@unknownuser said:
I just don't see myself creating a building with it.
I'm not so sure. This could be fantastic for doing detailed architectural elements. The concept of push-pulling anything : curves, curved faces, chamfers and fillets is very compelling.
Blender, like Max is a first generation 3D graphics system that carries the bagage of an overcomplex UI in order to access a massively powerful disjointed underlying graphics system. I speak as somebody that has spent the time and used this app for a short while. Just too complex and not worth the investment in time. The time cost in learning this app cannot be offset by the fact that it is free.
We may have looked at this one before, but this video really shows where our beloved Sketchup (could) / should be going:
(You can skip the first 15 % of the video, the good stuff starts after that.)
http://www2.spaceclaim.com/LearnMoreNow/AnalysisDemo.aspx
Pity about the pricing...
There are some good introductory videos here:
http://www.youtube.com/iesve
.
Work-around:
Paste in place a copy of the target mesh into another Sketchup session.
Paste the drape lines into the same session above.
Create as layer called "drape" and make it active.
Drape the lines onto the copy of the target mesh.
Open the target mesh group, select a draped line and right-click > select all on same layer.
Group, then copy the draped lines and paste in place into the original file.
If find that by isolating the target mesh in this way also speeds up the slow drape operation considerably.
An option may be to export to dxf and parse the object text data from there.
It will however require you to write a dxf parser if you can't use any commercial dxf object reader in your project. Not too difficult to do once you understand the dxf file structure.
Worth a look for those interested in environmental design:
http://www.iesve.com/content/default.asp?page=s62&newsid=3540&back=s61
.
Maybe they changed the date to throw us off the scent!
This question recently came up:
Which of the rendering engines that support Sketchup matches the the Sketchup camera exactly? This is of specific interest when overlaying Sketchup linework over rendered output.
If users of the many engines can report on this it would be very helpful.
Saw this speculation on the WorldCAD Access page:
@unknownuser said:
Reader David Flood noticed that Google's SketchUp evangelist Aidan Chopra has a placeholder for the next edition of his Google SketchUp X for Dummies for release on 2 September.
"I've got to assume that SketchUp 7 (the rumored newly architect-focused one) is imminent before mid-September," he feels. It's always a good thing when one of the world's largest non-CAD software companies releases a major update to its CAD software.
.
Bob,
@unknownuser said:
A few years ago I got a quote from a local (Oxford) practice that put the hourly rate at 55 UKP ...
I think you will find there is a big difference between what practices charge out staff hours to their clients, and what they pay staff or external contractors.
55 UKP will include costs and profit. Staff/contractors will earn less than half that, especially if they are new out of school.
@unknownuser said:
... , and most UK garages charge upwards of 45 UKP per hour for labour when repairing/servicing cars. Should a skilled modeller/illustrator be paid less?
No, - but in practice they often are.
Bob, while your advice is good I think 600 Euros + a day sounds incredibly optimistic. Visualisation is becoming a fairly general skill in the marketplace. A senior salaried architect in the UK may earn the equivalent of 300 Euros a day if he is very good. Rates in other parts of europe may be less, so I would be surprised if a visualiser will achieve the rates anyway near the above. If he can earn 25+ Euro per hour as a freelancer I think he will be doing well. If he has a studio that carries costs he may be able to do better but a lot of practices will go for a cheaper alternative.
When starting out it may be an alternative to build things up on the basis of working out what your basic expenses will be, add on top a little bit for the drinking budget, traveling, annual holiday and a little profit of 15% , divided by your estimated working working hours in the year to get to an hourly rate.(- And dont forget the Taxman!) Then once you have built up a relationship with the client after a couple of months you can negotiate a little more. Once you have a foundation with a few initial clients, it will allow you to price more aggressively when approached by new clients - which is where he can make some money.
In the mean time I received this response from Google support which is a little disappointing because it doesn't fix the problem.
They seem to think page shadow information is saved in the style definition!
@unknownuser said:
Google Help
to meshow details 7:40 PM (3 hours ago)
Reply
Hi,
Thank you for your note. We understand you're encountering some problems
with shadow information on page tabs. We've evaluated your file, and it
appears as though you aren't saving style information before saving and
closing the SketchUp file. SketchUp can automatically prompt you to save
these settings if you browse to "SketchUp" > "Preferences" > "General" and
check the option to "Warn of style change when creating scene." When you
update your scene you'll be prompted with a warning message, and you'll
want to "Update the selected style" then update the scene. Alternatively,
if you have the Styles menu open, you'll see a circular arrow pair in the
top left corner indicating that your new style hasn't been saved. Once we
saved your scene, the shadow information appeared to work correctly
between tabs.If you need further assistance, please let us know.
Regards,
The Google Team
Looking at the results of the annual American Society of Architectural Illustrators competition results made me wonder if there isn't room for a dedicated digital illustration work-flow forum here. (For Sketchup - Photoshop/Painter/Piranesi et al.)
What do the members and moderators think?
For those that haven't had a look the competition illustrations comprising traditional and digital media can be viewed here:
http://homepage.mac.com/ericbrightfield1/AIP23%20Winners/
ASAI Homepage : http://www.asai.org/
Chris,
You're the man! - Activating animations fixed it.
Thanks for taking the time to look into it.
And yes the custom location was set up in SU.
HFM,
@unknownuser said:
....after these steps turn back on the shadow Settings in the scene manager and your done
It works until you close the file down and reopen it. When you activate the tab it's the same old problem.
Or am I misunderstanding your instructions?
Carento01,
@unknownuser said:
I believe it has something to do with having different north orientations on different views.
North is consistently oriented in all tabs so I doubt if that is the problem.
Thanks for your input anyway.
Before I post this to Google HQ and in the bug list can somebody see if they have the same problem with shadow info on pages in this file:
(read the text file to replicate the error)
This recurs on files from time to time making the page setups in the file useless for future use.
If anybody has a solution or work-arround I would be happy to hear from you.
Shadow_Info_Error.skp
Shadow_Info_Error.txt
If you want to make visualization your career you can select any of these. It's like mastering a musical instrument: Be prepared to spend a LOT of time (think months not days) rendering, tweaking, rendering, before you will start getting consistently good results. The tool is less important than patience and talent. What you see on the render galleries is 10% technology and 90% skill.
If on the other hand you are primarily a designer looking for a tool to test your designs and occasionally create presentation images you must select the fastest renderer you can find, one that will render a test image of decent quality in small minutes rather than hours. This will allow you to use it to test design options,something that will be impractical if you select a slow rendering application. From the perspective I can strongly recommend Vray. Do not think that because it is fast the technology is inferior to any of the other rendering applications, - you will find that many of the premier commercial rendering studios use it.
But make no mistake it's still going to be hard work before you produce anything decent. Don't spend any money if you're not prepared for the commitment in time.
The data structure in AutoCAD is different to that in Sketchup so code conversion will be quite complicated. Unless the major part of the lisp code in question is computational rather than related to geometry manipulation, you will be better off writing new ruby code from scratch rather than trying to port the code to ruby.