@maxel99 said:

is it possible su8 could be worse from a usability / consistency level?

Hi maxel99,

We do watch crash reports pretty closely, and aren't seeing the kind of persistent instability you're seeing. Are you submitting reports when you crash? If you are, it really helps us if you also type in a quick sentence or two about what you were doing (or trying to do) when SketchUp crashed. Those crash reports are really the only way we can track down and fix problems like you are having.

john
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@juanv.soler said:

The Follow_Me command fails to get picked and gets confused by the Push_Pull tool

This is a known issue that we will try to address in a maintenance release. The tool functions as usual, though with the wrong cursor.

john
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@diviner said:

My renderer (IDX) is crashing in v8 and I need to back to 7 for awhile. I have a link to v7 pro that I guess reverts to free 7 after 8 hours, but I will have a class full of students next week who might have already upgraded, and I want them to get back to 7 in the most simple way possible.

Any link??

Error 404 (Not Found)!!1

(sketchup.google.com)

@pitrak said:

Is there a roadmap for Back Edges mr. Bacus?

As a matter of policy (both Google's and before that @Last's), we won't comment on unreleased features or future directions for the product in any but the broadest possible terms. I recognize how much you'd like to know what's coming next, but we need to preserve a quiet space in which the team is free to experiment with projects that may not work out. Software development is more like painting than manufacturing, and you're better off in the end if we're free to be creative.

john
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@emage said:

The main issue i feel neglected is simple - PERFORMANCE.

I don't know what application you're comparing SketchUp against in performance terms (you haven't said), but it abundantly clear that increases in rendering performance in SketchUp are helpful to all users. Here's what I've said previously on the subject on these forums:

@jbacus said:

I want you all to understand that the dev team understands clearly how important general performance is in SketchUp. We work on it with every single release, though sometimes in ways that aren't entirely obvious from the outside. SU7.1 included an entirely new rendering pipeline that was in development for almost two years. In SU8, we reworked the way that raster image data is handled internally. We'll work on something else in the next release.

And while we certainly have a responsibility to increase performance in SketchUp at every opportunity, you must also do your part by managing the complexity of your model to fit within the 'polygon budget' of your particular system.

In game-theoretic terms, SketchUp's modeling performance is a classic "arms race". Every time we make SketchUp faster, you start making bigger models. Then we have to make SketchUp faster again, and then you start making even bigger models. There is no logical conclusion to this game where performance is infinite and you can make an infinitely large model. Eventually performance will plateau, and you'll have to learn how to work with the system as it stands.

I don't know what you would consider a "medium project", and I don't know what your hardware configuration is either. But I can tell you that we have and always will continue to improve SketchUp's performance with every release. You have to take some responsibility as well, though, and manage your model to work within the constraints of the system.

john
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@emage said:

Now, don't take that as a rant.
I really appreciate the fact the John spends his time reading and answering us.
(though i feel some important issues are being dodged.)

What issue do you feel I dodged?

john
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@jclements said:

At LadyBugz (Carolyn):
Why are postings tagged as inappropriate and the author not informed of why and by whom?
Does anyone have the capability of tagging a posting as inappropriate?

Hi John,

Looking into this for you– folks are a bit slow getting back from the holiday weekend this morning. I think your posts were marked as 'inappropriate' because they included multiple ideas in a single post. You should post again, but please only one idea per post.

john
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@fountainhead said:

How many SketchUp programmers are on the 'Development Team'.

We don't share detailed information with the public on this question, but the team is about the same size that it was when we were acquired by Google. We don't have hundreds of folks working on SketchUp.

@fountainhead said:

How many SketchUp 'Pro' users are licensed, and are there in fact enough users who will likely pay for an upgrade to warrant investing the time and money into the program that we 'Pros' keep asking for.

We don't share detailed information about the size of our user base, but there were well over 1m unique activations of SketchUp in the last week. There are plenty of Pro users to keep us investing in SketchUp Pro's development. That said, the ArchViz Pro segment doesn't represent a majority of Pro users.

@fountainhead said:

How many individuals are there who use 3D modelling software for visualization that have little or no interest in advanced rendering.

