Hi folks,

Our company are looking for a daylight calculation plugin and found several online recommendations for "DL-Light". However, after downloading the demo version and installing it I can't see the plugin toolbar in either SketchUp 8 or SketchUp 2018, both of which I have installed on my workstation.

I can see that DL-Light is installed as it has created folders on the C:\ drive, but it doesn't seem to "find" the SketchUp installations.

Has anybody here had any experience with this plugin and can offer advice on getting it to work with SU 2018? Alternatively, can anyone recommend an alternative dalight calculation plugin or stand-alone?
Someone recommended Light Up Analytics, but it's unfortunately been discontinued.

I'd be very grateful for any help or advice anyone can give!

This problem has been driving me nuts for years, in my largest models it was impossible to right click and delete materials from the SU Material Editor. A real pain when SU automatically creates solid colour materials for imported dwgs.

Digitalmarley's trick above works! I had to change my Windows 7 theme to Classic (Basic didn't work), and SU stills hangs for about 20 seconds (for each material!), but finally the right click context menu comes up and I can choose delete. Thank you Digitalmarley!
Trimble really need to sort out how SU handles materials, it's a terrible bottleneck.

/Jackson

God that is pathetic.

What do they offer as an alternative?

SU

Pros
-Fast
-Cheap (Free)You can learn the basics in 4 hours
-Decent native real-time WYSIWYG shadow rendering
-Fantastic import & export options
-Open source options (ruby)
-Very easy material editor and UV mapping
-Makes working in 3D totally natural before easily exporting to boring old 2D for Cds
-Now has many options for excellent render plugins, Podium, Maxwell, VRay
-Developers (at least on the @last side of things) are very nice people
-Fast
-Fast
-Fast

Cons
-Doesn't handle curved geometry well
-Stupid childish name
-Ehm..... it's addictive? Hang on, I think that's a Pro.

Autocad

Pros
-Industry standard (thanks to monopolistic, abusive marketing)
-Reasonably fast for producing 2D CDs.
-Ehm... I'll come back to this.

Cons
-Did I say reasonably fast? I meant slow- I can model details in 3D in SU faster than I can draw them in 2D in Autocad.
-Extremely expensive and anachronistically so- most professional software has dropped dramatically in price in the last few years, but Acad has reluctantly crept very slowly down.
-Takes days to learn the basics.
-The software has barely changed in 7 years, yet every version makes previous versions obselete forcing the entire industry to upgrade.

• Autodesk. (There's some swearing for you Jon). They only have contempt for their customers, laughing all the way to the bank every time they release a "new" version and take their customers' money all over again.
  3D is an afterthought and God, does it show.

If anyone would like to do a pros and cons list for other software, eg 3DMax (you have to meditate for 7 years, become one with the universe and pray to the God of Horrible UIs and Insane Bugs before you're allowed to progress to Level 1). I'd love to see what these "We hate SU" gonks would use instead. They're obviously just bitter because they spent years learning software which has now become more or less obselete (see my post on the Pro User Forum re: an article in the Architect's Journal about huge architecture firms using SU extensively).

@lapx said:

These are stubborn architects that think they know with out even trying to use the software what the program is capable of. I have tried to convinced the office that su is more that just drawing pretty 3d models. Su as Bob says can be incorporated in every phase of the project including CD's. I got this question today- "Is it as acurate as autocad?Can you use to do cd's?"...I just wanted to SCREAM!!!The only reason why I'm complaining is because I know how much more productive our office could be if they would fully embrace and push the software to its limits.

I've been fortunate enough to introduce SU to 2 offices who after a little persuasion (this was before the free version came out) embraced it completely.
We do our building surveys, sketch designs, planning applications, export 2D sections for building warrant and construction documents all in SketchUp, safe in the knowledge that the SU model is 100% accurate (if I made it ) which means all the BW and CD drawings will be accurate and consistent. We even occasionally print off perpectives or axonometrics of complex details for contractors if they're struggling with visualising them. We have been able to take on about twice as much work with the same workforce as we are now so efficient. AND we have freed up time to spend on promotion, marketing, research and competitions. Win win.

http://www.dpreview.com/ is probably the best review site for the pro/prosumer digital camera market- they go into great detail (10+ pages) on cameras that have been around for a while and still give excellent reviews on new released cameras.

http://www.cameralabs.com/ is also very good, very detailed consistent reviews aimed more at the advanced amateur market.

