wow - hats off. What a labour of love. I'm curious about the statistics; number of polygons - millions / zillions?

@mike amos said:

Question is, will current users migrate in sufficient numbers to deter the slippery path development model?

On the official forum it already seems like business as usual. No indication that anything will change.

The bigwigs don't care for a few hundred / thousand 'old' loyal pro users who move over to Blender/Rhino etc. They will try to lure more people into the subs model and will probably start raising prices slightly every year at some point. Bigwig + shareholders will be happy with the extra revenue.

At least there is a perpetual license v2019. If that one can stay alive for as long as SU 2008 is alive already, that buys me a few years time to find a replacement for SU&LO.

I do hope the plugin developers will stick around for a while. If they start leaving to Blender/Rhino etc - SU would loose its appeal to me even faster.

In the Netherlands my reseller has the following info on their website:

• continue the maintenance (while license is still valid): 110,-
• upgrade after license has expired less than 1 year: 165,-
• upgrade after license has expired less than 3 years: 220,-
  It all depends of course how long they will keep the classic license.

I expect bug fixes will only be downloadable if you're maintenance is still valid.

are you looking for a specific plugin? Maybe someone still has it on their machine.

Have you looked at this source? (Jim Foltz I guess? - in authors list)
http://www.crai.archi.fr/rld/index.php

To me, It doesn't look like the message is listened to by the su-team (looking at the posts on the official forum). Web dev and different stuff Will keep taking much of the resources while the desktop pro wont get the fixes It really needs asap.
Maybe were just a minority. Would be very interesting to see a poll on peoples reaction on 2019 and trust in future developments for their needs.
I'm done ranting. Eyes open for alternatives while using 2019 this year.

Its sad many of the 'old' faces will move to different software. The ones that showed already in the early days Sketchup was a valid alternative to big cad. Gratefull for all your helpfull responses on the forums, posts on impressive modelling you did with early Sketchup versions, creators of impressive plugins and helpers to people with Ruby problems.

Interesting thread. I had a look at the price list but Vectorworks costs 3k (euro) in the Netherlands. That's quite a difference in costs.

I guess FormZ's web statistics will show a big spike after feb 6. Last time I had a look at a promo video, the interface looked more like a toy to me. Maybe its different now.

If only Blender had a 2d module just like layout - I would try it with a new project instantly.

Question: will there be an update for 2019 soon OR should we use the 2018 Wrap-r version?

@jo-ke said:

SU Exporter is out now.

Interessting thing.

Has anybody experience with ue?

My goal is to export my su model to ue (worked finally)
set materials to look fotoreal (have some problems with the interface)
and to view a walkthrough vie Oculus Rift (no idea how to do it)

I tried the exporter a few times. Last time it still generated a bit overhead (extra nodes). The default fbx export from sketchup fits my needs better for now.

For materials; there is so much to learn in Unreal. You already have looked some video tutorials on YouTube? A nice source is
https://www.youtube.com/user/VirtusEdu/videos

Doing a walk through on the Rift for starters is most easily done by creating a brand New Unreal Project and choose the Virtual Reality blueprint as the template. After that import your 3d model, update the NavMesh and it should all work (using the teleporting mechanism).

It takes a while to get used to the relevant Unreal features. The forum and YouTube were my main sources for information. Beware; more older videos can be outdated because Epic is constantly developing the engine and the documentation isn't up to date.

For VR, you already looked on the official forum?
https://forums.unrealengine.com/development-discussion/vr-ar-development?27-VR-Development=

Regarding 'complaining'...

I understand the SU-teams view of; 'keeping it simple' - and look for plugins if you need more fancy features.
But, complaining to me is very valid if, year after year, old and many times reported bugs still aren't fixed. The bugs cost me time, money & headaches and the bad thing is; reporting them on the official forum looks fairly useless.
Hoping V2019 will bring some positive surprises and in that case will gladly post a nice 'thank you' on the forum as well.

rant off/

Beautiful renders!

Nitpicking; personally / design-wise a different wall-tile pattern (or some more colorful tile pattern) could improve the atmosphere of the bathroom. For inspiration look here https://www.mosa.com

I see several Fredo plugins are getting updates these days which could be related (and also could mean some plugins might need some v19 adjustments to work again...)

So somewhere in Jan sounds reasonable.

@atelierpaar said:

...SU 2019 should be out soon. Is there ana chance that SU 2019 is going to be multi-threaded ?...

I wouldn't bet on that. To my knowledge, there's no CAD program that uses multi-threading for the normal drawing / work operations. Only when they start rendering - they (might) use more cores.

If you search for 'multi-core' on the official forums you will find more discussions about this. https://forums.sketchup.com/search?q=multi-core

My guess would be; pick any quad core Intel chip from the last two years (with as high Ghz speed as you can afford), add a gtx1080 (or 2080) to that, 32Gb ram and several SSD's (>= 512Mb - PCI NVMe if possible) to store the OS + swapfile + data and you're good to go for the next few years.

@jakemm said:

Does the GPU actually make much of a difference to SketchUp itself? I've heard conflicting comments, and I guess with the eGPU it's easy to see the difference as you can just unplug it.

I just tested 2 scenario's using the CrowdTest 3dModel from the 3dWarehouse.

First: Laptop with eGpu connected (gtx1080) with two large monitors. Biggest Scene(11) runs fine - eGPU 40% used (Task Manager)

Disconnecting the eGpu while running SketchUp crashes SketchUp (and Unreal etc). Makes sense though.

Second: Laptop running on its own (integrated gpu), only laptop display. Already in smaller scenes SketchUp is showing simplified geometry instead of the people. Big delays while switching between people and the simplified geometry.

So for me, and the dual external monitor setup, already in SketchUp it's a big difference. I can just focus on my work and don't get annoyed that much by SketchUp's performance (unless I run a plugin while the Outliner is open, or LayOut is freezing for half a minute while updating etc.)

It will depend though on your models. I rarely exceed 500k edges.

I always found it a bit strange for software updates v20XX to be released a few months before 20XX. Maybe this year, v2019 will actually come in or just before 2019?

bitdefender is happy again as well

ditto again with Bitdefender

@pistol_peto said:

...
My question is - does anyone have any experience with eGPU's? Do they improve performance much?

Have a look at https://egpu.io/build-guides/
You will find there lots of egpu solutions & combinations with laptops.

My setup is in there as well; a Thinkpad P51 with a Sonnet breakaway 350 & gtx 1080. Works great together with SketchUp & Unreal & Oculus Rift. Without the egpu is not that great or it won't work at all (Oculus Rift).

Its an easy setup in Windows. I expect on the Egpu.io forum you might find tips/stories about problems/solutions for the setup for Mac users.

Edit: I have used the system for a year now. My only regret is to have bought the cheaper version (lesser PSU) so when eventually upgrading the gfx card - I will have to look at the maximum power the gfx cards may use (probably no TI's).

Same problem here. Tested with a 7700HQ and gtx1080 (external via Thunderbolt).

When rotating, 1 cpu core is 100% maxed out, the others are barely used. Gfx card at 35% max. SU 2018 has difficulty in handling this much polys (400k). If you could split up the scene into smaller parts and hide a few of them, you will see some increase in speed.

A faster desktop might help a small bit but SketchUp always has trouble with these kind of files. Maybe version 2019 will surprise us.

Have you tried opening the file in Blender. You might be surprised by how that program handles the file.

I chose 'too busy' which is true but to be honest - I'm not expecting much for 2019. I'm more concerned Trimble is putting too much effort & resources into a web version and that - at some point - they will force pro users also over to the web.

It's mostly the plugin developers that keep to surprise me.