Ok my guess is Dec 17th

@ntxdave said:

@thorleyian said:

I chose excited but not making a fuss about it, I imagine I’ll get labelled “evangelist” or something for that. I’d just call it quiet optimism.

I have a feeling today might be “the” day, with nothing to back up that theory though.

Agree with your first part but still betting on next so they do not have to have support staff on call during the Thanksgiving holidays.

Maybe they're going to blow our socks off with this release, don't think it's a support staff issue since they released a new version of Trimble Business Center (5.0) yesterday, which had major changes from 4.10 and I would think TBC requires a lot more support than Sketchup.

@fredo6 said:

In general, it is better to conceive the terrain before adding decoration, houses, fences, etc...

But I'll think about what can be done, especially for roads.

Fredo

So what I'm doing is recreating our existing conditions surveys so that design can be brought in in 3D for some presentations and renders. When creating surfaces in Civil 3D our spot shots are used for the surface but so is our line work as breaklines for things such as roads, sidewalks, retaining walls. When I bring the contours into SU and create a surface using topo shaper sometimes the differences are pretty significant and just like KrisM I have to manually make adjustments to the surface which is tedious. Toposhaper already is a great plugin but I think having this feature will make it even better.

That's great Fredo, look forward to it.

Fredo, first off let me thank you for all of your amazing plugins. I have a request for toposhaper. I don't know anything about coding and/or how difficult this would be. But in surface modeling programs you have the ability to add breaklines which make a more accurate surface. Do you think this can be added?

A Breakline is a line used to connect data representing a distinct surface feature, like a ridge line, edge of pavement, toe of a slope, centreline of a road, or flowline of a ditch or stream. When a breakline is defined, the surface triangulation must first follow the breakline, by placing triangle edges coincident with the breakline segments. This ensures the feature in the model is accurately depicted. Then, the rest of the interpolation is performed based on proximity. Breaklines are typically critical to creating an accurate surface model. It is the interpolation of the data, not just the data itself that determines the shape of the model.

Haven't used it but looks pretty good plus free and open source, only 64 bit windows though
http://boundingboxsoftware.com/materialize/index.php

Like Dave said, you're better off using a component, you can make it whatever you want with whatever extra data you need. You then can use this http://sketchucation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=30506 to replace all of your guide points with your component.

https://sketchucation.com/pluginstore?listtype=1&author=0&category=0&search=Material+randomizer&submit=%3F

There's also this https://sketchucation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=323&t=66492

I tried to incorporate this extension into a project a few versions ago but it seemed to slow my work flow, don't know if this was because I just wasn't familiar enough with it or that it just wasn't mature enough yet. You have been making a ton of progress with this extension so I figured I would give it another go with a new project and post my thoughts here as I went through the project. So here's my 2 cents so far.

1. Still too many clicks but I haven't set up any presets yet.
2. If I draw walls in polyline mode, it would be nice if I then needed to edit that wall, I could edit all the walls at once that were drawn with that polyline, just way too time consuming clicking on individual wall sections to edit. I do realize editing different wall sections is also handy. So how about an option to edit in polyline mode or apply edit to rest of walls or something along these lines.
3. Color materials, I do like the graphical input but would also like to be able to type an input, I changed the color of my wall studs and the way things are now it's nearly impossible to match the rafter color, would be a snap if I could just type in the same hex color code as my wall studs. Hopefully the material editor will take care of that.
   Anyway, that's it for now, will continue to post as I work through this project.

I found that the easiest way to deal with this is to just bring the CAD file into Sketchup, go to top view, change the camera to parallel projection, export 2D graphic, pick dwg or dxf, then bring that file back into Sketchup, perfectly flat but you do loose your layering.

cad model coming flat.skp

@chippwalters said:

BTW, are these videos of value? I was planning on creating a whole series based on SketchUp's current interface and how it maps to Blenders. If they are offending anyone, then I can just post them on YouTube and not here.

Keep them coming

As someone who works with other Trimble software and hardware everyday I feel pretty confident that you will not see the pro version of Sketchup heading online anytime soon, that doesn't fit with any of their other professional tools. They have integrated SU quite a bit with their other tools, from import/export with Trimble Business Center, to Field Points, being able to use machine control with SU, to modeling from photos taken with the V10 rover and/or the S Series robotic total stations. However being that SU is part of the Trimble Buildings division I also doubt you will see advanced modeling options similar to Blender or 3DMax added anytime soon. I expect most of the future updates to focus a lot on Layout. Architecture, site and landscape design is where SU fits in the Trimble eco system and it already does that pretty well. Now that doesn't mean I wouldn't like to learn Blender, I have tried in the past and will again in the future, probably with the release of 2.8. However since 90 % of my SU work is architecture, SU will remain my software of choice for that for the foreseeable future. Thanks for the videos.

Did you update the scene after you unhid those items?

@marvins_dad said:

My quick question is about portability and VR...has anyone played with that yet?
Revit Live requires the model to be uploaded to the cloud then downloaded to run...which I think is ridiculous when you have the computing power to do it...but what about portability. You can't always rely on robust internet access if you take the setup to a client.

Can you run Enscape from a muscle powered laptop for a walkthrough in VR? Without internet access?

Yes you can run Enscape from a beefy laptop, I'm running a MSI with a Nvidia 1070, 32 GB ram, 2 TB ssd, runs without any issues. Also using the HTC Vive, not super portable but definitely manageable, you'll need some tripods or suction cups for the base stations, takes about 10 mins to setup on site. I have used it at 2 clients residences when they couldn't come to the office. It definitely wowed them. Not sure about the Oculus Rift but with the Vive you will need a internet connection to connect to Steam and run the room setup. The sketchup model is local on your laptop. I've been pretty impressed with Enscape so far.

Charlie pointed me in the right direction, end corner was set to inside corner though I was sure I had set it to outside corner, once I did that and updated all was good.

Still testing out to get a good feel for this plugin as I have a project that I would like to use it on along with the foundation and truss plugins. There definitely is an issue with the stud spacing algorithm, this time the bays worked but as you can see the outside corner didn't.

Had an error running 2 45° bays, totally reproducible, happens every time.

Ok nevermind on #1, didn't realize that I had to "save settings" on each page of the global settings, thought I could make all my changes and save settings just once.

So finally had some time to really try this out and have run into 3 issues,
1)My global settings don't stick
2)No matter what settings I use or which direction that I draw the wall in the cladding always is inside.
3)Would be nice if last settings were remembered when drawing a new wall