@juju said:

@derei

Your profile states you're using SketchUp2015 Make, for product design.

Please clarify how the product design would not be a breach of the Make license?

Apart from your obvious disheartened replies here about the new release, what does SketchUp have to offer you that has you keep on using it?

Juju, what my profile states may be obsolete/untrue/incomplete/incorrect... you, relying on that, when making a comment to my post shows that you are more focused to attack the person, than to debate the issue.
You don't know what I am using and for what. For your information, I am using licensed software for my professional work and my status wasn't updated in many years.
As for my "disheartened" replies, I have neither love nor hatred about the new release. I have a bit of disappointment, yes (and I made my reasons rather clear and objective, as much as I could)...and I am evaluating if it's worth paying a license upgrade for 2018... for now the balance inclines against it. I was trying to focus on facts, as much as I could, but now I have to respond to personal attacks, which is a waste of time.

@jiminy-billy-bob said:

@derei said:

So, I couldn't say it was focused towards architects

Layout, sun, sections, dimensions, Position Camera/Walk/Look Around, Geo Location, Match Photo, Two-point Perspective, IFC, etc...
To me, all these tools and features were created with architects in mind.
Not to mention the original logo, and the icons with buildings. Also the built-in materials categories: concrete, brick, cladding, carpets, roofing, stone, tiles, window, etc.

SketchUp has been aiming at architects since the beginning. But it doesn't mean it can't be used in other domains.

Those tools were added by Google in their attempt to make a world full of 3d modelled buildings in google earth. That was a initiative to involve people in 3d modelling their cities. That was before they realized is less effective and turned on to automated (satellite) mapping.
Ad for layout, that was a tool to incentivise the pro version, a presentation layout, because natively sketchup has little formatting capabilities (will output window size, instead of paper size).
Trying to cling on features like "icon was a house" is equal to saying that I was born architect because I was drawing houses on napkins when I was a kid.
Also, textures are clearly general-purpose textures with focus on whatever you find around you.
I see many of this replies as emotional, making a lot of effort to justify SketchUp as an architect's tool. But ask yourself, what architect would use SketchUp without the plugins? None. Because it would be a pain as a professional architect to work in bare sketchup. But, as you said earlier, it can be used for anything, that's why the plugin development was so much encouraged. So, again - if it was targeted from the beginning to a specific sector, then the efforts would have been towards that sector only!

@dave r said:

Architects were the primary focus of SketchUp when @Last began development of it. They aren't just now turning into a tool for architects.

SketchUp Make users are no worse off than they were two days ago. They haven't lost the the use of SketchUp and it's not going to hurt their wallets.

The Wikipedia page says

@unknownuser said:

@Last Software[edit]
SketchUp was developed by startup company @Last Software of Boulder, Colorado, co-founded in 1999 by Brad Schell and Joe Esch.[7][8]

SketchUp debuted in August 2000 as a general-purpose 3D content creation tool and was envisioned as a software program "that would allow design professionals to draw the way they want by emulating the feel and freedom of working with pen and paper in a simple and elegant interface, that would be fun to use and easy to learn and that would be used by designers to play with their designs in a way that is not possible with traditional design software. It also has user friendly buttons to make it easier to use."[3]

So, I couldn't say it was focused towards architects, but I can understand how an architect may see it that way. It's called biased vision. It is the same way I see that SketchUp would benefit of better uv-mapping - when I will be sent to Blender by some users. It is understandable that each of us see things in our personal way. Still, what's clear is that SketchUp was intended for people who wanted to draw (anything) in a less rigid manner.
Pushing active development in very specific areas of SketchUp clearly shows raised interest on a very specific category of those people who want to draw: the builders and the architects.
And yes, SU power comes from plugins, but when Trimble takes plugins functionality and makes it embedded in their program, seems more like indirectly screwing-over a plugin dev. I'm talking about Skalp here. While Skalp is certainly offering much more than SU does, I still consider that putting effort in making a redundant tool is not the way to support a flexible platform, grown by devs.

After reading the full changelog (can be found here: https://help.sketchup.com/en/article/141303 ) I can say there is a lot of change. Some of them (a good share, I may say) are changes that would fit rather in a maintenance release than in a major release, but it is understandable how Trimble may have wanted to bring in front a BIG LIST of changes to impress.

