[Poll] Can we please have a dedicated rendering category?

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@jody

Can we please have a dedicated rendering category …
… and perhaps subcategories of this for major rendering extension / apps ?

My main reason is I am not interested much in rendering, and not at all in seeing the various Vray issue topics that are posted several times per week in the Extensions category.

But I do want to see general topics on extensions and announcements for new extensions, so muting the Extensions category is not an option.

If we had a toplevel Rendering category it could serve for general questions, recommendations, polls etc., and the subcategories could serve for discussion, questions and issues with specific renderers.
(The “About” for each subcategory could suggest a 3rd party forum if they exist. Often members wish to post here anyway as they want to get advice from known SketchUp users.)

  • … and then I could mute these categories. :wink:

ADD: But as said below, forum readers who are interested in rendering can filter out extraneous posts simply by entering the rendering category when it exists.

POLL :ballot_box: (2 questions)

1. Create a dedicated Rendering category ?

(If not as a toplevel category, then as a subcategory within the Extending SketchUp category.)

  • Yes
  • No
  • Undecided
  • Don’t Care

0 voters

:question:

2. Create subcategories for major rendering extensions & apps ?

[Note that most of those extensions that qualify, already implement their own forums where it is more likely posters will get faster answers directly from the developers of the extension or app.]

  • Yes
  • No
  • Undecided
  • Don’t Care

0 voters

:question:

Current results will be shown after you vote.

5 Likes
2

While I wasn’t thinking about it as a top level, i have been considering adding something for rendering and V-Ray. This seems like a good a kick in the pants as any.

1 Like
4

I created this new top level, I’ll work on sub-categories over time.

Feel free to flag things to move to the new category.

Box, I’m actually curious about this one… I feel like I don’t even look at categories when I come to the forum. I will think on how I can omit things from bubbling to the front page, but I’m not sure the functionality exists without creating a separate access control list.

1 Like
6

This is because the default “landing” page is set to Latest rather than Categories (which also has a skinny Latest list on the right.)

I feel that because of this, it is the major cause of newbs posting new topics to the wrong categories, or them not learning quickly how the forum is organized. (This leads to them not being able to filter down the content to find topics on what they need, and so we get many topics asking the same ol’ questions.)

It would be nice if all newbs had their landing page as Categories and they could later change it in their personal account Preferences.

There is already a control list. Every member has their own control of what they see and do not.

We can mute / ignore particular users, individual topic threads, or categories (either toplevel or subcategory exclusively,) … but cannot ignore or mute by tag or keyword.

I’m just attempting to damp down “noise” a bit. So the simplest solution is that rendering (being a common theme) have it’s own category, and then members can choose to mute it, watch it, track it, or leave it as normal, … via the “bell” menu at the top of each category.

viz:

image

I’ve already done this for many categories I am not interested in… Sefaira and all it’s subcategories for example.

This is what my Categories list looks like …

image
image515×865 25.2 KB

… the “Muted” categories are now (recent change) collapsed into a list so if I have to go looking for something or get a category link for someone I can do it without having to change a mute setting in my preferences (which was a pain in da’ rear.)

Perhaps you think it funny, but it’s really just disrespectful sarcasm. :roll_eyes:

It has been requested in the past. So it is not really a new idea.
SketchUcation has been organized like this forever (AFAIK.)

The system has these filtering capabilities to help members see what interests them, and filter out what does not. When we don’t filter out and mute categories there are way too many things marked as unread.

2 Likes
7

Thanks Dan for digging into these… specific to my comments.

I’m aware of why I don’t see categories, but everyone has the option to drill into a category. I feel like I rarely drill into one. In any event, my point was moreso along the lines of Box’s response… I just go to the landing page and consume it as it comes at me.

Regarding an ACL, I literally have the ability to create a group on the back end with # users by their username/email address, then give ONLY that group access to certain “private” forums. We have an internal category that is only employees managed like this, similarly there are a handful of categories for specific programs (educational, resellers, etc) that have their own categories/groups as well. It is a bear to manage for anything more than a couple dozen users if the userbase changes very often. It is not scalable for standard use.

