Posts made by ValmontR

Dave,

Several years ago the primary original programmer (he was a kid when it came out) starting working on an update but the project proved to be too daunting, far more than he thought. It turns out he studied computer science at the same place and time as the owner of FormZ. After help and pressure from the guy who wrote over 500 tools that we all use (WildTools by Alfred Scot) FormZ took over the development on condition that the original programmer be part of the update team. Originally, we expected a beta last winter but the difficulties, especially with ancient graphic APIs, has caused numerous delays. We were told 1 months ago that it is 80–85% complete and in the last few months the forum has become very active. Both FormZ and PCADD have both been posting progress and I keep my fingers crossed. I now have lots of software that I cannot use on my primary Mac due to being restricted to OS Mojave. I'll post here when more is known…

Ralph

btw PCAD is probably the fastest and easiest to use 2D program ever written and can produce incredible drawings, and I've tried almost all of them going back to ClarisCAD in 1985.

Dave,

Unfortunately I can't use V 23 as I am stuck on OS Mojave for a while longer - there are a few of us here who use Mac PowerCADD for 2d drawing and it hasn't been updated much in 10 years. It was taken over by FormZ a couple years ago and we are told that an update is forthcoming… It required almost a complete rewrite as it was still using ancient Mac graphic APIs.

Ralph

This is not a problem but an error that has existed for many years. When I export a 2d drawing from SU (currently v. 22 mac - another story) the dialog box says "Exporting 3D model…"

Doesn't affect the export but still a visual problem after SOOOOO many years.

My issue is not with extensions but with SketchUp Pro 2022 itself.

One of the laptops that we use for SketchUp had a coffee/cat issue and the computer died. I went to the Trimble page to deauthorize all so that I could then relicense the computers we use, but it always leaves one seat in use and I am unable to authorize the 4 devices (2 desktops and 2 laptops used by the same 2 individuals when on site). Is it possible to reset the account completely? The licenses are under the email office@rfc.us. I even purchased a 3rd license but the same issue happens.

Earlier this year I had the same problem and the only way I was able to solve it was to cancel those licenses and purchase new ones.

Thanks in advance for any help.

Cheers,
Ralph Richards

@pipingguy said:

Finally found time to upgrade from 2019 to 2021 only to be repulsed by tag font being much too light when associated tag is hidden/turned-off.

This was discussed when 2021 was released but Trimble has not commented.

Lately every time I open a file I get a dialog:

"The recovered version of this file is newer than the file.
Open the recovered version instead?"

The two problems are:

1. It is not a newer version
2. Even saving the file does not clear this warning the next time I open a file.

The bug is nothing fatal but it is getting annoying.

Cheers,
Ralph

iMac - Retina 5K, 27-inch, 2019
3.6 GHz Intel Core i9
2 GB 2667 MHz DDR4
Radeon Pro Vega 48 8 GB

OS 10.14.6
SketchUp 20.0.362

@cjryan said:

Like Tuna and Valmont,

Lincoln Logs, Erector Sets, chemistry set's that included radioactive stuff, lead soldier casting stuff, and a few pounds of mercury to boot.

Oh yeah, those were the days!

Damn! I had totally forgotten about radioactive materials and playing with mercury. A few years ago my brother reminded me that I made nitroglycerin in class—nowadays I would have been arrested for terrorism. It's a surprise we lived through it all…

Reading previous replies reminded me that I had Tinker Toys as well.

Cheers,
Ralph

I have been extremely happy with the progress in the new versions. Sure, not a lot of new features have been added, but speed and stability are generally much better. With the new engine (2016 or 2017?) came the ability to create drawings with nearly unlimited numbers of lines and faces. Going WAY back, SU had limits in the hundreds of thousands, and before the new engine about 3 million lines and it choked. Selection became increasingly difficult, triple clicking for a solid ceased working, etc. The improvements in some tools have made the program far easier and less frustrating to use: finding the center of an arc now works most of the time, in the past it was hit and miss; the tape measure tool has become awesome—it's almost thinking ahead of me. Save times can still be extreme so I turned off fixing problems on save—the change in time is dramatic. Since I regularly check my models while drawing and purging there has been no problem. One of my pet peeves remains: the materials pallet on Mac sucks. Sometimes I have to save and reopen a drawing to get it to update, and many times when I paste an object into a drawing it doesn't update. Frequently I draw parts in a separate drawing and to maintain the same materials I copy them from the original drawing to the new one, but on paste the original drawing adds a new material.

I used Lincoln logs, Legos, and a couple Erector sets, all together.

Anti-aliasing works on Mac again!

And the improved tape measure is purely AWESOME!

Cheers.

You can also draw the whole thing quickly with the Spirix plugin.

I haven't reached a limit with the 2017 version - new graphics software. I have one drawing with over 5 million faces.

You can use the TIG-weld extension to rejoin the segments into a curve. Then when you push/pull the lines are gone. There may be other similar extensions, but this is the one I use.

Cheers,
ralph

WOOHOO!!! Just noticed that with SU 2017 Macintosh preview desktop preview icons are back again!

Cheers,
ralph

The new engine is nothing short of incredible. I don't remember any program getting this much of an upgrade in many, many years. Do I have wishes? SURE! I'd love to have real layer management and hierarchy, but I'm as happy as a pig in dung right now!

The other really exciting thing is I can use SU on hires screens. The line used to be nearly invisible and impossible to choose. It is beautiful now.

Cheers,
ralph

Dave,
That's what I figured was happening. So far, I am IMMENSELY happy with 2017. Whether real or not, everything feels a lot more "zippy"!

Ralph
Richards, Fowkes & Co.
Organbuilders

I just did a quick test in 2017 and the triple-click limit I mentioned above appears to be gone! and…it's FAST!

Cheers,
ralph

From my experience this is always related to the number of lines/faces in a model. I do HIGHLY detailed drawings and a recent one has over 10 million lines. I know I can reduce this by simplifying parts. But, basically somewhere around 3.5–4 million lines triple click becomes randomly quirky. Around 5–6 million lines it becomes non functional and will only select a single plane. For these instances I change my routine and create a plane, group it, double click, and then extrude to make a solid. All other functions work fine, although slower, even with HUGE models. The limit has moved steadily upward and I believe it was as low as 200k lines around SketchUp 4.

Cheers,
Ralph