On the other hand, there are some changes that I consider being part of a new release, mostly being related to LayOut and Ruby API. -> Here are a lot of changes, most important ones being that plugin devs now will have the ability to interact with LayOut via code.

Some updates, on the other hand, were pain useless (like filled section cuts), where there is already a fully functional plugin. I don't say that a native integration isn't better, but as long as there are a lot of more urgent issues to fix and obvious problems (like you can't search for a local component using component browser - it will only search in 3d warehouse), maybe the effort would have been better spent on those aspects.

Another questionable improvement would be rectangle draw... which whilst "it may" have its usefulness, the impact of having a fancy modifier when drawing a rectangle is rather small, compared with a better uv-mapping, to say so.

Overall, with the drop of Make version (and the online version not being - apparently - to accept plugins), plus the obvious orientation towards Architects, it seems Trimble's direction to be very clear.
One of the questions that I have now in my mind is if it's really worth for SketchUp to become an architect's tool, where there are already plenty of specialized tools for architects, some of them even better than SketchUp (especially because they are specialized). What was making SketchUp so special was its flexibility and versatility. The flexibility is still there, but less focused on it, less cared about it. Seems it's gonna sink and as another user said "if you don't like it, go to blender" - that came from someone who likes SketchUp to be a "lines drawing tool" and organic or complex modelling should not be part of it - at least that's what I could understand from that statement.

Baseline: SketchUp 2018 came with goods and bads, but seems to be paving the road for more changes (or more promises) - anyway, many of the people who were using the Make version may not benefit anymore of the new incoming features.

I think they focused on the sector that is most likely to pay for their software: architects and builders. If their job brings a lot of money, they will most likely want to pay.
So, that kind of explains why they try to turn SU in an architect's tool and take off anything that @Last meant for this software when they created it.
While this makes perfect sense in terms of business, it damages a lot in terms of other values. But we live in a world of capitalism, so there isn't much to say now.
I said it from the beginning, after Trimble acquired SU, that the fact they raised the license price just after they basically changed the application's icon, was a bad omen...

I just installed it and tried to load my bundle from Sketchucation Tools.
First impression is not very encouraging for me:

-SketchUp's Extension Manager was rescanning all extensions, bombarding me with update notifications for each extension that I installed (seems that one of the first extensions was detected as it needs updating and since that one for all, it appeared that pop-up)

-After I installed all extensions, I checked which needed to be updated and it was Eneroth Terrain Eroder and SketchUv.

-Tried to update them. Extension Manager started contradicting itself ("One extension updated successfully" and at the same time: "Failed to update SketchUv. Unable to complete download.")
So, yeah, one of the basic problems is still there, not fixed yet...

Other than that, it mostly seems the same. Probably under the hood are some fixings, but nothing to make the user visibly happy.

Ah: - it just crashed after I installed all extensions and I closed SketchUp. That's a good welcome

@gio said:

@derei said:

SketchUp 2018 is available https://www.sketchup.com/download/all

imgur.com

Discover the magic of the internet at Imgur, a community powered entertainment destination. Lift your spirits with funny jokes, trending memes, entertaining gifs, inspiring stories, viral videos, and so much more from users.

Imgur (imgur.com)

They just change the name at the moment (at least in NYC): the file is SU2017

Gio

Yup, confirmed...the downloaded file is still 2017 ... false alarm guys, go back to your beer

SketchUp 2018 is available https://www.sketchup.com/download/all

imgur.com

Discover the magic of the internet at Imgur, a community powered entertainment destination. Lift your spirits with funny jokes, trending memes, entertaining gifs, inspiring stories, viral videos, and so much more from users.

Imgur (imgur.com)

@cadmunkey said:

@rv1974 said:

How did you came to conclusion its fake?
I guess the page was 100% authentic, they simply posted it too early.

I agree, looked too good to be fake. Why bother faking a site anyway??

To lure people in buying a tampered software with injected code, maybe?... I know I sound paranoid and pessimistic, but it was just a theoretical hypothesis.

@juju said:

Probably. Let's hope it isn't a nervous laugh...

I think it's that laugh that tells "let them roast, we'll have some fun and then, after we are done, we'll release the new version...eventually"

Some guys at Trimble are having a good laugh reading this forum, I am sure of it

@rich o brien said:

@derei said:

now is Affinity Photo (which accepts Photoshop plugins, by the way)
... and many more.

