@unknownuser said:

oh - and PS - Lewis, did you used to play keyboard for a 70s British band called 'Sparks'?

I hope not. I'm almost certain I would remember that.

--Lewis

poster-Lewis Wadsworth

A few months back I donated a couple of structures to Pedro's project: the Forum of Trajan and the Markets of Trajan, which happen to have been my very first SketchUp project with SU version 1. Interestingly enough, I was contacted today through the nearly defunct Google SketchUp Pro User Forums by a classical historian at Oxford who is hoping to use Pedro's and my models to help him with an article on the Trajanic monuments. I gave Matthew Nicholls, the historian, the contact emails I had for Pedro (which seem to be out of date).

Anyway, if you're reading this, Pedro, and you haven't heard from Matthew, drop me a personal message so I can put you in touch with him.

--Lewis

poster-Lewis Wadsworth

I'm glad everyone's enjoying Thor's models. I wonder why he calls himself the "original moron" and his website "Moron Studios"? To my architect's eyes, his designs for aircraft and spacecraft seem strikingly original...not moronic at all.

Just today that program AC3D came up in a discussion I was having with Diego Matho at the Boston Architectural College about next fall's SketchUp classes (which I have agreed to teach again)...it's odd that Diego should have become aware of it at the same time as I did. It's my understanding that AC3D has been out there for nearly a decade, but that the developer has recently extended its capabilities. I've been reading the manual, and the clear interface with which one creates organic (subsurface-smoothed) objects from blocky faceted ones is something Google should emulate for SketchUp (assuming, that is, that Google continues developing SketchUp). AC3D also has a very nice built-in mechanism for reducing mesh object polygon count.

Incidentally, although it is available on all OS right now, on the Linux platform AC3D is about the closest thing to SketchUp, as far as I can tell. I could wish it had better snaps/inferences, but at least it has some, which makes it almost unique among the Linux-friendly modelers that I have evaluated.

--Lewis

poster-Lewis Wadsworth

http://originalmoron.sitesled.com/models.htm

I found the link to this site in the forum postings of a master of the inexpensive modeler AC3D. He signs himself there as "TBD." No, it's not the one you're thinking of. This TBD is a guy named Thor Danielson.

The quality of his modeling and the beguiling combinations he achieves of the organic and the orthagonal makes me want to give AC3D ( http://www.inivis.com/ ) a closer look as an add-on or accessory for SketchUp. Besides running on Linux, PCs, and Macs, it costs about $75 and will translate most 3D file types.

--Lewis

poster-Lewis Wadsworth

By-the-by, Bryce 5.5 is now free.

http://www.download.com/3120-20_4-0.html?tg=dl-20&qt=Bryce%205.5&tag=srch

You have to register it still. This is similar to the SketchUp/SketchUp Pro marketing scheme.

--Lewis

EDIT: Whoops, I just noticed you posted a link to Shaun's thread with that link before I added my direct one. Anyway, the link above saves a click.

P: Lewis Wadsworth

Thanks for the tip. Wish it was available for Linux.

When you work up a project that is a hybrid of SketchUp and this software, could you supply us with some images?

Thanks.

--Lewis

Lewis Wadsworth

I'm also fascinated that most of the surface detail on your hovership seems to be painted-in, as opposed to modeled. Is this your typical technique, Alex: the massing is done in SketchUp and most surface detail is indicated through post-processing/painting? I'm not sure I could make myself do that, but then my subject matter tends to be presumably build-able architecture.

P: Lewis Wadsworth

Beautiful work...I like the subject and the method of describing it...I tend to "render" items with a similar technique, using Photoshop CS3 XT and not Painterx (I don't quite know what that is).

P: Lewis Wadsworth

These kind of things are very useful for making your architecture look like a Borg spacecraft!

[Lewis Wadsworth]

@unknownuser said:

Do you want a Linux forum Lewis? Just say the word.

