@alan fraser said:

I suspect that the opening up of the APi may well have been Boulder's way of allowing the userbase to drive SU in whichever direction it chose, having found itself somewhat constrained by meeting the fairly narrow needs of Google Earth.

We built the Ruby API to open SketchUp as a platform for development by the community. That much is correct— and from my perspective, it has been an astounding success. It has been a difficult project (here's a funny picture of me talking about the challenges in my keynote to last year's "International Symposium on End-User Design") but also a profoundly rewarding one.

Our "3D for everyone" modeler by definition will always lack features in specific vertical markets. ArchViz folks feel that SU lacks rendering tools. GIS folks feel it lacks mapping tools. BIM folks feel it lacks construction documentation tools. Etc. etc. etc.

By opening a rich and accessible API to the community, we enabled SU to operate as a platform rather than as a specialized tool. The "community," which is actually made up of a huge diversity of different communities, is free to adapt the platform to most satisfyingly meet their needs without cluttering the experience of others.

john
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Another good perspective from the CAD industry press. I'm sure Roopinder would appreciate it if you guys read his post and gave him your thoughts on the deal.

john
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@solo said:

I agree, we should stay independent and a voice of the users and not the owners. We can be objective without restriction. Trimble can pay for advertising which will help fund this forum.

Would this forum still be considered independent if we were funding it?

john
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@hieru said:

My only reservation is the issue of 3rd party apps that would benefit from multi-core processing (e.g.Twighight). Would it be possible to allow 3rd party plugins to utilise multicore processing without having to re-engineer SU?

Not only is this possible today, but it is frequently done. Most rendering engines utilize multicore processing— even those that work as "plugins" for SketchUp.

john
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@unknownuser said:

@bmike said:

whatever did folks do when we only had pencils?

pencil fights..
of course.

[speaking of which, i haven't had a good pencil fight in a few years… anyone want to do battle? ]

My Mirado Black Warrior can take your puny Dixon Ticonderoga any day. Bring it on.

john
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Ralph Grabowski, long time CAD industry watcher, has weighed in with an opinion on our news. I'm not sure he's ever really understood what we're doing with SketchUp. Maybe you guys can help him out in the comments?

john
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@mrdentini said:

I've been told that SU will be greatly simplified.

I love it! Those of you who have been around for a while may have seen me post shots of my SketchUp workspace before, which is simple. I'm a fan of simplicity in life... and design.

@khai said:

welllll there was trueSpace and Microsoft...

Microsoft also owned Softimage (remember Softimage?) until they sold it to Avid in 1998. Who then sold it to Autodesk in 2008.

john
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I just sat down over my morning cappuchino and read this thread from front to back again, and was left with one overwhelming thought. You guys are awesome. Really.

Change is tough for everyone and there's every reason to fear that things could go completely pear-shaped at any moment. There's no way to say for sure what will happen. We're making some sausage here, and that isn't always the most elegant thing to watch.

But we've been making SketchUp-style sausage for a long time now and have survived many adversities. We've had a fair measure of success, too. There is absolutely no rational reason why a tiny little startup like ours should have been able to stand up against entrenched industry mega-competitors. The reason it has worked is... you guys— the designers, builders and makers of things. The people who worry about us.

If you're worried, then I'm confident. People who could care less if we make it don't 'worry'— they just don't show up at all. And one thing we know for sure is that people actually use SketchUp. They are showing up in droves, as it turns out.

Hang in there— this is going to be... fun!

john
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@chedda said:

Does this apply to mac osx as well as windows ? How is it modo blender and numerous other applications are moving in this direction ? Surely larger memory usage will help performance and support larger poly models ? I am well aware that sketch up would need to be re-written to use multiple cpu's but at sometime we all see beach balls and egg timers right ? (like Kwisten mentioned exploding objects etc is a killer)

These are old arguments, frequently discussed by me and others. CAD software is notoriously resistent to multithreading and 64-bit doesn't make models run faster. What you really want, what all users want, is software that runs whatever model you are working on today faster. Historically, we've delivered 'faster' with every release.

john
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@bigstick said:

We've had no-one from Trimble here to say anything about the application they have just spent a lot on, with millions of users. Why?

