@medeek said:

However, the reality is that I need to somehow make enough to survive and hence the necessary "evil" of having to charge, what I consider, high prices for these plugins.

It's always a challenge to build a passion into a self-sustaining business, and not to let short-term need short-circuit longer-term thinking.

You've created a lot of value with these plugins and you shouldn't feel the least bit guilty about charging an appropriate price for them. Those that use SU Pro as a/the primary tool for their business will have no problem investing in plugins that increase SU's capability and/or efficiency and should be your primary target market — for both pricing strategy and requirements capture. Any additional revenue that you pick up from the hobby market would simply be the icing on the cake, but you shouldn't let addressing that market derail your overall focus.

Accordingly, I think that (eventually) having two versions — Hobby/Pro — could help with the challenge of expanding the user base while still generating sufficient funds to sustain the effort. (All the development effort goes to Pro with Hobby as just a feature-limited version of same).

The only caveat would be that the larger your user base, the greater the demand for user support. When you consider the truism that the customers who spend the least/know the least also tend to demand the most, you'd have to consider carefully whether directly addressing the Hobby market would be worth the potential loss of time/focus. (at this point in time)

I also like the idea of doing a time-limited promotion (to generate some needed near-term funds) much better than setting the long-term price too low, and then being stuck with it.

I think it's a big mistake to keep discounting the price of your plugins. In my view the user adoption will follow the feature/UI completeness of the plugin(s).

For example: the only reason that I have yet to buy the truss plugin, is that the type of truss I needed wasn't feature complete enough — I would have happily paid double or triple the price if all of the current features had been available for that truss at the time. (they may well be now)

I will buy your wall plugin once it's stable and out of beta, and given the cost of similarly deep, professionally-developed plugins (eg Garry K's Cabinet Maker), you should be looking at raising your price not lowering it.

Maybe have a simple version at a lower price (without advanced options) for homeowners designing a backyard shed, but IMHO you should be charging at least $50-100 for the fully featured pro version. Maybe a $99 intro bundle for all 3 — Wall/Truss/Foundation.

Then, when you add engineering specification features that you've discussed, add that version at double the price. For a pro designer, the cost will pay itself in the first project.

I use top centre, though bottom centre works fine for doors. If you want more flexibility you could do it like Profile Builder with a selectable set point.

Ideally there would be an offset variable for the setback from the exterior sheathing. (For flanged windows the default value would then be '0'). In our case (Passivhaus) we centre the window in the middle of the insulating thickness, so the setback from the exterior can be as much as 8".

A saved variable with a default allows any scenario to be covered.

Curious. (the 'New' badge) ...Especially since it still references Google Sketchup

I'll ask him about the one-on-one training and if he's interested I'll put him in touch.

Thanks Dave.

I understand. Thanks for the link, I'll pass it along.

Hi Dave --

In reference to the post I just made on your Woodworking Basics video, are there any particular posts (or series) for a SU beginner on your blog, that I should point my friend to?

There's such a wealth of material in the 55 pages (!) of posts, that it's a little tough to ID those at the appropriate level. Just thought that there might be an obvious starting point for him that you know of.

Thanks,

Doug

A question for Dave R:

I was checking out your video at the Fine Woodworking site and there was a 'New' badge attached to it? Has it been recently revised from the 2013 version, or is it the option for download that's new?

You may have seen my post yesterday to David H. regarding his book — I'm gathering materials for an advanced furniture maker friend who is just jumping into SU and I want to help him navigate the learning curve.

I had meant to ask you whether there's much on the video that would now be outdated because of SU version changes (for example, inferencing)? But if there's been a revision, then no issues.

Thanks David,

I'll forward the link to him, and I'm sure it will be a big help in wrapping his mind around how to use SU.

Also, Dave R. — if you see this, I'd be very interested in your thoughts.

David - I have a friend who is a very talented woodworker (original, contemporary designs) who I've convinced to try SU to replace the 2D software (MacDraft) he currently uses.

I'll be coaching him and trying to help him short-circuit the learning curve by pointing him to the best and most pertinent learning resources. I've taken a gander through the preview of your book, and it looks like a great option for him from the outset.

So, I'd like to point him your way: can you give me the Etsy link you reference? There doesn't seem to be any click-through from the Issuu site and I try to avoid Amazon whenever possible. (plus I'd rather see all the revenue go directly to the author).

Once he's mastered the basics I also plan to point him to Dave R's book... and I've already given him the Design, Click, Build link. If there are any other particularly good woodworking-specific SU resources/tutorials that you know of, please pass on your recommendations.

Thanks.
Doug

Nice tables... and I really like the presentation style.

It's looking really good — great progress!

I hope once you have all of the functionality coded, you will consider (in a future version) a second input method for generating walls and their openings: from the faces of massed walls.

It would fit more easily into our workflow, since we always have a massed model before elaborating structural and finish detail, so that walls and windows are already fully defined in size, position and orientation.

As is, it is definitely a huge step forward and I'm looking forward to your finished version one.

Very happy to see you posting again. Your work is exceptionally creative and inspiring and always a pleasure to view.

Don't be a stranger!

I'm aware of the full BricsCAD workflow... that's part of the interest.

Thanks to both of you for a very useful code snippet. Especially helpful when you're making a component from loose geometry and forgot to check "Replace selection with component", and have to go through the process twice. Always good to save clicks and annoyances.

Congrats Anton on a very impressive and useful plug-in. Look forward to trying it out.

Thanks for posting Rich.

This is one that I've been keeping an eye on since it was first announced in the fall. Will be interesting to see how it compares to SU in capability, workflow integration and ease-of-use. If nothing else, it will be good for SU to have some additional competition in the AEC space.

Curious to check it out once my current deadline crunch clears.

Very well stated Rich.

I too share frustrations with the current state of SU (and especially LO) — the performance issues / long-term bugs / missing features and the painfully slow pace of front-facing advancements from version-to-version.

However, I'm also aware of how much work has gone into re-writing the back-end / graphics pipeline / API / developer tools and am willing to wait at least one more release cycle to see the fruits of these efforts before casting judgement on the efficacy / focus of development efforts.

If I were leading the SU dev team I would be concerned that competitors are catching up faster on SU's ease-of-use than SU is in advancing AEC / BIM workflow support (amongst other missing capabilities) and associated functionalities.

But there's a lot of awfully smart people on that team, so you have to assume they understand their own priorities — and it is likely that the foundational work required to bring SU into the modern era has precluded the most-frequent user-requested changes from being implemented until that work was complete. Hopefully we're pretty much at that point now, and we'll start seeing a pace of positive evolution that pleases everybody.

When you strip away the emotional content from these types of posts, what remains is that most users love SU, prefer to keep using it, and simply need it to get better in supporting their (professional) workflow. That's all I'm looking for.

(I should note that I agree that impugning intent and/or personal attacks are unhelpful in the extreme)

In Canada (officially metric, but stubbornly imperial in much of AEC industries), it's bloody complicated!:

Architects: ft-in, or ft-in & mm
Contractors: ft-in
Engineers: mm
Surveyors: m
Interior Designers: ft-in
Cabinet shops: mostly mm (32 mm Euro), old-school still use in
Furniture makers: in

Got an answer on the other forum to the import/file format questions. Still interested in hearing from anyone whose found a good source for standard AEC material patterns.

For anybody looking for the same: https://forums.sketchup.com/t/how-to-import-pattern-fills-into-layout/64448