Thanks so much, Coen, but let's hold off on that for a bit. One of the reasons I'm spending so much time of my private time with Ubuntu Linux these days is so that I can understand how the system might work with a modern architectural practice. The item that I'm missing, unfortunately, is SketchUp...CAD, office apps, plotter drivers, something that works with my IPod...it's all there. But no SketchUp. Just doesn't work on Linux in any real way, and there just doesn't seem to be any quick fix without devoting a couple of years of my life to relearning to code.

I've been hoping that Google would provide a port as they did with Google Earth and Picasa, but it's not in the cards apparently. And until I find something in Linux-land close to SketchUp, I think you should stick with SketchUp as the focus here. It would amount to much of a "fork" in the forum to devote space to the SU-deprived Linux world right now.

If I find anything of interest to the general community, I'll of course post in this corner bar. For instance, I've found this fellow who is soliciting proposals for a new open-source CAD/Modeler program he's writing, called AvoCADo...as soon as I have some time, I'll post some links here, because I know from which piece of software we would all like him to take his prompts.

Thanks again.

--Lewis

Lewis Wadsworth

So I take it you would rather I didn't try to post a /. story about this.

In all seriousness though, thanks Coen for the shelter and the quick forum category juggling. I'll try to look up from the Linux muck every once and a while and see what is happening to my old SketchUp comrades.

--Lewis

Lewis Wadsworth

@jim said:

"ayam".reverse

More like "onihr".reverse, except with a clunkier GUI. The developer used OpenNurbs.

http://en.wiki.mcneel.com/default.aspx/McNeel/opennurbs.html

I'm thinking I need to learn to program in Erlang now. On the other hand, I'm an architect, so shouldn't I be designing buildings instead?

--Lewis

poster-Lewis Wadsworth

@unknownuser said:

Thanks for letting us know Lewis, this ayam 1.12 seems interesting to look at, just for fun , work beeing done in SU of course, but who knows what we will be playing with in a few years....

Patrice

Hi Patrice.

Ayam was a struggle to install on my Linux system, and I had to alter some of the developer's scripts to get it to work at all, with some missing capabilities. Rather a shame...I'll have to see what the Windows version is like, but on Windows I already have a mature NURBS/CAD program, Rhino 4. By the way, is everyone aware that Rhino reads and writes SU (version 5) files now?

I'm currently concentrating on the newest version Wings3D as a SketchUp substitute (a better word than "replacement") on Linux. It actually has a great deal in common, in terms of interface, with SU...except for snaps/inferences, which may be the fatal flaw in my book.

--Lewis

poster-Lewis Wadsworth

It's so nice to get notifications that someone has posted on my thread! Remember when that used to work in the old Google forums?

Anyway:

Oh, no, I'm not suggesting giving up SketchUp. That would be heresy. But I have an abiding interest in using Linux in an architecture office setting; SketchUp has become indispensable to my architectural practice; and SketchUp doesn't work acceptably in any version of Linux I have tried. I continue to hope that Google will port SU over to some common distro like the ever-more-popular Ubuntu Linux, much as it has for Google Earth and Picasa. But I have no indication that this will happen despite some teasing from CraigD of Google in the late SketchUp Pro forums.

There are some acceptable lightweight CAD programs available for Linux, and there are some decent modelers, but there is nothing so far that has quite that special SketchUp magic. That is why I find the AvoCADo premise intriguing. And who wouldn't want to see someone develop an ideal CAD/BIM/3D program?

The other program I noted, Ayam, promises to permit some organic modeling that might complement SketchUp on any platform.

--Lewis

poster-Lewis Wadsworth

Hi, fellow Google escapees.

A couple of interesting items I found on my quest for a SketchUp replacement that runs on Linux:

avoCADo :: Open Source 3D CAD

avoCADo, a new open source 3D CAD project for engineers and artists alike!

