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.

Hmm - interesting ...

I've been discussing some better ways of doing things with some of the team, and I hope we'll have a better way of dealing with issues like this soon.

Coincidentally I've just been told that we have a new version with a fix for this and am just about to download and test it. I'll keep you updated.

@jeff hammond said:

further, you're not even letting people know about the issue and everyone using podium is blaming sketchup as the bad guy.. honestly, it should be on the download page.. "use podium and you'll now have to force quit sketchup.. don't worry- it only takes an extra 3 seconds".. then see how many people download it

Obviously you've got a point, but maybe you missed my comment where I said that we would fix it. Were it not for our recent discovery of the multibyte issue on Japanese installations, it would have been fixed by now. When that's resolved (it's a much more serious issue) this is at the top of the priority list.

It's not ideal by any means but really, it's not nearly as big an issue as you think. I think I've seen maybe one post on our forum about it, which is why I'm not fretting about it. However I am looking into how best to make users aware of things like this, and direct them to the most useful source of information straight away.

In the context of some of the other software problems we all have to deal with more often than we would like (Airplay from the Mac to Apple TV being broken for example, and let's not even start to talk about Heartbleed an UAC on Windows 7) our customers aren't getting particularly excitable about this.

But - it is an opportunity to re-evaluate how we look at some of these things in an effort to improve the software. There's always room for improvement

@jeff hammond said:

i don't think there's much else a user can do to try to fix it.. you're going to have to contact Podium and see if they'll fix it.. (though, how this manages to make it to a released version is beyond me but... )

good luck

Thanks for the testing Jeff, but this doesn't fix the issue. It manifests itself when you modify geometry. For example if you start with a new file and create a rectangle, SU will close. Extrude geometry or apply a texture and it won't.

The install path is related to issues we have had with the Mac installer. We would obviously prefer to use the current user option, but there are problems with this that have taken us a long time to work through. These did create problems for Mac users, and there were no immediately obvious solutions from an end user point of view.

Unfortunately it's not straightforward, and we can't use an rbz.

@driven said:

I think your remarks read as flippant and unprofessional coming from a representative of a 'commercial' plugin.

john

Hmm, interesting. In the overall scheme of things, the issue as I've seen it is trivial, which is probably why you felt it sounded flippant.

We do fix everything we are able to. Podium is updated frequently. We have issues related to OS limitations, SU bugs, and peculiarities of the render engine. The unfortunate thing is that not everything is fixable.

The reason this issue hasn't been resolved, is that the changes to the way SU2014 deals with multibyte systems has created major issues with customers in some countries, and this is a much bigger problem, which has delayed the fix.

What's with the inverted commas around the word 'commercial'? Do you have any reason to suggest that Podium is in some way not good enough to be classed as a commercial application?

You're right about 'Force quit' not being on the right-click menu in the dock, it's just 'Quit' but it works for me every time.

This issue isn't a problem in my office either. I do wonder whether you might be slightly overstating the case that users can lose several hours work through this bug. I don't actually see how it's possible. You can close files just fine. I'm not sure if you have seen the issue first hand, but if you are a Podium user and have lost work through this, please let me know.

I use Podium virtually every day, and haven't had an issue. From what I have seen, it's a 3 second fix each time with no issue, and actually only Edson has really identified this as an irritation. He's absolutely right of course, and it was really helpful that he pointed it out, which is why we will fix it, but we haven't had many complaints at all.

At risk of irritating you further, I actually think it is incumbent on everyone who is using a computer for work to learn how to use their tools competently. It's not like 20 years ago when we didn't have Google. There is a certain viewpoint that you shouldn't need to understand much about computers to do a professional design job.

I have some sympathy with this view - but only some. In the 'old days' before computers, you had to learn how to use technical pens, clean them, and how to scratch off lines from drafting film. You also need to learn how to hold your pencil and sketch so you don't smudge.

