Nomeradona,

Your eye for subjects is exquisite! Your technical skill is every bit as good. I'm a fan!

Here are a few from Northern California...

William

Hey everybody, I wanted to let you know about another product we released today, February 4:

DoubleCAD XT.

It is a 2D CAD application for drafting and detailing. We've designed it to be a really good companion application for SketchUp (and for AutoCAD). The UI is very similar to AutoCAD so that it should be easy to learn if you know AutoCAD's classic interface. It's not an AutoCAD LT clone, but is a "work-alike" with some differences in the feature set.

DoubleCAD XT is a full featured CAD application without limitations -- and it's free. Use it for unlimited commercial or personal purposes.

It has very good .dwg filters, but also reads .skp really well. Your .skp comes in with all layers and proper visibility; it automatically creates a paper space from each scene in SketchUp; all SketchUp components are automatically converted to DoubleCAD blocks. DoubleCAD includes an ADT-compatible wall tool, and all those DoubleCAD blocks (read .skp components like Anderson Windows, etc) can be dropped into the self-healing walls, and they automatically self-align.

If you save the file as a .dwg and bring it into AutoCAD or AutoCAD LT, the walls, and all the blocks you brought in from our application, retain their self-healing abilities in AutoCAD too! So you might just want to use DoubleCAD to kick-off projects you draft more fully in AutoCAD. You could also use the wall tool to kick-start your SU projects. Draw out the walls, then explode them, save them as a .dwg, and import that into SU -- it's a pretty quick workflow.

Again, it is free, and we believe it is a pretty full and comprehensive 2D application. You can get your download at http://www.doublecad.com

(Btw: we'll make money by launching a Pro version soon, like the SketchUp business model, and what we do with IDX Renditioner. Pro is also 2D with much more advanced features that we hope will be compelling. If it can save enough time in productivity enhancements and quality improvements, it should be an easy upgrade for many professional firms.)

OK, end of advertisement.

-- William

I'll just correct two items from above regarding Renditioner. We have both a free version for unlimited use commercial or personal use, and a 30-day trial of the full version.

Besides the size of renders, 640x480 vs. 4096x4096, the full version has multithreading, so it can be much faster. The free version is only single threaded, but because it has smaller renders it isn't as important relatively.

William

@solo said:

Idx has a roughness slider that converts the diffuse/normal to a bump and I believe it can also use a seperate bump, It also has a slider for reflection that if applied to a bumped texture gives pseudo specular reflection.

At this time with Renditioner we don't support external maps. So we auto-generate a bump and allow you to determine the amplitude, or reverse it. Our material finishes (polished metal, glass, etc) also add a small bump+specular that is particular to the finish.

• William

IDX Renditioner with the Lighting Conditions set to Full Moon at 100%, with a background image for the stars...
-- William

This looked too fun to pass up. Just to be different, I'll go vertical... with IDX Renditioner. Hazy lighting condition setting and a background image, no post.

William

It reminds me of discussions I had years ago regarding the advertising business: "every client gets the advertising they deserve." Applies in architectue too -- hamstring the architect's freedom of design with too many requirements, or pay as little as possible, and the client will have hired a draftsman, not an inspired artist/engineer/sociologist/psycholigist and whatever else you want to throw into the mix of the job description.

And Sepo, you're not alone: when I see the DE avatar I get another cup too! (Free trade.)

Great thread, but I'm surprised with all the talk about any work being offered for free as being wrong, that no-one has mentioned how much benefit people are getting from this free forum, from free ruby scripts, and even free SketchUp.

I think it was Ross some pages back who mentioned it could be of benefit to vanity or someone with a packaged houseplans business. For someone selling houseplans online, all it would take is one sale based on this to make it worthwhile to them.

Isn't it better to receive the offer, than not at all?

I agree that doing bespoke work from a professional architect almost certainly sends the wrong message. That seems like a different issue though. I'd love to see what academic research says about client perceptions of fees and pricing structure by architects. Might make for another interesting thread...

William

Fantasztikus!

Hi Mauricio,

I'm William and I'm with IDX. I'm on these forums from time to time, mostly learning about SketchUp. If you have specific Renditioner questions I should be able to help you. For general rendering and SketchUp questions the Gallery area here is fantastic for quick feedback! If they are narrow questions about how to do x or y, you will probably get faster help on the IDX forums at http://forums.idx-design.com.

I wanted to let people know that we've launched a significant update to IDX Renditioner as a v1.1. We've made significant improvements to quality, stability, and much deeper integration with SketchUp.