(avocado-cad.sourceforge.net)

This is an open source 3D CAD program under construction, very pre-alpha and not terribly functional yet but oddly reminiscent of SketchUp (surf about for some screenshots and you'll see what I mean) The developer is soliciting opinions and objectives here:

http://sourceforge.net/forum/forum.php? ... _id=656395

Screenshots here:

http://sourceforge.net/project/screensh ... _id=187405

There is a download page, rather rough, here:

http://sourceforge.net/project/platform ... tform=1199

This next program is more like an open source version of Rhino, meaning it is a free-form NURBS surface modeler (in fact, it incorporates some open-NURBS packages generously donated by the developers of Rhino). I'm planning on spending some Saturday morning down-time tomorrow evaluating it. Available all platforms, but not too much of a web-presence out there to describe how well it works.

Ayam - Start

(ayam.sourceforge.net)

--Lewis

poster-Lewis Wadsworth

Social evolution in action! Don't you just love it?

--Lewis

poster-Lewis Wadsworth

@krisidious said:

ok Lewis...

I have to see the outside...

the crown and ceiling panels are spectacular...

the double solid 8' or 9' doors...

and most of all did anyone notice the curved window treament and curved wall at the end? oh yeah how old is that building? 150 years?

fantastic... oh yeah I forgot about the computer... was there one in there? I didnt notice..

It's under the table, just a nice aluminum tower: Win XP SP2

Intel Pentium Dual CPU 3.20GHz, 3.20GHz hyperthreading OFF, 3.25 GB RAM, Intel Desktop Board D955XBK

Nvidia GeForce 7800 GTX Video BIOS 5.70.02.11.01 256 MB PCI Express x16 Forceware 94.24

Monitor: 1680 x 1050 pixels on HP f2105

...I'm going to upgrade it to a Core Duo once Vista is less of a nuisance.

The house is a 1865 Italianate bowfront masonry townhouse with sandstone trim...in other words, a "brownstone." I'll try to find a good outside photo...it's less startling from the exterior. Whoever bought this place from the builder would have finished the interior off as they desired with off-the-shelf (by nineteenth century standards) wood and plaster cornice moldings, and they clearly had a taste for the...shall we say, lushly ornate. Miraculously the details survived (everything is chipped, dented, and in some places even scorched now, but it's still nicely decadent). The parlor was the most useless space until I decide to make it my office..it's 13' wide by 13' high by 23' long with curved narrow ends that are impossible to use for anything. I just toss my furnishings around and pile them up to against the walls to keep it from feeling too much like a viewing room at a funeral home.

In case you're wondering, the rest of the building is interesting in some areas but largely unremarkable...I rehabbed it ten years ago (my first project, actually), and I was just today trying to find the drawings...it's about time to fix up some of the mistakes I made the first time around and make the place more of a home for a family and not only for an eccentric architect.

[Lewis Wadsworth]

I think my office--which is slightly Baroque by most standards--usually attracts more attention than my computer: whatever processor I happen to like or can afford stuffed into the same Lian Li tower case. There are two more-or-less obsolete notebooks computers on the other side of the table, both currently running Linux for no particularly good reason. My desk lamp is a sculpture by local artist Paul Wolcott. And, yes, that is a skull on the mantelpiece, in a Wedgwood bowl. No, I don't know whose.

[Lewis Wadsworth]

Desktop 3D laserscanning? How do these people find me?

https://www.nextengine.com/indexSecure.htm?gclid=CL_Vocm7_IwCFRNyZQod7wfEDQ

I think I would rather save up for a decent 3D printer, but this does look like an improvement over the kind of 3D scanners (stylus-based and pin-based) I used when I worked in a fabrication lab.

poster-Lewis Wadsworth

Paul, SU may not use multi-threading but some rendering software does, including VRay for SU, or at least I've been told so and there is an option in VRay for thread prioritizing. I have noticed some performance changes if I disable/enable multithreading in the BIOS for my PC.

[Lewis Wadsworth]