yes I spoke too soon, loading extensions into V8 may be tricky as they may be for a later version. I got the dreaded bug splat which locks you out badly if you get caught. reinstallting v* doesnt help as evils are still lurking and have to be removed. I found some rogue etxensions I had wantonly installed. I had to dig in an removed the rbzs before I could get V8 up running again - that was a scary momemnt. Google installer has an auto update checker. This needs to be disabled somehow or you may get another unpleasant surprise. I dont trust these big corps. They want to clickbait you into a subscription or they may sabotage your freebie make.

Anyone know how to disable updates on v8 (with W11) @TIG

@robint Well I dont know if I speak too soon, but I had a moment
I found V8 my old friend before I was persuaded to 2016+ bad move
I remember V8 many years ago as rock solid and it loads into W11 AFAIK so far.

But Im blown away - Text tag loads straight in and blasts text straight onto a flat plane, no spinning wheel, no grief?
and I loaded (after saved down to v8) a complex scheme that was noticeably lagging in 2017 was it blink fast in V8

Why did I ever leave? Dont understand the wonderful works of the wheel barrow but do I need to know

Cheers @TIG

Robin

Ps this might apply to a lot of extensions that dont work properly in 2017?

eg See if I can draw a red line on another layer work for 2mrw

@robint update
I saved my test page and restarted SU

tried to do same as above and it reverted to it faulty spinning behaviour - so it didnt save whatever happened to make it work

I have to wait up to a minute or more to place 1 char tag

even a repeat tag is the same time

I give up , cant do anymore here @TIG

@robint Further test - real mystery

I put in some text on a blank page with TExt Tag default settings

first 26 chars a thru z from the keyboard - it went into spinning mode and froze SU so I left it running and it took 8 mins to complete. Not a very happy result

BUT then

I did it again, same setting with just a single char "A" and shock horror it popped up straight away no delay WOT???????????

So I did a longer tag with 6 chars same result - instant display ???????????

Then a short sentence same result???????????

What has happened? If only it behaved like that? I dont know what I have done

Anyone know? will do some more testing 2mrw I am just too gobsmacked just now

@TIG Oh great @TIG you got the same problem. As we all know text in SU is a PIG. Your little Plugin had such promise. There is nothing to come near it. A CAD drawing you cant put text on - how did they get away with that - I was so mesmerised by my entry into 3D modelling.
Does the latest $$$$ SU version address this glaring deficiency?

IMHO, look at it again and re float it with some goodies eg your cant put much text in it - certainly cant do a paragraph two line or more. But Labels and tags would be very useful. I'd be happy to pay for something that worked properly and didnt do horrible thing to SU engine - something there it clearly doesnt like with its waiting and spinning wheels?

Cheers Tig

Help pls - this seems such a useful little tool but it behaves badly on my 2017make SU version. W11 modern Acer PC 8gig Ram etc

Why does it stutter when trying to place text - spinning wheel goes for a minute of more as it seems to struggle to complete a simple word tag?

When I did ca a dozen tags eventually it got so slow as to become unusable and it kept freezing (grey out the screen and shutting the program. When I reloaded from the task bar it carried on spinning, I couldnt get out of the cross icon move tool and eventually had to close the prog completely and restart.

Whats happening, What am I doing wrong?

IMHO this could be a really useful tool

Re: [Plugin] TextTags v1.4 https://sketchucation.com/pluginstore?pln=TextTag

Abrilliant little Plugin but sadly after half dozen small txt lables it stops works and crashed SU I have SU 2017 make. This makes it unusable . Anyway to fix it? It seems to give SU a hard time and takes ages to position a simple tag like "A". I have it on my layer 0 but it wants to make its own layer "label text" - maybe thats the problem

Text on SU is a real PIG.

I have to finish my diags and port over to Photoshop to do text and labelling to get a reasonable result. The other Flat txt tool produces a very bad pixelated txt result on an A4 diag - unusable

Tig you are a legend in the SU world. Ive been with SU since 2008. It was revolutionary back then and moved me into 3D (from Acad 14 2D)

Progress - maybe?