After months of research I've actually decided away from buying a DSLR as my next camera, think I'll go for a top-end compact instead: either the Ricoh GR Digital III, Canon PowerShot G11 (drool) or maybe the Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX3. The reality is I use my camera mostly for photographing materials for using as render textures so I need to be able to have it with me most of the time and for architectural photography used with a tripod so I don't need the ultra-low-noise large or full-format sensors which DSLRs offer. At "normal" light levels any of the above cameras will produce results as good as the lower end prosumer DSLRs so they only trade-off is not being able to upgrade lenses in the future. The brand new Canon PowerShot G11 is said to have much improved light-sensitivity; equivalent to 2 stops, which is very impressive. These compacts (which many journalism photographers carry as a backup) are generally more robust too. They're definitely a serious alternative to lower-end DSLRs.

@cyberdactyl said:

Twice now in the last month I have run into new clients who, once they saw proposals by my firm were partially done in SU had less than enthusiastic responses. Not that the work was under par, no, they were pleased with the design ideas, it was more that the work was done with that "shareware software" their kids were playing with at school.

@unknownuser said:

I have had this problem too, once I lost a client because of it

Although I think SU is child's play I have watched clients and non-SU-savvy colleagues trying to use it and it would be funny if it wasn't so frustrating. Many don't have a clue how to even navigate around a 3D model- the idea of using the middle mouse button for anything other than scrolling or maybe zooming just seems alien to them.

Kids use Photoshop at school, but do they understand modes, levels, channels, HDRIs? I can hold the same chisel and hammer as a stonemason, he'd produce a masterpiece, I'd produce a misshapen lump. Damn this topic winds me up, lemme at 'em, lemme at 'em!

This issue has become so bad that I'm almost unable to view SCF, even on Firefox. Any attempt to view an SCF page on IE results in a hang 99.9% of the time and in Firefox I'm getting about a 25% success rate, having to refresh 3 times out of 4 to get a page to display properly.

As before, HttpFox is flagging up "snowflks.gif" as a culprit, but there's plenty others too (see report below). Can I really be the only person having this problem?

I miss SCF!

NS_BINDING_ABORTED hADDEDTODISABLELINKttp://stats.buysellads.com/imp.gif?z=1239051&b=6927;&g=12677268452121625147&s=12677268452133623444&sw=1440&sh=900&br=firefox,3.6,win&r=0.43470795818489316

NS_BINDING_ABORTED hADDEDTODISABLELINKttp://forums.sketchucation.com/style.php?id=11&lang=en

NS_BINDING_ABORTED hADDEDTODISABLELINKttp://forums.sketchucation.com/posting.php?mode=edit&f=179&p=229788

text/html (NS_IMAGELIB_ERROR_NO_DECODER) hADDEDTODISABLELINKttp://forums.sketchucation.com/snowflks.gif

Jackson

Wow Thom, I never thought this old thread/request would come back to life with such exciting developments! Can I donate in advance?

I'm actually amazed it took so long before someone posted the inevitable "Then why are you using IE?" reply. I know IE is crap, but frankly I've had more problems in general with Firefox (add-ons often being incompatible with current Firefox versions, probelms loading certain websites, etc).

That said, I guess I should give Chrome a try.

Re: deleting cookies, I also use CCleaner, always when IE and Firefox are closed and I delete everything.

BTW, even in Firefox I'm still getting this problem with loading the "snowflks.gif" file, even if a) the snow flakes background is no longer on SCF and b ) all temp internet files on my PC have been deleted several times since the snow flakes background was removed. It's weird to say the least.

OK, having just experienced problems opening pages even in Firefox I thought I'd open HttpFox and take a look at what it is exactly it is that isn't loading and causing these terrible hangs.

As you can see from this HttpFox screenshot it's the "snowflks.gif" background which isn't downloading properly (as I scrolled back through the HttpFox history is shows up red every time). It would certainly explain why this has only started happening in the last couple of months.

... that would be an awesome render farm and yet with all that power SU would still only run at 1.6GHz. Where's a "head in hands" smiley when you need one?

I imagine that V-Ray would be close to running real-time 30fps photorealistic rendering on that bad boy..... droool.

Sorry if this has been brought up already, I searched, but didn't find anything specifically IE related.

