Ross nice to see that you made it home safely. The scenery in SF looks nice.

Todd Your presentation was one of my favorites. Your sense of humor is an asset for a presentation. Too bad you could not have passed out Stromboli to the audience but then no one would have wanted to leave.

I'll upload more of my photos from 3dbc soon.

Nice photos John. Especially the pano's.

Looks like there was fun at the Grand hotel also. The Avante crowd was a bit quieter.

This video is so cool. It's like watching someone take a regular manual screwdriver and turn it into power drill in front of your eyes. it transforms sketchup from a static modeler into an animation software, a game software, a live interaction software, etc. If sketchup was a simple pocket knife before it's now a swiss army knife.

The diner at Chillis was very good. It's great to finally meet the people I've communicated with on the forums for so long. The show and tell with Justin was very cool.

I arrive in San Jose at 1:00 pm on Tuesday so I should be at the Hotel by 2 or so. Diner at Chili sounds great. Is there anything going on later in the afternoon Maybe at the hotel lobby we'll run into each other.

Which Hotel?

Welcome Fernando.

Cool "Minneapolis" or close by Sketchup User Group is growing Great maybe someday this summer we can Google a place that allows us all to meet with out driving too far.

I provide both architectural services and 3d visualization services. Typically my fees for 3d Visualization services are less than that for Architectural services. That is primarily due to the fact that I am not incurring liability insurance expenses for those services. Unfortunately business is not as black and white as that. The grey area comes into play when you add many other factors into the mix. There are some clients who simply have a limited budget or a cap on how much a particular aspect of a project can cost. I did one set of illustrations on a fixed fee of $2,500 for example and whether I worked 10 hours or 100 hours that was my problem the fee was fixed at that amount. I've done other illustration projects on an hourly rate and when I actually added up my hours the fee would have been exuberant and I would have lost that client so I simply bill an amount that I feel is commensurate with the effort and will allow me to pay my bills and support my family without losing future income from that client. Ours is a competitive industry and you must continually wight many factors when determining fees. In the end I try to make a serious effort to determine the scope of the task and assign an estimated amount of hours it will take me to accomplish it, then determine what the comfort level of this particular client is for this particular task in terms of total expenditure. I also determine if this is a repeat client and will I want to maintain a good working relationship. I've some some 3d modeling projects that have spanned several weeks and multiple options for large scale projects that were very complicated and took a very specialized set of skills that I have developed over the many years of doing it for this particular client. In those cases I also factor into the equation a higher per hourly rate simply because of the special skills I have and my ability to achieve this clients goals in a rapid turn around time. Pfwew that was a lot of words... Well hourly fee's are just the starting point when determining the cost of your services. There will always be firms out there providing a similar service for less even some oversees firms that are providing it for WAY less, and there will always be firms making more for the same service. So to sum it up my hourly rate can range from $20/ hour to $100 per hour because in the end it's not your hourly rate that is important its the number at the bottom of the invoice and the perceived return on that investment. The bottom line number can be large if the perceived and actual benefit from having expended that money can be proven to have been worthwhile. IE in some cases the clients have told me that having my illustrations have helped them land a multi-million dollar project. So in that regard a few hundred dollars on this side or that side of my fees are negligible. IF however they do not land the project then my fee will be more highly scrutinized.

So give your fees more thought than just what other people are charging and try to determine what assets you have that bring more value to the table for your clients. build up a good working relationship and most importantly deliver your services on time and on budget.

When you spend two hours modeling something on the back side of a building that will never bee seen by anyone but you.

@jorgensen said:

They have fixed the shadow bug

I'd buy that for a dollar. I've always wondered why they left such an obvious "bug" in the application.

Maybe they'll throw in fixing the view plane being cut off if you have a Large (spatially large) model and try to zoom into an area.

Those two things alone would be worth the upgrade.

Sketchup+Piranesi

I like that it has a soft and comfortable feel to it. The transparent foliage helps.

Err sound's like you are letting the cat is out of the bag. I'd rather have received the email in total surprise. But I'll have to wait for the email to determine if the advanced notice dampens the effect.

Hey lets put our guesses here and see who's right:

Sketchup 7 will

1. have a new and improved user interface.

2. will have a built-in photo real renderer ( who did they buy out) .

3. will support the import of Google Earth models directly.

4. will have built-in nurbs modeling.

As long as the program continues to do what 6 and 5 did and does it more efficiently I really don't much care what else it does.

Err... good enough for me. Give me a holler when you come to Minneapolis. I was more interested in maybe meeting with some local users who also come to SCF.

Here's a question for you though. When did you finally decide to invest some time into learning "rendering" programs. It seems that I've only dabbled here and there with rendering programs and nothing is compelling me to teach myself these applications while I seem to have become enthralled with sketchup. I guess ultimately if you have a need to do high end rendering then you learn it. but it seems to me that there are a lot of people who are just driven to create better and better renderings and strive to learn all the rendering applications out there. I seem to remember that you are quite adept at many of the rendering applications. Did you get interested in them out of necessity or just curiosity?

I'll be arriving at 1pm on the 10th in San Jose and leaving at 2pm on the 14th. I have not booked a car yet I may look into ground transportation to the hotel from San Jose. I'll rent a car if needed but may wait to book it until closer to departure date.

Looking forward to seeing some of the sketchup users I've only communicated with via the forums or email.

I guess what I'm referring to is the fact that we all have a certain set of basic needs. Food, Water, and Shelter. Yes there is a wide spectrum of peoples abilities to provide for these basics. IE some people in this world simply die from starvation or malnutrition or exposure to the elements. at the other end there are people who live in opulence and could provide the basics for themselves and many many thousands of others. So eventually if mass amounts of people have no money and will work for pennies just to buy a few crumbs to eat or will show up in food lines to get a meager amount of food for free. If his theory is true and the dollar becomes worthless then that is where we are headed. So what's the point of the IMF having trillions of trillions of dollars what do "they" expect to do. What's their big Plan. If their big plan is to kill off mass amounts of people so that a select few can inherit the earth than I'd understand. because what's the point of having a trillion dollars if they are worthless.

Anyone in here from Minneapolis, Minnesota...or am I the only one?

Scary stuff. What's the point though. I mean what power do we have. We need to work to earn money to buy groceries to eat and feed our children. What can anyone do if his theory about the IMF and the World bank are true and the date that Iran starts to flood the market with cheap oil arrives. What would happen if the us economy tanks and money becomes worthless.

eventually we would all become slave labor and products would be too expensive to buy.

Wait a minute that's were we are now.