I did not know that!

I'm sure you are impressed by the price too... and by the way, it does if not all, at least most operations non-destructive (eg. resizing layers). I started using it, but I have to check some tutorials, to get the workflow better.
Some say that in certain aspects is rather slow (raw processing), but the software is not that old overall (two years).

@jql said:

@ben ritter said:

I'd really hate Sketchup to be turned into a subscription.

Subscription will kill software.

There was MS Office, now there is Libre Office and WPS Office
There was Photoshop, now is Affinity Photo (which accepts Photoshop plugins, by the way)
... and many more.
I said "was" because the more people go into this new software, the less popular the giants will become.

So, for each crazy priced (and subscription based) software, there are smart people to make a cheaper (and many times better) alternative, so the giants will have a fair competition.
I just hope SketchUp won't go that path, but mostly for nostalgia, because anytime someone else can come out with a better option...

@rich o brien said:

Did you try Fluid Interactives OBJ importer?
There's a 5 day trial

Fluidimporter crashes at start and freezes my system... so, I believe that's out.

Thanks anyway.

@rich o brien said:

Did you try Fluid Interactives OBJ importer?

It is written in C so parse files very quickly.

FluidImporter - Fast Importer for SketchUp

FluidImporter quickly and accurately imports .obj, .fbx, .3dm, .stl, .x, .ply, .dae, .3ds, .ase into SketchUp, together with materials and textures.

Fluid Interactive (www.fluidinteractive.com)

There's a 5 day trial

Thanks, I'll try it now. I tried the one from SimLab, but that one crashes once the RAM is full (and I have plenty of pagefile too...)

I'm trying to import a rather huge OBJ file (~1GB), using TIG's Obj Importer (https://sketchucation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=20584). I have 16GB of RAM and the import goes rather quick until it reaches ~8GB in ram, at which moment, the plugin asks for Model Units (i choose Meters, to make sure I reduce the chance of not generated faces).

Anyway, after the model starts to be drawn partly and my RAM goes to about ~9GB, it slows dramatically and I don't know why... could be the plugin, but I am tempted to assume is the pagefile... maybe, for some reason, the system is moving the data in pagefile, which may slow the import greatly.

Is it any way to force SU to stay in RAM with all its baggage, rather than dumping parts in pagefile?
... or if you think my issue is of other nature, please let me know. I'm open to anything.

Thank you.

@juju said:

This is something I did not know before, it may be a fairly specific feature since I have a gaming laptop (Lenovo Y5070 with GeForce GTX860M 4GB) and this bracket does not feature. I will have to keep this in mind then the next time I upgrade...

This is one of the options that I've found. You can see the connector: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Dell-Precision-M6800-VGA-Upgrade-Kit-NEW-NVIDIA-GTX-980M-8GB-DDR5-MXM-3-0b/122300661179

@juju said:

How do you change graphics cards in a laptop?

Thank you, juju for this useful insight.
This machine has MXM card (that can be replaced) - it's a feature in gaming and CAD laptops and desktop-replacement laptops. So, is not soldered to the motherboard.

The graph you provided, I assume is for desktop cards, but definitely I will be looking into GTX 1060 / 1070 options. The problems with laptops is the X-bracket, heatsink, power drawn... I need to see that all of them get into my machine's specs.

In the meantime, I'll be waiting for more advice and suggestions.

Hy guys,

I'm planning to change my graphics card in my laptop (Dell Precision M6800) - I currently have FirePro M6100.

I was looking at two options:

• Nvidia GTX 980M
• Nvidia Quadro K5100M

I've been reading about, seen tests, etc... benchmarks; can't decide. Some say that Quadro is better for CAD (generally), others say that nowadays technologies made the GeForce (GTX) cards competitive enough to overcome the Quadro advantage... so I am totally confused.

The main use for the machine is SketchUp, Rendering (mostly CPU based, but I am planning to move to CPU+GPU), some FreeCad occasionally and gaming now and then... So, for me would be interesting to know if there is any major advantage especially when it comes to SketchUp and Rendering in making this choice.

Also, if anyone here has (or had) this laptop and did any upgrades to it, I would appreciate to share some insights with me.

Thanks a lot guys!

I got my email for beta license extension and I would like to ask what are the changes on this new version? I would like to focus on exploring what was fixed/added/changed, so I can give a solid feedback.
Thank you very much.