The first versions definitely didn't weld vertices. I recall vividly because it added extra steps for me when exporting. It doesn't look like any of those older versions are here though. You might find it floating around on the web in some older plugin repositories.

Well Stinkie, I think you've jumped the lamprey on this thread.

@jql said:

What people seem to fail to see in this thread is that Skechup already wears big boy pants.

Sketchup is probably the most widely used 3d software on earth. There isn't a bigger boy.

So, we could reverse all this discourse and say: why aren't the other 3d modellers intuitive like sketchup?

Blender, 3DS max, Autocad, Revit, Archicad, Rhino…

They all fail much more than sketchup.

Wide adoption is not equivalent to high performance. I like and appreciate the intuitive interface of SU, but it would be a lot more useful for me if it were the front end of Blender. I think the point here is that SU fails to match the performance standards of other current 3D software, not about how widely it's used.

@valerostudio said:

I guess we wait for the day that Autodesk makes Trimble an offer they cant refuse and then we all die a little inside that day.

Lol! You want to pay all your subscription fees to AutoDesk, don't you

@stinkie said:

why not love it for what it can do, rather than hate it for what it can’t? Since then I’ve basically used SU as an archviz modeling plugin for Modo. I get far less headaches that way.

Completely this! For me, it's a tool to create architectural models for use in Blender. All my entourage and rendering happen in Blender. Every now and then I'll render a quick exterior in VfS3, but that's it. SU is just one tool in a toolbox, and it's very good at what it does.

Thanks Box! I ran into this as well, thanks for the pointer.

Great work! Your translucency artwork is fantastic too, thanks for sharing!

Beautiful work!! Thanks for sharing the pics and the process.

Interiors are just slower by their nature, especially in rooms with small window openings. You might not have the hardware to give you fast render times in this case. From your screen shot, it looks like you only have 8 buckets working. Do you have access to another computer? You could set up distributed rendering to help.
One suggestion I would make is to increase the intensity of your artificial lighting. It may help resolve the rendering calculations faster so you're relying less on the bounced light from the exterior. Also, do you have a portal light in the window? That may help too.

Definitely use "curves" adjustment. Brightness/ contrast is an older mode and gives you much less control. I would highly recommend Lightroom. It's non-destructive and has a really great set of controls for color adjustments. When you scan - set the bit depth as high as the scanner will let you - that will give your image editing program more information to work with.

Great job on the model! Quick question about the photos. Did you get photos that matched your previous model views, or did you go back and take views to match the photos of the project? I'm guessing the latter, but it would be cool if the SU model informed the architectural photography.

Did you try resetting to default render settings? In the asset editor in the settings tab, there's a button on the bottom left-hand that allows you to "Revert to default render settings"

That plant is looking too healthy!

Outlandish! In a good way of course

@eidam655 said:

...write a converter for the old materials

It may be worth asking this request on the Chaos Group forums. Maybe they can figure out something that can write the old materials with the reflection and refraction layers into one BRDF layer. That would in fact be quite useful.

@unknownuser said:

Thanks for the answer.

You're welcome!

Unfortunately, they've made it a bit of work to convert old scenes since they completely changed the way the engine (in particular the GPU engine) behaves with older materials. The CPU rendering seems to convert materials OK, but like you say, there can be a significant hit to render times. Rebuilding the materials as BRDF layers is really the only way forward. Sorry, you probably didn't want to hear that.

If you are rendering with GPU, MaterialID is not supported. A quick and dirty workaround is to use the "Diffuse" render element. Otherwise, you have to switch to CPU rendering for support of Mat ID.

Ditto. I still check in and see what's new, but definitely feeling a dropoff in contributions too. I guess a lot of my exciting work is being done in Blender, so even though I model everything in SU, it's all basic architectural stuff, so nothing I feel worth posting. This site is valuable even with a dropoff in active contributions. I'm looking forward to what Rich has in store!

Also - V-Ray got majorly simplified (for the better,) so there's not much to discuss with regards to optimal settings any more

Ugh! That's awful. Best wishes for a speedy recovery Kris.

@ben ritter said:

@sketch3d.de said:

@ben ritter said:

...why won't it be possible to have 2017 and 2018 reside on the computer at the same time?

it can and should be installed side-by-side sothat you are able doing a fallback to version 2017 if required because e.g. plugins are not compatible (yet).

Actually do not deactivate product activations of existing previous versions because they cannot be reactivated after activating SU 2018 again even on the same system! Use the 30 day trial runtime before activating a new version anyhow.

I'll have to get the exact quote from Trimble, but I didn't upgrade because there was some language stating that 2017 would become inoperative after 30 days. Not sure if anyone else saw this too?

True story. Happened to me with 2016 after I installed 2017. Worked fine alongside until later I had to reinstall my OS, and then I couldn't get 2016 activated.