I did see I have an option at the admin level to mute some categories, but it seems excessively nuclear in it’s functionality so I need to look further into it.

*Edit: Thanks for finding where that “Muted” section was, I hadn’t gone looking but knew it existed somewhere.

1 Like
9

Yes, I know about this, and this ACL or system mute are not feasible nor needed for the “individual filtering”.

The system has it now controllable by each member. Let’s just let us members decide.

So it’s just that rendering and it’s problems are a lot of the non-SketchUp extension content, so should be filterable by the members.

Filtering works both ways. I desire to filter rendering out.

Renderer users conversely filter everything else out by simply entering the category.

Once within a category, it also serves to filter the forum search engine to that category and it’s subcategories. (Which many members don’t realize. Searching from any of the main listing pages can result in an overwhelming list of “hits”.)

11

Individual member filtering preferences are great!

I’ve just had the occasion for my first use the newest filtering property called Users > Ignored with a duration of Forever. We do this when a member has nothing good to say or persists in bullying behavior.

(Take 1 guess who the user is.)

2 Likes
12

Trump?

2 Likes
13

There are 3 or 4 in this forum that I would like to put on permanent ignore.

14

Okay I’ve felt this out a bit.

The impetus for this request was the shortcomings that the “mixed bag” of the “Extensions” category is.

This request was specifically with regard to rendering because it’s such a common topic for post SketchUp processing. But yes the need for new subcategories can extend to a few other post modeling tasks besides rendering.

(BIM, Data Analysis, Costing, MRP [incl. Cut Lists, BoMs, etc.], Game Engines, etc.)

Can anyone think of any other major post modeling chores that deserve a subcategory ?

Presently the new “Extending SketchUp” category just adds another “mixed bag” rather than what was requested and what members are voting for in the poll. In order to have merit, the categories (or subcategories) need to serve as 2-way filters. (Filtering out other stuff when inside them, and allowing their stuff to be filtered out by category muting.)

3 Likes
15

@jody Perhaps add a note and link in the “Extensions” > About pinned topic to the new Post Processing / Rendering & etc. category(ies) ?

16

I wonder if admins can automatically reassign topics to another category based upon having a certain tag (or tags) ?

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Hey, … if you haven’t weighed in on the 2 poll questions, you can do so in the first post above.

FYI, …

  1. I numbered the questions as some respondents hadn’t answered the 2nd question.

  2. I have slightly changed the wording of the 1st poll question to remove the directive that a “Rendering” category be only top-level.

  3. And I changed the note following the 2nd question, to acknowledge that existence of dedicated forums run by the major rendering extension / app developers.*

If you voted already, you can review and change your vote if you like.

So far the poll appears to indicate a 87-94% approval of a having category labeled “Rendering” from the 1st question.

No real “hard” no votes as of yet.

* Currently, it looks like probably about 12-15% feel that since rendering apps usually have their own dedicated forums, that creating subcategories here would violate the DRY principle.

Ie, it would mean that the devs of these apps would need to spend extra time checking the forums for all the modeling applications their renderer supports (not just SketchUp) to find questions to answer from users.
I’m thinking (in retrospect) that this just isn’t something we should saddle these developers with. After all they likely created their own forums so as not to have to do this.

I also suspect that the members voting no for the 2nd question are mostly forum sages who are already weary of pointing users toward the dedicated external forums by the rendering app developers.

So, I just changed my vote to no for the 2nd question.
(It was never really my idea anyway. I think it was suggested by someone else.)

18

FYI: A dedicated Vray subcategory was added at the begining of October 2020.

Still not exactly what we’ve asked for. :thinking:

19

I continue to see members post rendering and Vray questions in the wrong category, mainly (I believe)
(a) because the word “Rendering” does not appear in a category name
and (b) because the “Latest” filter list (rather than the “Categories”) filter list seems to be the default in the user settings.

20

Related topic, being evidence newer members do not know where to post regarding Rendering.

1 Like