Over the last dozen or so years I have created 7,100 models in Sketchup Make. As you may have guessed the vast majority are rather simple... variations on length and width for the most part, but also many very complex models such as large steam era passenger train stations -- for example http://www.elvastower.com/forums/index.php?app=core&module=attach&section=attach&attach_rel_module=post&attach_id=93302. I've never had any need for SU Pro and there is no way I would entrust so many models to Trimble's cloud storage.

Which is to say I'm using SU 2016 and have no need / intention of using anything new from Trimble.

My question for the future is this: What happens when I have to build a new PC? Maybe this year, certainly before the end of the 2020. I have the installer from 2016... will it install and produce a working copy of SU Make or is this licensing stuff Trimble is talking about right now going to prevent that?

A long time ago I used a 2d drawing tool called Visual CADD, which, IMO had a really good UI. It had a couple of functions I wish I could find in SU.

• Extend lines to intersect: select the function, click the first line, click on the second line, done!
• Bevel corner: select the function, click the first line, click on the second line, enter "back off" amount, done!
• Round Corner: same as bevel corner but produces an arc instead of a straight line.
• Draw line to tangent: select the function, set down a vertex point and drag your line out, select the circle or arc, done!

Anyone know where I can find something like those?

I;m working on an unusually tall model today so it made sense for me to swing my display into portrait mode. Unfortunately on started SU (2016) my trays were lost somewhere to the right of the edge of the screen. I fiddled a bit w/o success.

Other than returning to landscape mode and repositioning my trays to the left, is there any way I can do that while remaining in portrait mode?

Thanks in advance.

So why was my post deleted?

Yeah, it was a bit snarky, but not very far off the truth.

An easier way for SU Make users to learn Blender.

I have one master model w/ ~150,000 faces that I broke up into 8 or 9 sub-assemblies. To ensure a correct placement in the final product I would pick a location in the master model and draw a triangle from there to where I would create an origin point in each future sub-assembly. That gave me an exact number of meters for an XY offset. Of course that triangle would be sent off to the sub-assembly too just in case I needed to importing everything back into a master model for inspection.

When I was sure I was done I'd make a copy, remove my offset triangle, and export from there.

When I just needed to clear out space and work on everything separately (but always intended to produce just a single model), I'd do the reload component trick mentioned above.

I've always wanted SU to have a native select untextured faces. I'm surprised it has never been added.

Create rubbish? There are a few of my earliest models....

Seriously, it's going to be the textures that solve your problem. I did a model of a recycling metals company and I found some very useful (free) textures at textures.com. I suggest you check there.

I rather doubt anyone from Trimble actually reads threads like this, but on the wild chance they do....

My wish list for oh, at least the last 10 versions:
Drawn lines should be drawing elements that can display their own color and line form per whatever the end user wishes them to do.

Please redo the menu structure under textures. Get rid of "Position" and put in its place the commands located under "Position".

Stop the display of the "Unable to load image file" popup message when one does a control-c on the file name, control-v to the materials name box while creating a new material.

Thank you.

Oh I expect to be using SU for a long, long time too. I just think that from Trimble's perspective the Make Potato must be fully baked by now.

Cooks will stick a fork into a baked potato to see it is done. Is it time to stick one into SU?

Seems to me that other than changes to further integrate it into products used in Trimble's chosen markets, yeah, it's probably pretty close to finished -- at least by Trimble.

Sure, everybody has a long list of missing features, myself included, but from Trimble's POV, why bother about what Make users want? Pro users are either already using other Trimble products or are in closely related industries, like Architects, that are part of Trimble's market.

All software gets to the point of it does almost all of what is really needed. SU is close and Trimble doesn't need to pay for adding stuff it's real customers don't need it to do.

Development cost for commercial products development (as opposed to open source) going into ever more arcane features will increasingly look like a bad investment. Trimble doesn't need to add burning in ambient occlusion to materials for use on models in games, it doesn't need to provide it's own raytracing software, it's never going to change materials to be managed like geometric objects nor add true circles.

So is it done yet?

I think it might be, so hand me a fork. <stab> What do you think?

No, it's still STUPID. 6 times trying and it finally let me in. I needed to log into a google account via web page and then back out of the Trimble login, tried to login again, failed, repeat 4 more times and on the last time, w/o entering anything, it knew who I was and let me in.

Go figure.

Yes, I found that and have now configured 3 trays (which appear as tabs in the tray area): Main, showing Outline, Materials (for me these tend to be large); Info, showing Entity Info and Layers; Effects, showing Soften Edges, Shadows, and Styles.

I would like to have Entity Info in two places but the software won't allow it.

