interestind, they improved so much last version, we’ll have to try this one

numerobis  I hope that with Ruby 2.0 and the BIM Focus we can start to see some serious parametric approach to modeling 😉

ronenbekerman SU isn’t a quad modeler. Nor is it more likely to become one in the future than it is to become an aardvark. Why must it?

jbacus I know 😉 Forget about SubD or Quads. I would love to see more add to SketchUP Pro vs. Layout for example.

jbacus For me it feels that SketchUP Pro did not advance as fast as client demands and design needs did.

ronenbekerman When was the last time a feature that made you catch your breath was added to Photoshop? Or Microsoft Word?

ronenbekerman What features would you add to SketchUp to assist the Design Process?

ronenbekerman Many would say that is our strong suit, compared to other popular tools in the typical architect’s toolbox 😉

jbacus Who uses Word? but in PS – Pupet Warp and Content Aware Fill (it does go back to CS5).

ronenbekerman Personally, I use Google Docs exclusively. Which I love for having fewer features than Word. Great for collaboration, though.

jbacus See this closeup. A curved facade and randomly cut along the edges. It can be done and rather simple… http://twitter.com/ronenbekerman/status/440217684228055040/photo/1

ronenbekerman This was hard to model in SU? What version are you using, and how did you build the model? I’m sure you have a supercomputer.

jbacus You need to rebuild it as new most times.

ronenbekerman No- but you’re making a special case. If you want that level of surface parameterization, Rhino is a better choice, right?

jbacus I see the point of this bloating SketchUP coming, but I just don’t think it will – you can make it work.

ronenbekerman The way we make it work is with Extension Warehouse. Simple SU platform, coral reef of beautiful extensions for special needs

jbacus Can this type of functionality work as a 3rd party extension?

jbacus ronenbekerman SketchUp I’d like a modifier stack. To be able to chamfer edges, then undo it to make inevitable design changes.

ronenbekerman jbacus Railclone for SU would be amazing.

jbacus ronenbekerman SketchUp References. A proper referencing system to enable multiple people to work on different parts of a job.

jbacus ronenbekerman direct is great for basic users, without doubt. Why confuse people? But what about pro users?

ronenbekerman jbacus henryjpgoss dBrenders might have some ideas.. Dynamic components idea always intrigued me but was un sketchup in..

jbacus Macker202 SketchUp Yep + None Destructive editing vs “Direct” that would be the one that will make me catch my breath 😉

Macker202 ronenbekerman So really what you want is a dynamic LoD system, right?

jbacus Macker202 A need grater than that is to be able to deliver for the client FASTER and BETTER and Direct is not good enough.

jbacus paguthrie henryjpgoss dBrenders Ok – I got what I came for 😉

ronenbekerman Macker202 The question at hand, through, is through what techniques are the clients needs met faster and better?

jbacus ronenbekerman … I know max costs LOTS more, but without it I’d be lost on complex sites. A way of doing this would be great.

ronenbekerman Macker202 SU section planes are crufty and old- could surely use an update. Clip volumes are the most common request there.

jbacus Macker202 change the shape and the object cut / section is also changing in real time.

Macker202 ronenbekerman SU isn’t really a boolean modeler, though it can pretend sometimes. Multiples can be operated on by grouping them.

jbacus Macker202 Allowing a simple change in the 2d outline to reflect on the building facade right away!

ronenbekerman paguthrie jbacus Which is the limits in polycounts for this new version.?

ronenbekerman jbacus paguthrie or we do need to make optimisation of the hole bim objects in a real and complete architectural 3d model

jbacus Macker202 paguthrie dBrenders While being able to modify (without building as new) angle of rotation, floor height, windows, etc.

ronenbekerman jbacus paguthrie dBrenders defo, the more modelling in SU the better.

dBrenders paguthrie ronenbekerman Access to memory is not the bottleneck in SketchUp where ‘more geometry’ is concerned.

ronenbekerman jbacus Macker202 My N°1 request for SU : fixing the old “clipping camera plane bug” that hinders modeling large models

@Laurent_Brixius ronenbekerman jbacus Macker202  Indeed!!!

@jbacus ronenbekerman  I must say I digg the new 3d warehouse embed feature! Will we see more features in it?

