released a new build which fixes this behaviour.

I've just tested a new build that fixes the hanging on exit issue. It has taken a while, but we think we finally have it resolved. I'll post an update when we release it.

Sorry about the delay - apparently it's been tricky to pin down...

Actually, for us Mac users, there isn't too much choice. Vectorworks isn't up to much as a BIM platform, at least in 2013 form. It imports SU IFC files just fine, but you can't edit the geometry. I've yet to see what VW2014 can do.

There is ArchiCAD, which is good, but expensive - and that's about it, I think. Running Windows software in a VM is not a suitable solution for BIM software IMO.

Another compelling reason for a Mac native version of PlusSpec.

On a different note, SU 2014 doesn't add IFC globalIDs for IFC tagged objects. At least not as far as I can tell from testing in VW and Solibri.

Unless I'm wrong, it's something to be fixed in a future release I think...

Damn, no Mac version yet apparently. Bit of a deal breaker for me right now...

No actually - very interesting, thanks for the heads up

To keep this thread alive (because I still think there is work to be done), PlusSpec has had almost unanimously positive reviews about being a wonderful piece of software. Andrew and his team seem to have done a great job.

However, technically it's not 'true BIM' because it's standalone. There's a long discussion to be had in relation to this, and there are lots of definitions. BuildingSmart defines it as:-

“A BIM is a digital representation of physical and functional characteristics of a building. As such it serves as a shared knowledge resource for information about a building forming a reliable basis for decisions during its life-cycle from inception onward.”

The 'shared' word seems to be significant to every authoritative resource using the term.

That doesn't mean that PlusSpec not an excellent application, in lots of cases it's probably better than the large commercial applications. It does mean that it's not quite 'full' BIM - yet.

To my mind, PlusSpec + IFC would equal true BIM for everyone, which is what PlusSpec is (in my humble opinion) aiming for. Andrew is well aware of the IFC issues, and I hope he's implementing support.

He is right in that you can use a standalone system for individual houses and small projects, but SketchUp is suitable for larger projects (I use it for buildings of 9000sq.m.) which do need interoperability and team working.

This means IFC, which would push PlusSpec into a much bigger market.

Come on Andrew, there are thousands of us willing you on!

Great work with the updated version Pascal!

One suggestion however, when inserting multiple instances of the same plant/tree, what would be very cool would be an option in the 'Settings' dialog to randomly scale and rotate each new instance.

With 3D plants, you can naturally get a degree of variation just by rotating and scaling components. The benefit of this is that it works with instancing for render engines, and keeps the file size down

This is truly fantastic - epic work Pascal! The improvement from version 1 (which was good) is immense.

I'm going to buy this, it's what I've been waiting for for a long time!

This is a classic case of principles vs pragmatism. In absolute terms, of course you're right, and on Windows it's not a problem. What I found in the office was that security restrictions prevented any access to the 'Program Files' folders.

This meant that plugins couldn't be installed by anyone other than the IT department, because security permissions prohibit users being given Local Admin rights.

The move in SU 2014 to move this to areas where UAC doesn't get excited is a really big thing for my office.

On the Mac, it's the standard OS X installer that has problems. We tried doing things the other ('correct') way, but found that unfortunately it created significant issues for end users. The solution (for the moment at least) is to end up with our current installation path, which isn't ideal, but it does work.