@dave r said:

This was my first attempt at this. I see a few things to refine for the next try.

What don't you like about it? Looks pretty great to me!

An elegant table and a nice job modelling it.

@kaas said:

I'm thinking about going for the same machine for giving presentations and doing more light out-of-office work. You're still happy with it? Also, could you post a full screen screen dump of a project in Sketchup? I'm curious to see the quality of the linework (anti-aliased or not) etc.

I had seen this back around the time you first posted it and had meant to reply, but was in the middle of deadlines... so you know the story. In any case I figured I'd finally reply and hope it still has some relevance, if not for you than for someone else in a similar position.

I still love the Macbook. I just got back from a road trip, where I used it without external monitors for over a week, primarily for SU work. It's a great size for travel: easily transportable and usable on the plane/train/bus.

Obviously for SU modeling the screen size is a limitation, and occasionally I wished I had sprung for the 15"... but if I had I'm sure there would be many more times when I wished I was lugging around the smaller machine. On balance, I think the 13" is the best compromise between transportability, usability and cost. (at least for me)

There are retina display issues in SU that Trimble has yet to fully address. Most significant for me is the thickness of guide lines — drawn edges aren't a problem, since that can be addressed by bumping up profiles/depth cues in style settings — but guidelines/intersections are harder to hit easily due to their extreme thinness. Other RD issues include things like editing scene names in-tab (impossibly small text) and plug-in icon sizes.

Since I'm using the MacBook out-of-the-office much more for presentations than for modelling, the drawing issues aren't a deal-breaker for me. It's a great presentation machine: the renders and line-work look fantastic and the overall brightness/clarity/fidelity of the screen is a wonder.

Hope this helps and if you'd like to see a screen dump I can PM you (I don't have any current work I can post publicly).

Doug

First off Pixero, thanks for a great plug-in. Its simplicity and speed in custom window creation is awesome.

One thing that slows me down is having to over-write the pre-sets each time I re-open the tool. I was thinking no problem, I'll just open the script and modify the parameters... but it's .rbs not .rb, therefore uneditable.

I would like to set the frame and window dimensions once (based on manufacturer specs for the current project) and have it remember them — rather than over-writing with default values on each new use.

So, if you had a way of saving new pre-set values, it would be great. Even better would be multiple pre-sets... for fixed-pane vs operable windows vs window-walls etc.

Request 2 is an option for triple pane windows. (my current projects are both PassivHaus)

I understand not wanting feature-bloat to ruin a simple approach, but each of these features would extend functionality without impeding usability. (though they would obviously make the script itself more complex, so I would understand not wanting to)

Thanks for the consideration.

@jim said:

Martin gave me the ok to update this for Sketchup 14/15. I might not have time until the weekend.

That's great news Jim. Will look forward to the update.

@tig said:

scenes.

To delete all scenes, select the first in the list, hold the Shift key and select the last in the list, they should now all be highlighted, now click the -ve button to remove them...
No Plugin or code needed...

Doh!

Not sure why that didn't occur to me... maybe because I always use the Scenes Manager in thumbnails mode, so didn't see it as a list that could be selected that way. Lame, I know

@tig said:

One-liner in Ruby Console.
CODE: SELECT ALL
p=Sketchup.active_model.pages; while p[0]; p.erase(p[0]); end

Thanks TIG... works perfectly for my purpose!

@tig said:

You work out how to make it into a Plugin...
It will annoy your users, UNLESS its results are VERY VERY expected...
It is NOT undo-able !

Thanks for the warning: I made a copy of the file before running the code in the console — and the 30 some scenes were all messed up from some origin / scale changes, so nothing worth keeping — but I can see how it could easily annoy users with unexpected outcomes.

I'm neither brave enough nor educated enough in Ruby to attempt making a plugin from it

Doug

Is there a plugin that will delete all scenes in a model in one shot?

Thanks.

@jclements said:

It seems to me that the 2.7GHz (Intel Iris Pro graphics) was a good value compared to the 1.4Gz configuration.

Definitely.

@jclements said:

If I wanted to use SketchUp, would the 2.7GHz option do the job or is the 2.9GHz/nVidia necessary?

@jeff hammond said:

i've never personally used an intel gpu with 3D apps (i have an imac.. nvidia 780m though) but i just haven't heard any complaints lately with the 13" and many 15" macbook pro, the new mac mini, nor these imacs.. all of which use the iris pro.