Hard to put a number to this one. But given the diversity of photorealistic rendering plugins for SketchUp available on the market today, I think that it is clear there is a belief that advanced rendering still goes hand-in-hand with 3D modeling. Our experience with SketchUp does suggest that there are many more 'sketch models' created than 'renderings' over the course of an average architectural design project. I'm keen to help rendering apps work as well as they can with SketchUp, as I recognize that sometimes the rendering, while done less frequently, can turn out to be the most important part of the project.

@fountainhead said:

I love SketchUp, and Layout too for that matter... but currently I love the Ruby developers more.

We have something in common, then. I think the Ruby developers are doing a great job, too. We build and maintain a very high-level and capable API precisely to support the work of these folks, and they are doing a stellar job providing you all with specialized and powerful tools that you ask for.

This is collaboration, not competition... and I think it is working pretty well. We get to keep the core SketchUp app clean and simple for the majority of users, while at the same time you get to add specialized tools as you need them. The Ruby community, with help from our API, is the glue that binds this all together.

john
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@unknownuser said:

Right now, instead of a guy that's suppost to understand the needs of someone working with 3D meshs, i feel like i'm talking to someone that never did 3D...sorry if this sound disrespectfull but i'm just beeing honest here.

You are being a bit disrespectful to me and my background, but my architectural education has gifted me with a very thick skin. I do think that you're confusing the specialized needs of archviz professionals with the generalized needs of all users of SketchUp. I talk to lots of heavy SketchUp users whose eyes would cross if I asked them about unwarping their UV's.

Also, you're assuming that there is one true method for dealing with "3D meshs" that the SketchUp team is either too stubborn, distracted or incompetent to implement for you. That's a little disrespectful, too– and it is kind standing in the way of moving this conversation forward as well.

There are certainly things we can add to SketchUp that will improve its usefullness for archviz pros without losing sight of the general needs of all SketchUp users. Itemizing those things and discussing them in detail would move this conversation forward.

john
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@thomthom said:

@unknownuser said:

In defense of SketchUp in general, not in particular v8, I find that when I turn off Edges and Profiles, or more generally speaking all Style related aspects,

Yes, style effects can slow down a model as badly as shadows. (even Colour by Material and Colour by Axis slows things down as SU has to draw the edges in multiple GL operations) I usually have a "Modelspace" scene that turns on my optimized modelling style with all effects off. I model with that style and only swap to scenes with effects on when I'm ready to export.

For maximum performance, you should stick to rendering styles that can be entirely handled by your GPU. For quick tips on optimizing SketchUp performance, see the "Making SketchUp run faster" Help Center article. For excellent and exhaustive detail, have a look at the "How do I make SketchUp run faster?" page on the SketchUp Sages site.

john
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@unknownuser said:

jbacus i still would like to know what you think of my post
http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=30586&start=60#p268908

I think it is great that you're digging into the real applicability of 64-bit computing for 3D modeling apps, and that you now recognize that 'performance' is the issue that you care about, not our adoption of some particular technology that you think will make a difference.

I want you all to understand that the dev team understands clearly how important general performance is in SketchUp. We work on it with every single release, though sometimes in ways that aren't entirely obvious from the outside. SU7.1 included an entirely new rendering pipeline that was in development for almost two years. In SU8, we reworked the way that raster image data is handled internally. We'll work on something else in the next release.

And while we certainly have a responsibility to increase performance in SketchUp at every opportunity, you must also do your part by managing the complexity of your model to fit within the 'polygon budget' of your particular system.

In game-theoretic terms, SketchUp's modeling performance is a classic "arms race". Every time we make SketchUp faster, you start making bigger models. Then we have to make SketchUp faster again, and then you start making even bigger models. There is no logical conclusion to this game where performance is infinite and you can make an infinitely large model. Eventually performance will plateau, and you'll have to learn how to work with the system as it stands.

john
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@khai said:

I get it. you prefer Collada even tho it is a poorly supported format at this time.

No, I'm questioning your assumption that it is poorly supported. I think it is pretty well supported now, and see evidence supporting that position.

john
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@pixero said:

We also filled that wishlist with our needs so I think you had all the time to come back to us for more information what we meant and didnt have to wait until now for that.