Other people have complained on this board about crashes when resizing etc. One soul noted that Firefox has issues with Open gl

you need to go into about:com and search for Webgl disabled and switch it enable

Also Firefox needs hardware acceleration turned on - its off default

google for instructions

Also I changed to Chrome browser and the problems stopped

so maybe this might help someone

so far fingers crossed

BTW terrible reviews of SU free and SU WEB/cloud

Is T trying to destroy the product, so many angry users out there

I followed your link to the forum and blow me, there is no category for su2017 make (or any of free, web)

this makes me suspicious that this is a bigT controlled forum here.

Ok thnx for the heads up, may the force be with you, btw this board doesnt seem to notify me when you post even though i set it to email me?

is there somewhere i can link to keep up to speed with SU

doesnt stop the bean counters drilling down for extra profit and bonuses. Im not an architect so have fo idea about that market but that what SU was aimed at originally - but there are many other visualisers in that market
The SU did some special things with Ray tracing, meant you could simulate indoor lighting schemes - very clever, The there are commercial studios who make wonderful models of cars for example
I havent kept up with any of that stuff, but Im sure there's a loyal bunch of users still out there

Google offloaded it pretty quick, could have done well in terrain modelling but didnt follow through - I wonder if the military interfered - like they did with google earth

I hope it doesnt fall aside - but without new gripping features, say incorporating some of the best of the extensions

there's one springs to mind SB trilateration - that will accurately intersect 2 circles and 3 spheres with points in space. that solves those nasty intersect problems that wont snap.

Then theres Sketchy Physics the engine ceased development so you couldnt input real worlds values - how good would that be. you could make your model animated and collide

theres one extension can calculate forces in pin join structures

the list couldgo on

but I think the subscription model is a death wish - its dying
Usage model is the buzz, but investors dont like it cos they aint got the punters by the nuts

IMHO just keep going along with straight sales and regular updates SU is no threat and no other 3d cad has come near to SU, and dont be greedy - Adobe failed with its agressive approach, there are several photo shop competitors to their bloatware.

i had a lightbulb moment and decided to disable all my extension ive added over the years, vast majority I never use, but they do slow up the loading and phone home for up date and notification I dont need, the recent one skp to dxf converter may have been the issue but wont know as they are all off duty
so su make loaded up in half the time and so far as limited playing around with my original sketch ive had no trouble BUT its too early to say but before i was crashing every 5 mins

yes 15 years with SU as a hobbyist and ive never made a penny from my works just amateur fun
checking my floor plans laying out a kitchen and the like.

Remember there were thousands of souls out there to developing extensions for free such as TIG and Freddo etc and this is what made SU so unique not just a cash cow for some corporate monster

must have brought 3d geometry to millions of humble souls

FWIW I have been using Win 8.1 and have not changed my os or graphics. SU make 2017 had been working fine until a couple of weeks agao. only thing changed was i added a tool to convert skp to dxf as make doesnt allow this

perhaps i will uninstall this see if it makes any differentce.

i am back on SU v7 and it solid and reliable as before, Ive been on SY for 15 years, never had a problem like this

Hi Sketchers, Ive been an enthusiastic hobby supporter since V 4 15 years ago?

Back then it was truly ground breaking in providing a simple GUI to model in 3D, ACAD was murder, 3Ds steep learning SU 1/2 hour

It gained massive support from amateur users who polished and improved for free the product with Ruby script, a good manual etc

So when Trimble took over it was in for some aggressive monetising and still is which worked against the amateur modeller (who made it great)
Somewhat reluctantly T provided 2017 Make free for amateurs but now over the last few weeks SU has started to crash and its now doing it almost every 5 mins. It seems to happen when I use the scaling tool or the dimension tool. I am using a simple small 2d model, no fancy curves rendering etc. I went through all the hoops and even reinstalled a fresh copy of 2017 Make. Checked my intel 4000 gpu It worked for a day then started crashing the same as before

Just cos im paranoid doesnt make me wrong

Has anyone else had this. I suspect this free version is being secretly crippled?