@driven said:

I've been watching this thread and have a dilemma in my understanding of your pursuit...

simple flipping and scaling of components helps keep the file size down in a skp...

so any diversion from that principle only makes the skp larger and harder to work with...

Yes, I am aware of that.

@driven said:

is this desire for an 'on export' conversion, as that's a completely different thing that is available for some formats already...

if it's for export, why not say which format you need this for?

john

I did not think it was relevant but since you asked, .s format. It was designed by KUJU for the 2001 game sold by Microsoft -- Train Simulator. While that game lingers on some 15 years later there is an Open Source replacement called Open Rails that will read the .s files and display those models and textures in-game. My work is for use in Open Rails and I use only Sketchup for 3dcad. An example:

Ahhh, so it is need to retain the relative values of the points that causes the axis to flip when you scale... that makes a lot of sense.

Here's an example of my situation: This is the underframe of a freight car -- think spine & rib cage. Everything is mirrored left to right and many things are mirrored A end to B end.

This pattern of mirroring continues on everything else that I'll be adding to this model, from 50 foot sides to 1 inch rivets.

OK then, no extant plug-in that does exactly what I need... manually messing with the axis always depends on being able to see the model's axis (seldom occurs) so that's no good for me. I suppose I'm stuck exploding the component and building it new. Sigh... that'll work in many situations but it does expose the drawing elements to other drawing elements, creating the risk of interaction (I have requirements to strictly avoid that).

Thank you everyone for your answers, it helped me understand why this is occurring; absent someone creating a specifically for this situation I guess I'll just continue as I have.

I can think of a few situations where relocating the origin would be handy, but that's not what I'm looking for right now.

Some pictures:

The component on the right is the original one. That on the left was created with a copy/paste plus make unique, plus scale -1. It's origin is in the correct location but is incorrect because it was flipped.

Here the axis has been corrected. I used a plugin I found the other day called Center of Component -- it worked -- but I find it pretty easy to get confused over which was is right or left, near or far... it's not always obvious. If it had one more function -- Match orientation of model -- w/o moving the axis, it would be perfect for all situations.

Same issue with another one I looked at, Axes Tools -- straightforward choices (I know I'll use it when I need the axis on bottom center) but when your in the middle of things knowing right from left, again, isn't always obvious. Again, a choice to simply reset it the model orientation, where it is at present, is what I'd like to see.

Both are good, just not as sure-fire simple as I'm hoping to find.

@dave r said:

There are extensions that can set the axes to align to the model axes. Search through the Sketchucation Plugin Store using the word Axis as a search term.

I'll look again.

@dave r said:

But, if you change the axes on the mirrored instance of the component, the original instance will get its axes changed and you'll be right where you started. So you'll first have to make each instance unique thus breaking the relationship with the other instances. Is that alright?

Yes, I'm aware of that and so I do make the mirrored component unique and from that give it it's final name. Tedious but necessary. A quick fix to the axis will save me from having to explode each component and rebuilding it, something that occasionally causes problems from lines intersecting when I'd rather they did not.

The problem I see is when you do a -1 scale function on a component or group -- to mirror it -- its axis does not stay as oriented as it was... it mirrors as well. That causes me big problems later on after I export the model out of SU.

What I need is a simple way to get the axis of the mirrored component to revert back to the way it was -- normally identical to the axis of the model.

I've looked at the axe_tool and while it will be nice to use in other situations it does not change the orientation, only it's location.

So what I am hoping to find is a function (or plug-in) that will copy the axis orientation of the model and apply it to a component using the fewest number of mouse clicks... really tight... something like click on component whose axis needs to be reset, invoke function, done... nothing else required.

@wo3Dan: Is your idea more than just seeing an example of what the axis should look like?

Make version of SU.

Is there a simple copy axis from a to b plug-in anywhere? I do a fair amount of mirroring components -- copy, make unique, scale -1, rename -- and the only solutions I know of to reset the axis of the component to match the model is either to explode and rebuild it under its new name or use the clumsy axes tool.

Those steps are ok when it's a one level component (or group) but I often have multi-level components which means I have to reset the axis on each level. I don't like having to rename each scaled component... no way around that I guess, but I sure would like a 1-2-3 (get function, this to that) mouse click way to change a bunch of axes.

Any suggestions?

Kim, I downloaded your model and took a look and yes, the results are what I'm looking for... but I cannot yet replicate what you did. I see you used the UV plugin... when I try that the results are never right... either the texture gets angled down as it runs along the long axis or is all broken up by the faces of the tube.

Is there something I'm missing (besides my unfamiliarity with the UV tool)?

Oh, one more thing: Your use of the word projection... I do know the word of course but as used in your sentence I was not sure if you meant it to refer to a specific SU or Plug-In function or not..