I haven't been keeping up with this, but one of my students recently claimed to have had a great deal of luck with Maxwell, Jeff. Please keep us posted. Oh, and since I don't have them bookmarked offhand, would you mind posting the links to the Maxwell pages and the plugin necessary to use it with SketchUp.

And actually, I don't know what Studio is...a component of Maxwell, or another modeler where you are using a Maxwell renderer plugin...or do you mean 3D Studio Max?

--Lewis

Posted by Lewis Wadsworth

@unknownuser said:

stop get a refund... pro is worthless...

I would have said that GE Plus is not a very good value, unless you want slightly higher resolution images. Pro has significantly higher resolution output, measures area, and apparently the animation export is now built in (you used to have to buy additional plugins).

What bothers me about GE is the licensing...even the pro version has restrictions that could be construed as completely forbidding the licensee from doing "professional" things with it, like placing a work of architecture in site and using this for public demonstration (although it is possible that the wording only prevents the licensee from repackaging the presentation or the data and calling it, say, Lewis Wadsworth Earth). With the free version, you potentially violate the license (as I understand it) if you use GE to locate a coffee shop and then tell your friends how to get there. Furthermore, the free version features advertisements within some of the information balloons (you can turn them off in Pro...but has anyone really noticed these things anyhow?).

I like NASA's World Wind, now finally beta-testing a cross-platform Java-based version. Here's a comparison with GE:

(www.worldwindcentral.com)

WW is free and completely open source/open use, but won't import your SketchUp files the way GE does--although there are a few people working on that.

--Lewis

poster-Lewis Wadsworth

@kdjanz said:

What is the CAD replacement Lewis?

Kelly

I've yet to try it on a real project of any size (certainly nothing like the giant projects my employers take on), but the Pro version of QCAD http://www.ribbonsoft.com/qcad.html seems quite adequate enough. (It cost me all of $30...well worth it, as the Open Source version is somewhat crippled.) There's now an autosnap feature that reminds me a little of SketchUp's approach, which is nice.

If I need something more robust, there are a few IntelliCAD variants available on Linux for about $500 or so...bricsCAD at http://www.bricscad.nl/ seems most like AutoCAD. I haven't bought it yet, but I may. Of course, one of the issues is that I don't want to use AutoCAD, or anything much like it, even on Linux.

I also have a Debian package for BRL-CAD, which is said to be a wonderful CAD program if you can get past the absolutely brutal interface (or rather, lack of interface, which is probably what you should expect of a program used originally to design tanks and military hardware): http://brlcad.org/. There is quite a set of tutorials available.

Most of the other inexpensive or OS CAD programs seem too immature (alpha, beta, etc.) for real use, These people are testing them:

http://international.cad4linux.nl/cms/page.php?2

There are some high end commercial packages available, like GraphiteOne-CAD http://www.graphiteone-cad.com/en/product_2ddrafting.htm , but I don't feel like spending that kind of money yet. Especially if SketchUp is not going to be available on Linux. (Are you reading this, Craig?)

--Lewis

poster-Lewis Wadsworth

@unknownuser said:

Eye candy maybe, but as examples of graphic design I love these images. The muted browns, greys and transparency are beautiful.

Jackson

Thanks, Jackson. I'm about to enter the project that I'm smearing across Beryl into an unbuilt architecture competition...I'll post the images here when the thing is over...it's a minor elaboration on something I already placed on the Google SketchUp forums.

http://forum.sketchup.com/showthread.php?t=79756&highlight=Oblivion

After playing around with Beryl and Linux it is really hard to go back to Windows...it it wasn't for SketchUp I think I might just junk the M$W platform. I have replacements or substitutions for almost every other piece of software I use as an architect.

--Lewis

poster-Lewis Wadsworth

I've become sufficiently confident in Ubuntu Linux that I've installed it on my personal desktop PC, dual-booting with Windows XP (and only because SketchUp, Rhino, and PS CS3 XT are not available on Linux). This PC has the horsepower to run Beryl, a window manger with a variety of peculiar 3D aspects. It's all just eyecandy, but it is fascinating...what you see below are screenshots as I rotate between virtual desktops...each desktop has a rendering of my current favorite SketchUp project applied, as does the environment/skymap behind the cube.

--Lewis

poster-Lewis Wadsworth

Yep, 2007-06-05 9:07 AM EST I just received a private message from the old place.

Lewis Wadsworth

@unknownuser said:

As far as Google's reluctance to talk about what they're up to, they seem to have a flat policy not to talk about that stuff.

Or else they don't care and aren't doing much. AEC and by extension 3D modeling is not part of their core search/advertising financial continuum. I've been worried about that since they bought @Last. I suspect that if the Google Overlords weren't so besotted with the science fiction novel "Snowcrash" they would not have acquired Keyhole (Google Earth), and they only bought and free-bied SketchUp as a quick way to fill GE with visual content.

--Lewis

Lewis Wadsworth

I'm just itching for someone to get out of line...so I can Moderate them, Jedi-style:

You are really sorry you wrote that.

"I'm really sorry I wrote that."

You won't post anything like that again.

"I won't post anything like that again."