I think we got all the information we needed. I've been pretty transparent about the Product Ideas series, and have answered many of the posts there over the last few months– either right in the series (see "Answered Questions") or in the official SketchUp Help Forums. And as I've said elsewhere in this thread, I think we knocked off a respectable number of the top requests in SU8.

If the pressing issues that you feel we should have addressed in SU8 didn't rise to the top of the voting in our series last fall, it could be that they are simply not as important to everyone as you think they should be. We had over 12,000 votes by the end of the series, so I think we got a pretty good sample. You can review the final series to see where your ideas fell if you like: 2009 SketchUp Product Ideas

Don't let your feelings about how this went last time prevent you from participating this time. We've already got over 2000 votes on 120 topics, and we're less than a week into the voting. Head over to the 2010 SketchUp Questions and Ideas Series and make your voice heard.

john
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@rv1974 said:

"No one will need more than 637 kb of memory for a personal computer." -Bill Gates, 1981
"64-bit processing will have no benefit" -John Bacus. 2010(sic!)

Be polite. I'm making a more complex point than you're giving me credit for making.

john
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@thomthom said:

Kindof is... SU was designed as a sketching application. By the sound of it, more render apps are moving to studio solutions - to escape the 32bit limitation of SU.

Using Ruby, it is possible to access an engine running outside SketchUp's process while still maintaining UI inside the SketchUp application. It is not necessary to switch to a full 'studio' solution. There are several examples of rendering engines that do this successfully on the market today.

I'm not familiar with the "LargeAddressAware" flag in Visual Studio, but wouldn't expect it to be a panacea. Since this is a holiday weekend in the US, I'm not going to bother Tyler with this until Tuesday.

john
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@cadmunkey said:

@jbacus said:

@cadmunkey said:

Jeez.. no 64 bit version in 2010? C'mon Google you've dropped the ball! You beta testers couldnt persuade them?

What benefit do you hope to gain from a 64-bit version of SketchUp? This is really this question that needs to be discussed.

john
.

John I hope you are joking. Obviously more memory space and the ability to render out complex models.

I think I've already answered the question about rendering large models. Rendering engines, which do benefit from 64-bit processing, can be run today in their own 64-bit environment.

Performance is clearly important to all our users, but "64-bit" isn't really the technology that I'd bring to bear to improve SketchUp's performance next.

john
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@thiago luz said:

John, a SIMPLE work I decided to use a bank that was a model of BB Italia ... the sketchup only took 18 HOURS to explode the bank ...

If it took 18 hours to explode your model, then it doesn't seem to me that it was very simple! 'Explode' operations are a good example of the sort of computation that benefits from a single fast processor core (not from multicore or from 64-bit).

john
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@d12dozr said:

John,
I should have been more clear, I meant rendering with a plugin inside Sketchup. I use Twilight, I understand Vray and other render programs have similar trouble. Depending on model size, trouble can start at 2000 px.

Thanks for replying.

It is certainly the case that photorealistic rendering benefits from a 64-bit environment and access to loads and loads of memory. Rendering plugins for SketchUp can be built either to run their rendering processes inside SketchUp's 32-bit environment or outside it in their own separate 64-bit environment. You might check you favorites to see how they work.

john
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@unknownuser said:

Personally I think a better fix, at least in the case of exporting images, would be to have the ability to determine the thickness of SU's linework. I find personally that because a line is always 1 pixel thick I end up having to export very large images even if (especially if) I don't need that much resolution. I'll end up exporting a very large image and then reducing the image size in photoshop. Other than this reason, I'm not sure why someone might need a SU image to export at more than 4,000 pixels (between poly counts being limited and texture resolution limits I can't imagine what benefit you'd get).

You should try rendering images in LayOut instead of SketchUp. Layout gives you the ability to change the line weight of the drawing prior to export so that you don't have the problem you're describing.

john
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@d12dozr said:

John,
I should have been more clear, I meant rendering with a plugin inside Sketchup. I use Twilight, I understand Vray and other render programs have similar trouble. Depending on model size, trouble can start at 2000 px.

Thanks for replying.

Photorealistic rendering operations surely benefit from 64-bit processing. Rendering plugins do not have to execute rendering operations inside SketchUp's 32-bit environment, and can be built to run in their own 64-bit environment outside of the main SketchUp process. I think many of the more popular ones are already doing this.

john
.