@jbacus paguthrie ronenbekerman henryjpgoss dBrenders  Yep I will itoosoft

fillieverhoeven ronenbekerman SketchUp  I can second that on the WIN version too. Now that you mention this the material / texturing panel could use some work within the SketchUP context and most definitely considering the many render engines that work from within SketchUP today. The current thumbnail system is not helping much and I think the SketchUP team should consider putting in place the groundwork for 3rd party add on’s to build on top of.

I wouldn’t go far saying they have little clue, since they had the biggest clue of all! It is an issue of evolution and I feel SketchUP fails to adapt fast enough.

ronenbekerman  well, they have the biggest clue of course. That’s why its so frustrating to feel they haven’t. 
But I would like to  invite a Sketchup teammember to our office to come and have a look at how we (have to) work. And try to pass by P. Guthrie and others for a day or so to see were time is lost in the workflow. The fact that major issues are not even addressed shows that its not just a matter of lacking speed to catch up with evolution. 
There is a distance between the users and the developers that is hard to explain but it shows in the updates. Even though I am feeling a little better under Trimble than how it was under Google.

@jbacus ronenbekermanMacker202 
My client needs are met faster & better when SU doesn’t freeze up when doing ordinary tasks on large models. And we all know “the drill” of “How to make SU run faster”. And all of us pro users have the proper machines to run SU, but it still does the “not responding” way too often. If you know that SU is never going to be faster & better then just tell us.

@jbacus ronenbekerman  
Designers feel the rapid iteration of design studies is stalled and frustrated by specific UI inefficiencies and only partly by lack of modeling speed. 
The general idea is that these inefficiencies could have been straightened out if recognized by you. Your answers make me feel you really don’t see the problems we advanced users are dealing with every hour of the day. Sketchup is far from being as developed as Photoshop. Instead of pointing to other software developers you have plenty opportunities to catch our breath.

fillieverhoeven ronenbekerman SketchUp
Hi Francois, you may like to hear I took it upon myself to
employ 2 full time developers whom created a plugin that allows you to use
Sketchup and have the functionality of parametrics with walls, roof, floor and
windows, stairs and more. 
Just to be clear the plug in is being sold in Australia yet will
soon be available to the rest of the world shortly. 
I hear your pain when it comes to altering models, yet I agree with
John that Sketchup itself was created more for design freedom. Adding
parametrics can be limiting to the traditional Sketchup user. I personally
think it is helps my work flow as it will yours so I created it. 
The name of the Plugin is PlusSpec. There is a 1 minute video
that was done 12 months ago yet the functionality is higher than the video
suggests. PlusSpec eliminates a lot of the short fall yourself and others have
outlined. You can find it under software on the RubySketch website
I use PlusSpec every day in conjunction with Sketchup and
layout. I consider it to be the missing link that many of us in the design or
build world have been seeking.  I did the following  design for a
client in Sydney & I did it far less time than you suggest it is taking
you. 
Creating a model such as this is a real time saver, especially
when it comes to editing and plotting.  You can change any texture on any
surface without opening a component and you can move windows and doors, ad
properties, glass type, insulation actually more that I can write in this
post. 
The models can be rendered yet I  rarely render models when
they are at concept stage. 
I am not familiar with your  work, as you may guess I
mainly do residential work, yet I PlusSpec has the functionality to do
commercial or multi residential work. The best thing about PlusSpec is it will
attribute everything for you according to your selections at the time of
conception. No need to make groups or components, no need to manually add
materials and no need to cut windows into walls. It is easier than anything
that I have ever used. It is possible to pre register and we have limited BETA
testing licenses to issue. 
There is a lot of good to be said about Sketchup, allowing
people just like yourself and me to create plug ins to enhance the efficiency
of the program makes Sketchup so much more flexible than any other 3D package
that I am aware of.

Hi guys,

I have SU Pro2014 parked on my desk top, but still using 2013 because Maxwell for SU plug-in has not been updated to work with SU 2014.  In the next development stage I wonder if it would be too much to ask for coordination between SU team and plug-ins developers so there’s a smoother transition. As it is now I find it really cumbersome and time consuming (in previous upgrades I have lost some bought and paid for plugins).

So I guess what I’m saying; why was this called an “update”. If it were a simple update to the core SU program then why do I have to now find all my licensed plugins and reinstall those, and then reset my work space attributes back to the way I prefer to work?  I apologize if my terminology is not be entirely correct and if someone could email direct that would be much appreciated. The weather here is finally getting above freezing so I’m going out to play.

   thank you!