You are going to turn off the computer, go outside for a few minutes, and re-think your life.

"I'm going to turn off my computer now, go outside, and re-think my life."

poster-Lewis Wadsworth

@shaun tennant said:

wow - Lewis, your skywalker avatar freaking rules!!! - I am laughing pretty hard right now.. thanks for that!

Glad you like it. My oldest daughter has discovered the Star Wars movies, and I'm fielding a great many questions about the Force and the history of the Sith and so forth these days.

At work my project team's studio is behind a glass partition...if someone forgets their pass key, the easiest way to let them in is for someone already inside to put some part of their body close enough to the door for the sensors to pick them up and unlock it. I found myself suggesting the other day to the associate who sits nearest the door that she should unlock it with one of those Jedi gestures that seems to accompany feats of telekinesis in the movies...

poster-Lewis Wadsworth

I have to admit, I'm feeling increasingly sinister and maniacal now that I have an avatar. Today at work I found myself struggling with the impulse to crush an upstart draftsman's larynx with my mind.

poster-Lewis Wadsworth

Greetings, Todd.

I was actually going to track you down and bring your attention to this fellow's use of SketchUp, Rubies, G-Code, and a CNC router.

viewtopic.php?f=9&t=853&hilit=

Here you are, so I don't have to go looking for you after all. I remember that you spoke about working on this issue at the 3-D Basecamp so long ago.

--Lewis

poster-Lewis Wadsworth

Welcome, Ken. Glad to have you aboard.

--Lewis

poster-Lewis Wadsworth

Would you like to read the article?

http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/18911/

Google Earth + Second Life == Metaverse!

(I want my Snowcrash!)

--Lewis

poster-Lewis Wadsworth

Hey Fred, you're famous!

This was mailed to every AIA member this morning:

Page not found

The AIA is the voice of the architectural profession and a resource for its members in service to society.

The American Institute of Architects (www.aia.org)

--Lewis

poster-Lewis Wadsworth

This is great news...in case the other forum members are not aware of it, Rhino is an inexpensive, full-featured 3D CAD program and NURBS Surface Modeler which is capable of generating any form, organic/curvilinear or Euclidean, with a measurable precision accurate enough for everything from jewelry design to naval architecture...and it reads and now writes SketchUp files. And almost any other CAD or 3D file format, for that matter. As of release 4, it has the functionality now to be an AutoCAD killer, as far as I am concerned.

Rhino has been the only tool that has held me to Windows for a while now. The only software-related news that could make me much happier would be a port of SketchUp to Linux. Or Rhino to Linux. Or news of the mothership arriving to take the blood-sucking aliens who run AutoDesk back to their home planet, their nefarious mission an abject failure.

Thanks for the post, Mark. I hadn't caught this one.

--Lewis

poster-Lewis Wadsworth

Do you mean the Google bot? I've noticed this before and still don't understand. How can a webspider be a member of the forum? There are people from Google here often though...most notably CraigD.

Incidentally, that kecsaphu guy has been sending me absolutely incomprehensible personal messages. I believe he is using some kind of translator to turn Hungarian (?) into English and it's not working. Who knows how he is interpreting anything written here!

poster-Lewis Wadsworth

Fascinating...I did not put together the tiger face and "Gully" until a moment ago. I think I preferred "The Demolished Man", though.

poster-Lewis Wadsworth

Speaking of odd technologies coming out of the maw of M$, I saw a demo of this product a couple of years ago...now you can download an alpha version. It's a very odd piece of software that maps collections of 2D photographs into an approximate 3D model...like a 3D version of Flickr. Watch the video and you'll see what I mean.

http://labs.live.com/photosynth/default.html

--Lewis

poster-Lewis Wadsworth

@mark leichliter said:

WIP: Work In Progress.

Thanks for clearing that up. I was worried:

"Weapons of Immense Potency"
"Wampas of Incalculable Pustulence" (that's a Star Wars reference)
"Wonky Infantile Politics"
"Wimpy Insecurity Plug"
"Wonderful Institution Pulverized"
"Wombats Insufferably Proliferating"
"Wildly Intersecting Proclivities"
"Wearisome Indigestible Protazoans"

I was really hoping it wasn't

"Worrisome Insect Proboscis"

because that would imply that I had absolutely no grip on what this or any other SketchUp forum was about.

--Lewis

poster-Lewis Wadsworth

I also remember this from the old Google forums. I admire the endless amounts of labor that went into it (I used to work as an architectural illustrator for a high-end visualization firm, so I feel I understand that well) but I have difficulty with the idea that this is anything other than a proof-of-concept experiment. It's my professional prejudice, I suspect: for me, computer models are only a means to an end (the real building, the real aircraft/submarine/satellite, the real whatever that exists independently of the power-on button on a computer somewhere). I can also see a great value in the digital recreation of historic architecture and environments that no longer exist intact.

I would have been much more impressed with the cathedral modelers if they had worked up a completely new cathedral to this level of detail and then proceeded to ask for bids from building contractors.

What, incidentally, does WIP mean? I'm embarrassed to acknowledge that I have no idea. --Lewis

poster-Lewis Wadsworth