After 15 years why now

I had kept former versions such as v8 Google (cant import dxf) but went to v7 which can)

I really object to the subscription model £250 pa, a life licence £600

If your a professional then these fees are simply overheads but for a hobbyist, right out of order - and you dont get much more in the pro version

I hope v7 holds up ( I am on Win 8.1 and su 2017 has been fine for 3 years

These big corporate fat cats really know how to kill off what was a capable product

There are other 3d modellers out there and the push pull patent has run out so SU may get strangled

A similar thing happened to a video editing prog called Ulead. It was designed for the hobby handy cam users and was quick and easy to use (compared to Adobe Premier). Sony got hold of it and messed it up and it is no longer

Pls advise if you have had similar strange problems

I hope that sketchucation remains independant of big T. Notice how all the other forums are all tied to sketchup.com - really wants tocontrol the narrative

Robin

my work around is to auto save every 1min but it still crashes

Yeehaaa

here's a dummy way with a tetrahedron

fudge your model with a face on x,y plane and one edge on the x axis - you hope. this face must be filled

draw a flat rectangle joining this edge at both end and extend along the flat plane y. It should fill by itself. the line in between can be removed and it should all fill - if not you screwed up placing your model

I think this is fundamental to any modelling (would you start a 2d drg without an origin, scale and xy directions

Hi thanx for the heads up, I thoought I was probably being simplistic

Its a pity that SUC does allow more realistic FB to developers. Some of the stuff is brill and I would give 5*

But I am strictly on the geometric solids/eng side and SU is mainly for graphics and visualisers I guess

Well indeed I have been confused and will follow your advice thanx (you can see why I would be concerned if my doodles ended up inaccessable after 30 days. I have been and ardent fan from the begining and will now hope to remain so

As for plug ins, I came across 2 great tools, trilateration by SLBaumgartner which will construct accurate triangles and tetrahedrons. i di the math some years ago but never managed to hoo up with a Ruby wizard to put a gui on it.

Then there's the unwrap and flatten - Alex Schreyer

both are exceptional tools but need Ruby 2 >2013

I came up through the Acad route and any 3D was a nightmare so SU was a revelation but sadly never suited to making engineering drawings and would these days come anywhere near the goliath packages such as Aveva PDMS

Still I would recommend it as a good starting place to get the feel of the 3D world (vs 2D) before moving on to becoming a CAD professional

I did fiddle with sketchy physics for a while but found the engine was basic and limited. you couldnt assign real mks parameters like density, friction . In the mass spring damper models the results weren't accurate enough to be useful - pity and I think the author moved on (to some paid work? - 10 years ago)

I have been fiddling with SU since pre SU4, almost when it first came out, cant remember that far back.

I dip into the SU box from time to time. Some of the later extensions will only work on >2013 and Ruby 2. SU8 I have has Ruby 1.8.6.

So maybe I need 2013 although most of the new ones from SUK need >2016

Files from 2016? I didnt think I ever used 2016 unless its very very recent and I DIDNT UPLOAD ANYTHING so how can you see these files? Is there some intrusion into my pc I dont know about

I think I looked at 2017 and its only a months trial and then buy 2018 for £500

like I say, I am only a hobby user

Is there anyway of replacing ruby 1.86 with ruby 2

or is that a no no

I need a free of nearly free version 2016. I am strictly and always have been a private hobby user and enquiries always direct me to buy a pro 2018 version ca £500

Also I dont trust these evaluation versions which expire in 1 month. my doodles could be wasted

I cant afford that outlay for a hobby (interested in geometric solids)

I wouldnt mind if the version was limited to inhibit commercial use, like preventing import/export, only saving skb and no printout

Hi PP
changed the angle so its a cannon 0 - 80deg azimuth control
just gets better

mortar 5.3.skp