Anyone else received An email with An offer to 'upgrade' your classic license to the new PRO subscribtion for a one time 60% discount?

Not remotely tempted... Using blender nowadays for some parts of the work.

Edit: after using Blender for a few weeks now and then - I must say; I'm really impressed with it. Tried it a few years ago - it just didn't work for me then. Now, the new version has a much more friendly UI and it makes all the difference to keep going.

With Blender, I feel like the software isn't holding me back anymore - like SketchUp does in several areas (high poly, materials/ uv-mapping, modifiers, optimizing, speed, etc). After all those years of really mediocre updates and the 2019-subscribtion-move its nice to use software again that surprises me in a good way - just like Unreal & Oculus every new (sub-)version do.

Still using SketchUp for architecture projects and LayOut for making working drawings. But when I need something high poly, mapped and/or optimized for VR, its Blender.

Gave it a spin. Impressed. Very easy to get something visual in a nice way.

THE biggest plus; a few thousand nice library items for materials, cars, trees etc. Biggest downside; its a closed box. If you need something just different, you can be stuck.

They (epic) have said somewhere they intend that these scenes could be imported into unrealengine. That might make it really interesting; quickly setup something in twinmotion and switch to ue after for doing the more fancy stuff / tweaking

Three weeks ago I upgraded to a Ryzen 7 3700X on a Gigabyte X570 Aorus PRO.
Really happy with the speed. A few things though;

• its new. The X570 bios is still in its infancy so still issues to be solved by AMD and the mobo manufacturers.
  Edit: for instance XMP enabled can cause BSOD - I only see that when building UE from source in VisualStudio. For the rest the system is stable all the time with XMP enabled.

• boot times for some reason are very long on the x570 platform. Almost a minute (even with fast PCI-e M2). Also, the x570 chipset has active cooling on most mobo's

• apparently the Ryzen 7 3000 series behave more like a GPU where they reach (and maintain) top performance only when the temps are low (if there's enough cooling) and throttle down speed when the temps get too high.

• the Ryzen 7 3000 series cpu's temp go up&down 45-65-45 degrees every second even when just browsing. I have a Noctua fan on the cpu and 3 more in the case but they just can't keep up with the temperature spikes (just like any other fan / cooling solution I expect). Fan noise going up&down was really annoying until a custom profile was set in the bios where the fans are at 60% speed from 0 to 75 degrees (barely audible) and ramp up to 100% when above 75c. Now I almost never hear the fans again.

• finally still a few issues with lower max turbo speeds compared to what AMD's promo machine wants us to believe. In short; the turbo speed is only achieved for a few milliseconds by one core and most of the time a bit lower. The 3700X is at 4,2Ghz - 4,3 Ghz most of the time and spikes 4,4Ghz only every now and then.
  Look on YouTube for 'Der Bauer Ryzen' videos for more info.

Still I'm happy with the 3700X. It crushes compile times on UnrealEngine and the machine feels very snappy.

Feel free to ask more questions

Edit: added videos
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgSoZAdk_E8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LesYlfhv3o

Some extra info;
The biggest difference I see is my old Intel based (mobile) machine would max out on all cores at the max turbo speed during load.

With Ryzen, I see a lower speed when all cores are maxed out (edit: about 4.17Ghz). During less load, I see two cores alternating and hitting the 4,4Ghz for a split second and dropping again and the rest are at way lower speed.

Some people say the 7nm generates too much heat for the cores to sustain the max turbo for more than a split second.

@solo said:

I remember when there was a new plugin every week...Is it just me, or do you feel a fizzle out?

I think its a combo of;

• a lot of necessary and wonderful plugins already have been made for SketchUp the last 10+ years.
• more complicated plugins either are too difficult to make in SketchUp OR don't match the user base of SketchUp (user type and/or user count).

imho; SketchUp has lost some of its momentum since 5 / 3 years ago so maybe plugin developers also might have moved to other places. I think a part of the old user base has/is.

Nice house - never seen this project by Pei. I mainly know him for his big projects.

Top notch renders! The grass maybe could use some more variation (not that I can do anything near this quality).

absolutely stunning. I totally agree with pbacot.
I'm curious - whats the polycount / edge count of some of those models - for instance the lab. We are talking several millions or..?

very nice!
If I may; how does the collaboration go? You get a list of the models he needs?
Who decides on the style / tech finishes of all the vehicles?
Is it a ping-pong of ideas and revisions?

I'm also looking for a more modern and easy way to do building surveys.

In my notes I find the IpinPro had some really bad reviews so it wasn't an option for me. I didn't even bother to write down which reviews so better look for yourself. Maybe they have fixed the software by now.

@pixero said:

Could anyone confirm if they can see my comment or not?

Your remark is gone. The one comments thats there is not yours and only has 'show' in it.

@box said:

Works fine for me

I didn't know I had to open the toolbars menu to be able to remove the icons. Thanks a lot Box.

@box said:

If you don't want them just drag them off. If you want them back reset the toolbar.
How you do that? I can drag off custom icons but the native icons on the large tool set are fixed.

double post

@derek edison said:

And so it begins for classic license holders...
"Lucky news for you subscription holders! This new feature is only available for SketchUp Pro and Studio subscribers."

I missed that one.

@juju said:

So Trimble released SketchUp 2019.2[/url] yesterday....What are your thoughts here?.

Not much to talk about R2 for me.

• A few icons were added to the large tool set that I really don't want there. Its not like I will be pressing those functions 20 times a day so why put them on that toolbar?!? They were fine just in the menus. Or at least make it a custom toolbar you can get rid of.
• Also, the code of the large tool set was 'changed' for adding these icons but... you still can't add two custom icons yourself next to each other on that large toolset or you will get 3 columns (2 icons with a large space in between).
• New isometric dimensions were added to layout. Fine for those who use them but.. I prefer to add all my dimensions in SketchUp and - depending on the position of a scene on the LayOut sheet - the dimensions are still cut / split / partly invisible.

I can go on but...maybe in R3

Cant remember i was notified there was a .1 update. Or do you need to be in the non-classic version for that?

maybe you can with the Viz plugin?
https://www.fluidinteractive.com/products/sketchup-extensions/viz/

2019 classic here as well. Still using su&Lo for my architecture business. Keeping eyes open for alternatives but not found a match yet.

The classic / subscription shady marketing moves of 2019 still leave a bad taste. Combined with few useful improvements and lack of bug fixes (for me) over the last years, trust in the su team went away with that.

Edit; Only excitement is for what is done by plugin makers and modellers/artist over here. Barely visiting the official forums nowadays.

@pilou said:

@unknownuser said:

Yes you can work from / stream your pc-desktop to the quest.

I suppose that will be the same for programms ? SketchUp for example ,..
For the moment seems you can't have in the O Quest "a full screen helmet" of what is on the PC ?

I never tried it but I think you can. Look at the promo video of VirtualDesktop on the Oculus shop:
https://www.oculus.com/experiences/rift/911715622255585/

@pilou said:

Another little question Can you control and manage your PC (like with a tablett you can run a program on the PC with programs like TeamViewer, RealVNC etc... )

Yes you can work from / stream your pc-desktop to the quest. The app is called VirtualDesktop.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_xDHCHmW78