I have this theory that with everything else George Bush is to blame for the delay with Sketchup 7.
The first test for BO is whether he can get it out by Christmas.
With the rest of the world I am now looking for forward to resumption of regular annual releases...
On a serious note: Congratulations America, you have restored my hope for you!
Mike,
If southern Africa is your focus you may wish to look at the following link:
http://www.shuttleworthfoundation.org/
(Mark Shuttleworth is the bloke who flew the first private Russian space mission a few years back.)
They have specific funding criteria but your initiative may fit well with their overall objectives.
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Mike,
This is a big idea with fantastic potential.
One thing I can say is that if the forum members wish to contribute to community construction projects it will have to be tackled it in an organised and professional manner. The initiative will lose credibility very quickly if we cannot follow through on a commitment. Ideally one should set up some sort of charter that will form the basis for individual members to commit their time. If individual members are really serious about contributing in this way I do not think that it is unreasonable that there is some contractual basis on which they get involved, otherwise it will be very difficult to reliably manage resources in order to bring a project to completion.
Maybe a starting point would be to have members submit an expression of interrest in a standard format stating their availability, skills & experience. This can be used to develop a database of resources which can be used to identify 'virtual project teams' for individual projects.Suitable candidates for team leaders, design and tecnical functions can then also be identified.
Some thought needs to be given to the practicallity of being involved on all stages and issues relating to liability.
(Just some ideas to keep the pot boiling...)
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Chris, I would encourage you to persue it if you have the time. For a solution to be useful for time planning purposes it needs to integegrate with legacy project management software otherwise you potential target market will not be interrested, however 'fresh' your solution may be. Project planners will not be interrested in maintaining two data sets and will not discard traditional devices such as PERT and GANTT in favour of 4D, no matter how intuitive your data input may be.
@unknownuser said:
I think then you agree this Synchro "solution" is half-hearted
You are putting words in my mouth. I cannot comment on the merrits of Synchro without looking at it in depth, but what I do know is that the system would have gone through years of development and could hardly be described as a 'half-hearted' solution.
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Two requests:
Simple methods for retrieving points,angles and distances without using a tool class.(Something as simple as 'getpoint' and getangle in AutoCAD's api. Maybe something like pt=Sketchup.utility.getpoint(prompt) for example)
'Getangle' should offer the use of the protractor tool for input.
Then a request for the Sketchup COM api: Include a 'runRubyScript' method that can be called from the api and returns the return value from the script.
@unknownuser said:
..but it seems to me, to qualify you only need to put a Sketchup model and Primavera type scheduling tools into a single interface, and, onClick "animate" relevant parts to be hidden or "lit up."
Having been involved in the software development of one 4D software system I can tell you that things become a lot more complex than just moving and hiding elements when you start considering the complexities of many-to-many task-to-element relationships and tasks that apply to super-groups and sub-elements. And things have to be that complex before project planners will take it seriously as a system.
4D construction simulation systems while not being in mainstream use has been in development/use for at least 15 years. Navisworks e.g have had a very basic system for some time and many universities across the globe are doing research on the subject. There are actually quite a few commercial systems out there but due to the lead time required for modelling & the complexities involved in scheduling highly complex models (which typically have to be broken down into the smallest separate elements for scheduling), adoption has been slow.
Autodesk hired a 4D specialist a while back so look out for 4D simulation in future products. It fits well with their long term BIM strategy.
(http://aecnews.com/articles/1081.aspx)
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@unknownuser said:
...the truly modern way for project scheduling would be an animation of the construction or assembly process ...
Chris, 4D is all about animating construction processes and I suspect that this is exactly what this product does, although it isn't clear from the video.
A couple of years ago ArchiCAD was pushing a new construction scheduling system called Constructor. After the subsequent sell-out to Nemetschek this product disappeared off the ArchiCAD portfolio. Apparently it was spun off as a separate operation : http://www.vicosoftware.com/Products/Constructor/tabid/46258/Default.aspx
And why is this interesting? The man in charge of Visco is Mark Sawyer, ex @Last CEO responsible for selling Sketchup to Google! This bloke is in the business of developing market share for new technologies and then selling it on to the big guns, - so watch this space.