I'd echo Jeff's comments. I've recently bought a 13" MacBook Pro RD with a 2.5GHz i5/ Iris Pro, so a slightly slower version of the middle config for the iMac you're considering. So far I've been super-pleased with its SU performance. I don't render with it, but I haven't had any issues at all with medium-large files (40-50 MB). I just finished a walkthrough animation that produced a 45MB mp4 file. The animation inside SU and the movie were smooth and hitch free.

So, yes the 2.7GHz would do the job for most SU users, excepting perhaps those with the most demanding workflows.

I also concur with Jeff regarding Apple Care, and have a similar track record with a long string of Macs going back to the SE... never bought it, never needed it. The MacBook replaces an almost 11 year old 12" Powerbook G4 —which survived untold amounts of abuse. Any issues I've had —hard drive / optical drive failure — happened years after an extended warranty would have run out. (7 & 9 years respectively).

@jim said:

It's an easy fix. It has to do with changes to the String class.
...
I sent an update to Martin via his email.

Thanks for identifying the needed fix Jim.

I hope that Martin posts an updated version to the SCF plugin store. It seems to me that if more people knew how useful / time-saving this plugin is for any model with more than a few scenes, it would find a lot of users.

I so could have used it over the past couple of days to clean up a walkthrough animation.

And thanks again to Jsteacy for following up on the original post with Martin.

Dave —

Great modelling and texturing as always, and of a very cool design. What do you use for rendering?

Maybe I'll turn off auto-save in LayOut to avoid such a clash. Thanks for the idea.

Thanks for the quick reply John.

Shadows are off. Here's my settings:

@driven said:

A lot of mac users only ever manually save to minimise these potential clashes.

The info on the potential cause is helpful. Though I'm loathe to disable autosave, as the only reason I haven't lost hours of work of the series of crashes is that autosave is operating.

My problem is that it is when I am most engaged in drawing that I'm least likely to remember to save every few changes. I suppose I could try to retrain myself, but the question is which way will more aggregate time be lost: fewer crashes/manual save vs. more crashes/autosave.

To start with I'll disable the auto problem check and auto update check (leaving autosave on for now) and see if it reduces the frequency of splats.

Thanks again,

Doug

I've had 4 or 5 bug splats over the past 24 hrs in SU Pro 2015 on OSX Mavericks on my 2014 13" MacBook Pro RD (16GB) under the following conditions:

32 MB model
purged and validity checked, without problems.
LayOut open
tool palettes visible —entity info/styles/layers/scenes.
on a couple of the splats, outliner/components were also on-screen, but minimized.
palettes get messed up (why isn't this fixed yet?)
Reset Workspace
SPLAT

Anyone experiencing similar issues or have any thoughts on how to avoid the splats?
This is getting frustrating.

[I should note that I submitted the last 3 of the bugsplat reports]

@kaas said:

Would changing the style and setting the profile to a higher value 'fix' this?

Was curious about your idea, so just tried it... and yes, it does make it easier.

My normal styles have profiles (and other effects) turned off as I prefer a finer line/cleaner look. What could work well is to have one 'drawing mode' style with thick profiles attached to a corresponding scene. You could still have your 'display' scenes with the beautiful thin lines, but a way of manipulating them easier when needed.

@slbaumgartner said:

I mean this as discussion, not argument

That's the way I understood it too, so I hope I didn't sound like I was arguing back... just agreeing that for board layout there's too many variables for it to be useful, but that mightn't be the case with (some) sheet goods.

@slbaumgartner said:

Even for sheet goods, the layout facilities in CutList don't take orientation of the figure into account.

That would make it fairly useless for veneered sheet goods (or the laminated bamboo we often use) I wasn't sure whether it allowed you to specify grain direction in layout.

@slbaumgartner said:

To your second point, I have never been impressed with the layout algorithms in CutList. I've seen them propose a layout that called for a second sheet when those pieces could be fit into the first sheet by a bit of rearrangement and reorientation.

That's disappointing, and by your overall account it would seem layout in its current incarnation has limited value — or least limited use cases where it might be of value.

@dave r said:

I know that Steve had been working on improving the layout section of the plugin shortly before his death. He and I had been discussing it only the week before. It's unfortunate that we won't see his improvements now. Maybe someone else will be able to take it further, though.

That's too bad that he didn't have the chance to finish his work. Much worse that he passed too soon and without much forewarning (if I understood well from your earlier post)

@dave r said:

He was a good friend and I for one miss him.

I never had the opportunity to interact with him, but I appreciate his contributions and I'm sorry for the loss of your friend.

