@morisdov said:
It would be nice if you can clearly and simply explain what is the problem your solution solves.
Well I will try but maybe you don't see the problem as a problem!
What you are doing is helping Sketchup modelers, what I am trying to do is to help John and Jane use Sketchup models to ease their daily toil (an idea relevant to this forum and good for modellers I think).
At http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/kevin_kelly_on_the_next_5_000_days_of_the_web.html Kevin Kelly explains that the Web used to be about linking computers, now it is linking pages but it is gradually restructuring to link data. Data belongs to physical things. And physical things can be represented by models.
Not everyone needs models to do their work, but generally models are helpful, essential in a design where nothing else but a site and ideas exist. Ideas for things like baths can be represented by nouns, their generic names but they only become recognisably unique and useful when they have an address and some functionality; that is what a nameset gives them.
If you believe data linking is the future (consider where Google is going before dismissing) then data must be accessible to all. In this case, it is crazy to enter a value in the VCP, if the only way to extract it is by using an exporter and passing it to "die" (unclickable) in an Excel cell. What would be good is a Sketchup method to trap such data and store it directly in plain text so that it can be automated to link up with other data on the Web, for example, a building design stored essentially as links to building products + their xyz's.
@morisdov said:
Components are organised in standard component libraries - your solution adds an [color=#008080][b]additional hierarchy tree to organise components ?
A nameset does not add anything to Sketchup except the dialog with a few callbacks. It provides its own separate hierarchies by assembling names associated with specific tasks (one of Gaieus' digs perhaps). The association can be physical, temporal and so on, or a combination as a nameset can have devices to link and cross link. If the association is physical, the names can be used to pick up models and position them, if temporal the models can be animated.
@morisdov said:
Other 3D CAD tools have extensive RDBMS systems linked to them, decades old legacy and enrichment. Sketchup came very late to this party and it will not compete with the old monsters.
Gee come on. This sounds like the senator who raved that man would not enter space until the next century (the year before Gagarin did), or the "toy" personal computer and monster mainframe, or hundreds of others similar. I never imagined you as a stick-in-the-mud.
Please don't take offense, I am happy to discuss such things with you
Chris