No-one in their right mind would expect most people to know how to map a printer by IP address, or diagnose network problems, but knowing what to do when an application hangs I would argue is kind of fundamental, and right-clicking on icons is intuitive. There are options to close applications this way on Windows and OS X, so it's not exactly obscure.

Personally I think people are a bit naive if they think they don't need to know this stuff, and are likely to have bigger problems than an app which hangs on exit.

Just for perspective, for my 'day job' I manage an architects section, and act as the IT Manager for a multi-disciplinary division in local government. We have a range of abilities in the office, from very IT literate, to "I don't want to know about this stuff, I just want to turn my computer on, draw and print." The latter viewpoint I find in just a single person out of maybe 50, and this seems be in tune with what I have found everywhere I have worked.

We know about this, and we're looking at it. We have a more serious issue with multibyte systems that was introduced by how SU2014 deals with this stuff, that will be fixed first.

Although it doesn't really cause any problems (right clicking 'force quit' and waiting a few seconds isn't a massive inconvenience) we are going to fix it.

@unknownuser said:

More than one viewport is complicated? Really?!?

Yes, really. The single viewport principle employed by SU is one of the big reasons for its success. It's central to the way SU works. In fact it's the antithesis to the 4 view approach. If that's what you want, you are missing the whole point of the application.

@unknownuser said:

This simplicity thing is really a joke. You have to install a massive amount of plugins to make sketchup really usable.

No it's not, and no you don't. The main reason you need plugins is to improve productivity. It's true that plugins enable you to model things that would be extremely difficult without them. But this statement is kind of absurd.

My main wish list items are:-

1. Fix the distorted texture scaling issue in DCs
2. Implement much better texture/UV mapping in SU
3. Improve performance with large/complex models. Because it's so easy and so much fun, you find yourself adding detail to your models almost without thinking. This means you need a high end graphics card to work effectively. However, even then, performance is so much worse than an app like Maya, Lightwave or 3ds max.
4. Improved scene management. A means of organising scenes by tabs, or having a series of scene tab sets would be really excellent. Imagine a way of managing groups of scenes where you have tabs which act as hierarchical containers, so that you could have a tab which contains scenes for display styles, another for elevations, another for interiors, another for exteriors, another for sections, another for animations. So much more powerful.

If this is the same thing you have asked for in the Podium forum, you might want to read the response there.

If you post minimal information while angry/desperate/frustrated it's not going to get your issue fixed quickly at all. It's just going to get the most basic of error diagnosis, which is exactly what you have in the forum. There are two responses, to which you haven't yet responded...

I found this old thread and thought I would add an update. I've been working with the author of NGPlant to implement collada export. The latest version is pretty neat and creates trees with instanced leaves as SU components.

NGP is a cool application. It's an open source cross platform WYSIWYG tree generator. More info here:- http://ngplant.sourceforge.net

I created some video tutorials on Vimeo for building trees with NGP.

The tricky thing is to get realistic trees with a manageable poly count.

I always have trouble with these things. Apart from the red/green axes thing (I'm red/green colour blind, I can't tell the difference, I never get it right first time) I always have difficulty knowing which is the 'front' and which is the 'back'.

Anyway, I'm using the new Trimble branded build, and I've followed 2 tutorial videos to try to get this to work - and failed...

As a test, I create a rectangle in a horizontal plane, create some more geometry, group it and move it in the direction of the rectangle. At this stage I just want the cutting plane to work, I can line stuff up later. I create a component using the gluing to any plane option, and checking the cut opening box.

Nothing. My components will insert and align themselves to any plane, but they don't cut rectangular holes. I've tried deleting the rectangle plane, I've tried making it transparent, I've tried leaving it solid. Nothing seems to work.

Am I missing something basic, or is this broken?

PS
Please, software developers and hardware manufacturers, what's with the red and green colour options? Seriously, 1 in 10 men are colour blind, most of my electronic equipment I can't tell whether it is on, or on standby - or off. You couldn't pick two worse contrasting colours if you tried!
SketchUp team, any chance you could give us colour options for the axes?