I bought a latest revision 13" Retina MacBook Pro (2.GHz Core i5 w/ 16GB RAM) a couple of months ago and I love it. It's become my main SU machine taking over from a 2010 Mac Mini. So you can imagine how much of a speed boost I've seen.

At my desk I have it hooked up to two external displays: a Dell U2412M plus a Dell 2007WFP (in portrait mode). It drives the two external displays plus the retina display concurrently without a hitch or stutter.

When I'm out of the office or at a client and working in SketchUp on the retina display alone, I concur with the previous comments about the occasional difficulty selecting the thin lines... and how great the images look!

Personally I could never go back to a non-retina display laptop, and in fact I'm noticing the pixelation on my Dell monitors for the first time. The latest revision is a significant upgrade in graphics performance over the 2013 version, so the comparison isn't one-to-one with the macs you're considering. (iris 5100 vs HD4000... plus it's a Haswell vs Ivy Bridge CPU.)

The Air is a nice machine, but in the most recent versions there's no comparison for SU use — the RD Pro smokes the Air. The comparison between the 2013 versions is much tighter (due to the HD 4000 graphics) so a tougher call.

The 13" is an awesome combination of power, lightweight, fantastic screen and portability. If I were using it primarily on it's own (i.e. without external displays) then I would definitely have gone 15", but for me the smaller size is a major plus.

Not sure this helps you with your choice at all, but thought I'd relay my experience

Doug

As a follow-up:

Just received notice that the new SU2015-compatible 3DXWare driver for Space Navigator/Space Mouse has been released. I've downloaded it and given it a quick test and everything seems to work fine. Yea — full speed ahead in 2015 Pro!

Next up on the migration odyssey: Yosemite. When and if? Anybody have any advice/experience on 2015 with Yosemite? (not that SU is the only app that I need to ensure is compatible, but without it fully functional... not even worth considering the OS 'upgrade'.)

@krisidious said:

There is a tremendous amount of free labor going on around here and I find it ironic that labels like greed are tossed around. Rich, Tig, Dave, Box not to mention many others are constantly in the forums answering the same questions they've answered a million times all while working on projects and plugins to better the whole community.

Couldn't agree more. Always impresses me the ongoing willingness and generosity of the folks you mentioned (and others) to offer their time and experience to help strangers resolve their SketchUp issues — even when they've answered similar questions hundreds of times before. They are the glue that holds this community together and I can understand if any of them takes umbrage at offensiveness of the OP.

I don't qualify as an 'old faithful' here, having only joined in 2010 (and not been a particularly active member), so maybe I don't rate an opinion on this matter.

But I first started with 3D modelling with Virtus Walkthrough on a Powerbook 100 too many years ago to remember and was an early adopter of SU back in the @Last days. I've lurked on these forums (and their predecessor) since they started and I don't need to be one of the boys to know a dick move when I see one.

I suspect that Rob will come to seriously regret ever pressing send after drafting his late night rant. It's one thing to embarrass yourself over a mistaken opinion or an overly-thin skin: it's a whole other thing to attack people's efforts and intentions with the vehemence and general wrongness he did. Not the best marketing strategy for his book promotion it would seem.

@dave r said:

Yes. That's another one. I gave it a try when Joe first released it. It is very extensive and it can do a lot of cool stuff but I found it difficult and too time consuming to set up for what I use out of a cutlist. Steve's is straightforward with almost nothing to set up. It'll export to CutList Pro for those who use that program.

I think you're referencing Joe Zeh's CutList Bridge plugin for CutList Plus, which seems a comprehensive —though somewhat complex— software combo for production cabinet shops, but likely overkill for most individual woodworkers. And CutList Plus is reasonably costly ($249 for the non-brain-dead version and $495 for the unlimited version), so maybe not an interesting option for non-professionals or one-man shops.

Cutlister was Dana Woodman's extensible, open-source fork of CutList — which he completely rewrote with some added features, and a cleaned-up interface. He eventually abandoned developing it, but gave anyone leave to take over. The code-base is still hosted on GitHub: https://github.com/danawoodman/Google-Sketchup-Cutlister-Plugin

At the time it worked better for me, though I had both it and CutList installed in SU8. In fact, in my reply to slbaumgartner I stated I couldn't get layout to work in CutlIster: there's a good reason for that — my faulty memory! Layout was never implemented in Cutlister, but I remember trying to get it to work (unsuccessfully) on my mac in what must have been Cutlist.

I just downloaded CutLister from the SCF store and will test it in 2015 to see if it still works. If it does work —and I get ambitious— I may do a comparative review of the two... but don't hold your breath!