Hi All,

Was recently having a converstion with Dan Rathbun and we figured it would be worth sharing.

The basic idea is how EXTREMELY valuable a mobile sketchup viewer would be that one could take measurements from. I know there is an iPad viewer but, as I understand it, there is no way to take dimensional info from it: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/sketchup-mobile-viewer/id796352563?mt=8

Having a mobile viewer with dimensional data would save me a lot of complexity in working drawings, enable better communication between designers and fabricators etc.

Examples of Useful Mobile Viewers:

SolidWorks eDrawing:
http://www.solidworks.com/sw/products/edrawings-mobile.htm

The Open Design Alliance Teigha Viewer is extensible so tools can be added to it.
It looks very similar to the SketchUp Viewer, but allows selecting objects, so their properties can be inspected (Properties pane.) Allows some simple editing (but may likely be turned off, by removing those extensions.)
http://www.opendesign.com/guestfiles/teigha_viewer

The AutoDWG Viewer allows measuring in the current release (and has a Pro version that does markup.) Has Windows and ActiveX editions. Supposed to have an Android edition.
http://autodwg.com/dwg-viewer/

Found these via Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_CAD,_CAM_and_CAE_file_viewers

An older thread which is a wish list for the Sketchup Viewer: http://sketchucation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=10%26amp;t=47991

Other alternatives for a useful SU mobile viewer:
If you cannot wait, then there is the Make version, which might run on a Tablet PC. (You can always mark the SKP file as Read-Only.)

There are also items like this from Simlab but they appear to not support measurement of any kind: http://sketchucation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=323%26amp;t=49843

Summary:
Short of porting to another 3D file format, there is quite a lot of work in creating a really useful mobile SU viewer.

The current tapemeasure tool actually creates geometry (construction lines) which is beyond the scope of what a mobile viewer should do. The trick then is to have a way to view the 3D data but retain the ability to take dimensional info from it.

If someone has the capacity or some of the capacity to execute this, I for one would be willing to chip in some cash to make it happen.

Anyone else willing to chip in or can contribute insights?

Has anyone else noticed the 3DWH (3D Warehouse) running slow since it was upgraded?

It seems that half the time I log on from within SU I can hardly use it due to slow response times. When I open from Chrome it runs very fast - but its a pain to download files and copy/paste them manually.

Is this an issue with the browser built in to SU?

Thanks Box,

TIG's Xref Manager looks promising too: http://sketchucation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=7329

I'm working on an engineering project that is physically large but includes many, smaller components.

Because I want to be able to refer independent contractors to particular parts of the project but not all of it I am going to have a master file showing all project components as well as smaller files of the components themselves.

I want to know if there is a way to link these "Satellite" SU files back to the master file so that, if I change a satellite file it will automatically update the master file.

I wondered if an automated "paste in place" might be possible?

I have seen Didier Bur's "Link Manager" here (http://sketchucation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=323%26amp;t=33534%26amp;p=527739#p527739) which I think is great but doesn't update any master file.

Any suggestions?

This would also be helpful for getting around SU/computer performance restrictions on large files and the clipping issues faced on larger files.

Awesome plugin,surprised I haven't come across this earlier. Will be using this to refer to componentry manuals used in SU models. IE: if I have a particular electric motor in a drawing I can link to the motor's manual to see any additional specifications.

Great work!

So when will we able to do this on SU? When our connections are 1Gbps I guess?

My line of work is more mechanical engineering these days, and I can see application for some of PlusSpec within that but when you have had a think about that side of your tool let me know - cut lists and BOMs are useful and I have a sneaking suspicion that I can integrate some of my own dynamic components but one has to focus on specific clients and I can see your targeting the architect/builder market.

Perhaps when you have made a healthy profit from your product the next iteration can be for engineers?

@unknownuser said:

I was thinking about getting of a race together with some of the top Revit and Archicad guys.

When I first started working for myself using sketchup I met with a group of guys who were right into ArchiCAD - they asked me what software I could use and I said "SketchUp" they laughed in a not-so-encouraging way. I tried using other CAD packages but found them all so unintuitive compared to SU - I'm glad I've stuck with SU and can now deliver real value by putting out models at a competitive rate compared to some folks who use heavier CAD packages.

The Warriors'll probably get nailed, not sure about the ABs

Solo, if you're having problems with it running in SU2014 then let me know as I did some tinkering the other day and got it running.

Well PlusSpec, it looks as though you're stealing the show and thats possibly justified if your product is as good as it sounds.

I wondered if you have any info on who you guys are and what you're trying to achieve - might make people a little more comfortable to part with their $395

I see your "About" page and the nice vid there but who are the people behind plusspec and what is your vision? When I personally get serious about buying a product I generally scan the "about" pages for info on who those people are and why they're doing what they're doing - I guess it makes me feel like I know the horse I'm backing

Just a suggestion - I love your efforts to push our dear Sketchup forward

About PlusSpec video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_RM_EAFZeY

*Can't seem to get the above video to embed here on sketchucation...

@utiler said:

Super powerful, guys! I've been testing it for some time and without a doubt it is the most extensive add-on to SketchUp...

You're referring to plusspec or Bimup 5D?

It won't save as "UTF8-without-BOM" I can hit "convert to UTF8-without-BOM" or "encode with UTF8-without-BOM" and save it but when I re-open the file it is back to ANSI......

I can get it to encode in just UTF8 but that doesn't fix anything

Thanks for your effort anyway - At least I can finish my project now.

Then works immediately when I move "load_keyframeanimation.rb" out of its subfolder - the toolbar icons are still absent

It returns this Load Error:

Error Loading File rp_keyframeanimation.rb
Error; #<SyntaxError; C;/Users/Ash/AppData/Roaming/SketchUp/SketchUp 2014/SketchUp/Plugins/rp_keyframeanimation.rb;18; invalid multibyte char (UTF-8)>

C:\Users"Username"\AppData\Roaming\SketchUp\SketchUp 2014\SketchUp\Plugins

Thanks for taking an interest - I feel like I'm going a little nuts but there must be something wrong....

Downloaded it from the regular polygon site and installed it via SU's native installer and .rbz

After a lot of tinkering I realized that the .rbz was unpacking "load_keyframeanimation.rb" within a folder so SU wasn't recognizing the install. I placed this directly in the plugins folder and finally got Keyframe working without toolbar icons so that, after a couple hours of headscratching I can finally get back to work.

This may have been a regularpolygon issue but it feels like an unnecessarily convoluted trouble shooting process - I feel like a lone voice on this so have to assume that I'm missing something critical... Either that or the other people that are having issues aren't posting.

Is there documentation about how the plugin system is supposed to work?

Thanks for your help Box

So Keyframe Animation was behaving strangely after I threw it into the AppData plugins folder. I uninstalled it and re-downloaded it through the Sketchucation plugin store. Now it shows up in the plugins manager as if its working but I can't get the toolbar to show up or have sketchup's native installer recognize it.

No doub't I'm doing something that I shouldn't but after several of years using SU its quite frustrating to not be able to just make things work - I don't know how to fix this so I'll have to wait for someone to reply to make it work wheras before I could have deleted it from the plugins folder and thrown a new copy in there and continued working.

Feeling caged but probably just under-informed....

Ash

I have watched what videos are available but I'm surprised they don't make more info available before you buy - there are a few BIM packages to choose from now and I can't see myself trying each one out on a 30 day trial or something like that.

I'm more inclined to spend 30 minutes or so watching videos on each and then make a purchase and do my best to work with it.....

Is the talk about plusspec at 3D basecamp 2014 available online anywhere?

For that matter, is any of the content from 2014 available online? I can't seem to find much