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Mattheo,
If the application is developed with Excel macros/vba he will have little protection. Ideally what he needs to do is to place the sensitive functionality of his application in an external .dll (dynamic link library) that is obfuscated (the code is mangled by a special program so that it becomes difficult for a skilled programmer to read / reverse engineer the code). Furthermore the .dll needs to be protected against decompilation. Depending on which computer language is used to compile the .dll there are various applications that can obfuscate, encrypt and protect a compiled application or .dll. (Some very expensive, others quite resonable.)
Some of these applications also offer license key support which will guard against multiple unauthorised installations.
Seriously interesting technology (especially the last section of the video):
http://www.solidsmack.com/future-interfaces-3d-multi-stroke-sketching-system/2008-10-08/
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Thanks for the input.
Has anybody used the 'send money' option rather than credit card transactions?
I'm looking into choosing a card payment system for selling downloadable software. I would appreciate any input or feedback from users or merchants using Paypal, Google Checkout, Plimus or any other recommendable service.
One thing few seem to pick up on is the fact that in a normal economy banks would not be allowed by the competition authorities to merge in the way that they do right now. Banks are caching in on the opportunity to create new super-banks with less competition which will be to the detriment of the consumer when the fracas settles down.
The real losers in all this will be anybody considering retirement now or in the next 3-5 years. Some pensions may take a decade to recover from the hit taken over the last 12 months.
Many will be forced to work until they die. In countries where retirement is mandatory at a certain age, folks are going to find themselves between a rock and a hard place.
Nobody seems to be talking about a bailout plan for these people.
Well I guess Google could follow the example of Autocad by bowing to user pressure and releasing without adding any new features... 
In my country of origin the following principle is probably more apparent than elsewhere but the same principle is universal:
There are a few very large investment companies that make their business out of selling a fairly modern invention called a pension scheme. We are conditioned into thinking that every responsible person should make provision for their old age. Typically the marketing of these pension products include projections based on expected inflation over periods of 10-20 years. When they tell you how much you will need to survive your last 10 years after retirement it is enough to scare the milk out of anyone.
What you do not realise when you buy into this system is that these companies re-invest your money by buying out things like grocery chains, medical companies and many other businesses that deliver products on which common folk like you and me depend. In order to deliver a yield on your pension these investments are engineered to provide products and services at ever increasing inflation year on year.Because of the size of these investments this affects inflation in a national economy directly. By virtue of their buying power these companies are in a position where they dictate the market at the the expense of primary producers like the farming community.
And so we finance the enterprise that increases our cost of living over time through our monthly pension contributions, ironically through our fear that inflation will overtake our needs when we are in our old age. And then having done so diligently for most of our working life these companies often fail in producing any yields anyway even if they have not gone bust during the period.
The point is that as long as we rely on the system whether political, financial, or otherwise, to act in our interest without being involved and interrogating it, we will always continue to strengthen the process that exploits us through our complacency. None of us can make a difference on a macro-economic level, but we can choose not to keep feeding the machine that is exploiting us.
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On a serious note Mateo,
It is the 'we can't do anything about it' attitude which enables politicians and multi-nationals to develop a stranglehold over people and uphold the interests of a small minority over the common good. We need to be more involved and knowledgeable about what is actually happening, develop an active opinion about it and support pressure groups that fight this kind of thing physically and financially. As long as we sit in the comfort zone of non-involvement and are afraid of being criticized for being non-conformist, unpatriotic etc. etc., nothing can change.
But history has examples where accumulated pressure over a long period can bring real change. A simple way to start is to force you local politicians to answer questions about why things are happening. When they start to worry about consensus at ground level which may threaten their re-election, they will start putting pressure on national leadership which in turn will modify policy as soon as they sense that common consensus starts to threaten re-election prospects. Keep on asking difficult questions formally, demand a response, encourage those around you to do the same. It's a bottom-up approach based on democratic pressure. It works if it threatens the position of politicians and officials.