In short SCF has become almost impossible for me to view in IE8. This started happening a few weeks ago, but as I've recently done a lot of reinstalling of software, XP and IE updating, got a new broadband connection and one or more of my neighbours' wireless networks is interfering with mine so I wasn't sure what was causing my SCF problems. The symptom is that SCF behaves as if my internet connection is cutting in and out, so some pages open, others just hang. It seems to be completely random as I can sometimes view certain threads, the suddenly I can't. I assumed it was something to do with my connection (although it hasn't happened in other forums/sites), but SCF works fine in Firefox. I've cleared all my cookies so it shouldn't have anything to do with that.

Just me? Any ideas?

@pbacot said:

Like most start-ups and speculation, I think the important thing is to move money, not energy, from one location to another.

ROFLMAO!

How true... from the pockets of gullible people to the off-shore bank accounts of con-men.

LOL, brilliant!

@unknownuser said:

We still have the rugby to look forward to Mike.

I thought Thierry was playing rugby?

I'm as cynical about political and corporate collusion in widespread vaccine programmes as the next guy, but the vast majority of medical research is in total agreement that vaccines work. I'm no expert, but my fianceé is a doctor in immunology and although I only understand about 2% of her chosen specialism I have learned a little about how the immune system operates at a cellular level. The ability of the immune system to remember and recognise pathogens which it has previously encountered (carried by dendritic cells to the lymph nodes) by producing memory T- and B-cells is fundamental to its functioning (and to its malfunctioning i.e. allergies and autoimmune diseases). In fact, as far as I'm aware it's so fundamental that in the 21st century research is focused on a much deeper understanding of how dendritic cells and T- and B-cells actually work rather than if they work. After all, tyre companies spend their time and money researching rubber compounds and tread patterns, not whether wheels should be round.

I'm extremely wary of "Well, it never did me any harm!" advice. It reminds me of the comedian George Burns in his 90's proudly puffing away on his trademark cigar saying it "never did me any harm". It used to make me so angry- just thinking of the hundreds of thousands of men and women who spend the last decades, years, months, weeks and days of their lives hacking up blood and gasping for breath while emphysema and lung cancer ravages their bodies... but we don't see them hidden away in hospital wards and hospices- we saw George Burns beaming from the tv as though he is the true face of elderly smokers everywhere. I liked the guy as a comedian, but he should have kept his medical advice to himself.

Bruce,

In spite of what I've written above, I'm not really implying it's the same thing to suggest smoking doesn't do any harm as it is to suggest that we shouldn't automatically vaccinate our children. I just mean that the "it didn't do my kids any harm" argument is pretty weak as it's impossible to prove or disprove that your kids or grandkids would ever have caught those diseases anyway. Maybe they were never exposed to them.... maybe they've just got good genes!

Long live healthy debate!

If Whaat's plugin does the obj conversion correctly, rendering in other plugins/progs shouldn't be a problem. I did a test (the apple again), exported from SU to UU3D and back into SU via TIG's obj importer and it rendered fine in V-Ray for SU. This is actually surprising as V-Ray for SU usually doesn't recognise textures which have been skewed or distorted in SU.

Whaat,

I must admit I got pretty confused while I was testing UU3D as I was juggling obj and 3ds exports from SU with obj and 3ds exports from UU3D as well as running them all through Meshlab, 3DMax and Vue 6 and saving further obj and 3ds copies to see if it helped with SU's and UU3D's importing, but I think the "no spaces" rule applied both to 3ds and obj.

Then again, I'm pretty sure most progs capable of exporting in 3ds format automatically insert understrikes/underscores in place of spaces. As such, I've never had problems importing 3ds into SU before, from any source.

Whaat,

Thanks for the quick answer. I meddled with a few UV unwrapping prog demos a few months ago, but got nowhere- most SU meshes just seem to unwrap 3-dimensionally (i.e. polys are exploded above and below each other when viewed in the UV editing view) making them impossible to export an editable UV map from. I did have some success exporting an apple mesh from SU, but haven't been able to work out what it was that made that mesh import properly into UV unwrapping software properly while most don't. I've specifically made closed convex hull meshes (which the apple obviously was) in SU to see if they would import properly in UV unwrapping programs, but it makes no difference.

I just did a quick trial with the demo of Ultimate Unwrap 3D and yet again, the apple mesh imports and unwraps correctly, but anything else (even single sided very low poly meshes) unwraps as a bunch of exploded overlapping triangles.

As a note for your anyone using UU3D you must always export obj meshes and texture bitmaps FROM UU3D using names WITHOUT SPACES. SU doesn't import the UV map otherwise.

Thanks Remus, I'll try TIG's obj importer.

Jackson