So, i read all these comments and the thing that stands out the most is that @jbacus is trying very hard to justify why is SketchUp the way it is. I got an impression that he’s even aggravated at other commenters for not liking the way things are.

On one hand i get this. He and his team have had a dream for years of making a simple 3D modeling tool. To replace paper and pencil with a digital tool that can produce great sketches and was very easy to learn. They have done just that, and he doesn’t want it to become something it was never ment to be. I cannot blame a man for sticking to his dream.

On the other hand, that dream vas consived over a decade ago. I’m sure Zuckerberg didn’t imagine “taking over the world” with his social network, or that Larry and Sergey knew that Google would be so much more then a web search engine. But they evolved, just like Sketchup should. They have even done it without compromising their original idea. So – can – Sketchup!

Parametric design is something  we are definitelly interested in. But even much simpler things are missing from SU. For instance:
– Why can’t we dock the Materials, Components and other widowns to the side of the screen in a scrollable panel?
– Why is there no longer option to save (and load) toolbar positions?
– Why can’t we make groups for Layers?
– Why can’t we make groups for Materials? … (a feature i’d like to see in Vray too, btw)
– Why is there no better UV mapping (for organic shapes)?
– Why is there still viewport clipping in large models?
– Why is Sketchup still not optimized for detailed models?
– Why is it still stuck at 32bit?
– Why must we reinstall all plugins every time a new version is released?
…
(I can go on, but you get the picture)
…
– And whoever chose Make for the name of the free version should go stand in the corner for 5 minutes. Now.

The thing is, we were expecting all these features to be resolved back in V8. And yet we are in 2014 and not much has changed. We all use Sketchup because we love it and because we see great potential in it. But it seasms like the SU Team is either not able or not willing to inovate as much as we would like them to, and we get more and more disappointed with every new release.

@jbacus, i am not ‘as pro’ as some of the other ArchViz guys here, so if my input doesn’t matter, then be it, but do take the time to talk to ronenbekerman, @dBrenders etc (have a hangout or something) and see if you guys can come up with some stuff that will benefit all of us who are into archviz, product design and so on.

The future potential of Sketchup. I hope to
revive this debate into some constructive thinking for the development of SU. My specific
experience is in Model Organization within SU and related to this I want to
share some ideas of how I see Sketchup become serious at BIM. I honestly don’t think
the new classifier tool will reach potential if core organizational features, The
Outliner & Layers in particular, don’t get a proper overhaul.

I have made
SU work as a design to precise detail & engineering tool and I use Outliner
& Layers allot to organize my models. As an engineer I like to make the
physical building sequence clear in my models. I use Numbers, Dots, CAPS and Hyphens
to structure the building sequence inside the Outliner and Layers.  In both Outliner and Layers the naming is closely related and with some shifts in the model I need to restructure both
manually, this can be time-consuming. With the 2013 update I had hoped for
some basic improvements and bug fixes in this area, at least sub layers, alas.

An ongoing
Bug in Outliner: in Entity Info, when I click on a components name, definition
name or layer, the component gets auto renamed allot to a previous input. I am
even coming across instances that I see multiple renaming of groups and
components have taken place even without me seemingly touching the Outliner or
Entity Info. And what I miss in the Outliner: you can’t rename inside Outliner
or drag & copy drop.

I have been
working on a modular building system which needed a structured naming of
components for re-use in new models and a logical export of
components to my hard drive. I, for example, added codes for level_location &
type to the component name.  It worked,
but the limited features in SU’s Layers & Outliner has been one of the
things I got stuck with on trying to BIM / organize my models to detail… Now organization of models remains too much of a hand job and that’s why for me Sketchup is stuck on being a sketch, design & visualization tool and only fit for engineering small models and furniture. 

I believe the key to BIM and better model
organization for SU lies in the integration of the Outliner & Layers and the
new classifier tool can fit in this too. In this integrated tool you can move from
sketch to design to detailing in a flexible & evolving information structure, custom or adapted to industry standards:
-Having
layers with sub-layers and components & groups nested inside these layers. 
–          Layers & sub-layers can also have class tags. 
-To
be able to custom rearrange and auto renumber for creating the physical building
order.
-To
have this numbering be a customizable part of an export naming string.

–          Perhaps the relating of building elements to each other could become a feature of this tool too? 

As an extra clarification I attached some screenshots and I realized
while writing this I am just scratching the surface of this idea, so before I get
lost in it, I am curious what you think.

Greetings,

Jasper