Since this deal hasn't yet closed, there are specific legal restrictions that control what Trimble can say. That's why you don't see them here. Until then, you'll have to be satisfied with what's said on this site. You should expect to see more information added there as things progress.

john
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@mitcorb said:

Hi to John Bacus:
I wish you and your team good fortune.
You may need to take a look at your signature,eventually:

Thanks- I appreciate it. Definitely a renewed sense of optimism around here. I haven't changed my sig yet because until the deal closes, I'm still technically a googler. When that sig changes, you'll know the deal closed.

john
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@fionmacool said:

Now if Trimble would just sponsor some humorous SketchUp videos to help push their new acquisition.... I wonder who they could get to do that.......

I for one am curious how Charles Edouard feels about this change of ownership.

john
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@solo said:

John, you and the team moving too?

Yes- I'm moving to Trimble, along with the rest of the SketchUp team. They are building us a nice new office across town here in Boulder.

john
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@thomthom said:

What worries me here is that I don't see the relevance of what they do with what I'm used with for SketchUp.
Will SU transform into a different type of solution? Will it fragment into specialized editions?

Hi guys,

Obviously we are still working out the product roadmap and we still won't be able offer any more specific forward-looking statements than we ever did. But it is clear to us that Trimble is better aligned as a company with the SketchUp team's goals than Google. We've learned a ton from our time at Google, but there's plenty we wanted to do that we couldn't.

Trimble is an interesting company and is far more invested in software than most people realize— particularly software for the AEC industry. If you don't know about Tekla, you should. Ditto for many of the other recent BIM acquisitions they have made.

Trimble are committed to growing our team and have invested in our product's future. They understand what our mission is, and support it wholeheartedly. Trimble is about "...transforming the way people work." And that is something that SketchUp has always done.

john
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(ps: just so you guys know, there are 64-bit (and multithreaded) members of the SketchUp team sitting together in a room reading these posts.)

Hi Howard,

We decided many years ago to stop updating our ArcGIS plugin in favor of native support from ESRI. This page is a good place to start learning about the new features in ArcGIS.

Is there something about our old plugin that you prefer over ESRI's native support?

john
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@thomthom said:

The Extension list is not very user friendly. Especially them messageboxes.

You'll be happy to find, then, that there is new support in the Ruby API for building your own Extension Manager which improves on all the faults of the default system. I think the updated docs are going up today...

john
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@jpalm32 said:

dae inport: Unicorn.dae Size 14,000KB- Import 3.5 Minutes; get this explode -Gave up after 8 minutes.
Same file in VUE 9.5 Import 1 Second; Ungroup less (That's less 3 Seconds)
I don't understand!
Import was accurate, which it didn't do prior to update, but who cares.
How can one program be that much better??? VUE has it's problem also but man....

Ungroup in Vue is a different operation than Explode in SketchUp. Exploding this model in SketchUp merges all the geometry. Merging, while quite useful when modifying the model later, is pretty 'expensive' computationally. Vue doesn't merge geometry on explode.

john
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@tig said:

Well if it is exactly 1000, then they just need to change it to say 2000 or 10000 !!!

This number can't be infinitely large. How many commands are "enough" to meet your needs?

Just so that someone has said it... you guys could also leave fewer extensions activated. It was my hope that by making it easier to install and activate plugins you would find it easier to keep only those you really need for a particular model active in the application.

Hundreds of active plugins put strain on many parts of SketchUp. We can (and will) continue chasing bottlenecks in the code, but you guys can play a role here as well.

john
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@mukul.ar said:

@jbacus: Thankyou for clarifying This may be out of topic, but is the google team working on a sketchup that is able to handle more geometry (heavier models)? Because that would be the only push I'd need to go pro... Its not every day I get to interact with the developing team so... Thankyou for this great piece of software...

You're welcome! We're very proud of the work we do with SketchUp.

Performance is something we work on with every release, and it is something that clearly benefits all users. Every time we make SketchUp more able to handle bigger models, you guys begin making heavier models yet. Classic arms race. We've been in this condition for many releases now, and I think if you were to take one of the models you are working on today back to an older version of SketchUp you'd notice a significant difference.

But this is an academic argument and not what you're probably looking for. I promise we'll continue making SketchUp perform better with every release. In return, you've got to know where the limitations of the system are and keep building your models with respect to that.

Out of curiosity, what are you modeling today, and how 'heavy' would your model have to be before you'd be satisfied with the level of detail?

john
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