The integration is essentially for speed of setup and ease of use, plus deeper support for SU7 dynamic components. Besides working as a plugin to SketchUp we now:

• Support materials applied to multi-level nested groups and components (important for DCs, as exploding them destroys their intelligence).
• Support all material changes made in the SketchUp material editor.
• Include a reflectance slider to adjust the nuance of material finishes such as Polished Metal, Mirror, Water, etc.
• Work with either "normal" or "reverse" faces - we don't care, and both faces can have separate materials.
• Support Imported Images as is in model without exploding or using them as textues.
• Allow style changes to SketchUp Sky and Ground color to be used in Environmental settings without limitations.
• Demonstrate material attribute changes, such as changing the amplitude of the auto-generated bumpmap, in the material preview (new for Mac) which is now multithreaded in all versions.

And there's much more. Plus we've added a free version for the Mac as well as the PC. Renditioner supports 16 megapixel renders, and has multithreading speed. The free version has no multithreading (except in material preview) and a maximum render of 640 x 480.

You're invited to check it out at http://www.idx-design.com -- I hope you'll agree that it has the fastest workflow and deepest integration with SketchUp. Attached render includes several multi-level nested dynamic components: the flowers can be found at http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/details?mid=1dacbfe1727586554af4635b6ebb0145

-- William

Thanks Jim, I'll try that.

The really odd thing though, is that after deleting the copies at the parent level, if I then save the component, I still get components at the parent level the next time I import it...

Either way it is fun to simply play with the formulas and later I can figure out what I want to build.

Chris, I think your idea was nice, but it might require more regression calculations back and forth from parent to child component in a way that DCs aren't designed to do right now.

I think Jim is on the right track with groups.

I went a different direction with this one, making a couple of useless shapes that copy when scaled. One is a spiral ramp or slide, the other is just playing with shapes. For the second one, Stretch, make it pretty wide, like 30-50 feet in order to see how the shapes play out.

EDIT: the SpiralSlide is an odd one. You need to Import it, but I get weird behavior. when you open it you will see that it in the Component Attributes it says Copies at the parent level. Delete this attribute, then use the scale tool on the component. What is weird is that every time I save the component (through the Component In Model context menu Save As) and re-open it, I always have this extra copies command. If you scale it with this copy at the parent level it takes a long time, and you see the number of copies explode if you have Outliner open. Any ideas why? Maybe I just need to clean things up and reinstall...

Stretch.skp

SpiralSlide.skp

I agree that the Alert should be more than just an OnClick. There are a lot of text functions too which I haven't explored too much yet.

You can create a crude messaging system though. I've attached a dynamic Message Box. Try importing it and then use the Choose Options dialog to change its size.

It works, even if it isn't elegant.

William

MessageBox.skp

The Autodesk speculation is amusing. Especially when last week they introduced AutoSketch v10 4 years after v9. It's $190 and can't touch the free version of SketchUp.

As far as v7, I think it will age well as we use it, like a fine wine... More people will create Dynamic Components than create Ruby scripts, and if manufacturers get into the act in a big way we'll all benefit over time from real-world parts.

I believe Google also thinks more holistically about the offering: SketchUp, Layout, StyleBuilder, and the 3D Warehouse. Maybe with v7.000 the balance feels wrong, but under the hood if feels good -- faster modeling, more stability, and exciting potential.

SketchUp is what it is, and does it well. Comparing it one minute with a subsurface modeler, the next with a Solid Modeler, and then with BIM or a full-on 2D CAD package seems a bit unfair. There's no one-size-fits-all for modeling apps.

-- William

Camille, these are really nice designs. KT can do a good job with them too.

Je suis desole d'entendre que tu as toujours des problems avec IDX. Je vais t'ecrire tot si tu veux pour correger des problemes.

William

I believe the Pro product is a little over $2,000, but when they started it was for an annual lease and was about $1,700/year. Not sure any more.

Founded by Michael Payne, who also founded PTC then SolidWorks. He was then CTO for Dassault (Catia), and prior to this was CEO of Spatial who make the solid modeling engine ACIS. Not a bad track record if I have it right.

Tremendous app for mechanical design, but for architecture though, don't you want more detailing for 2D production drawings?

Thanks again for the great feedback. We created a prototype with full HDRI environments and lighting, area lights, IES support, a complete materials editor, and much, much more. Basically a working concept on a single code base for PC/Mac. The problem at this time is that the UI wasn't the least bit friendly. Longer term we'll move everthing on to the single code base and break it into free, standard, and a future pro version. Shorter term we may just add HDRI and alpha support to the current product based on the feedback we're hearing.

Thanks again,
William

Just one new slider... to impact the amplitude of the effect of the material finish properties... whether polished, mirrored, glow, etc.

@solo said:

... Otherwise it was remarkably fast, this render (not very good) took 56 seconds to render.

Thanks for giving it a try. If this was 56 seconds with the free version, and you tried the same thing on your Mac Pro 8-core I thnk you could have done it in 12-15 seconds...