I haven’t read all the comments, so I don’t know what has been mentioned already. Two features I would like to see are: 1) ability to consolidate similar materials. For example when you download multiple models into a project, each one with a different translucent material, it would help with workflow and file size if you could make them each have the same translucent material with a “single click.” 2) customizable tool bars. Where I can display only the tools I want to use. It can get annoying when there are twenty different types of exotic arc-drawing tools for me to accidentally click on when all I want is the square tool. It would be great if I could show only the individual tools I use. Or maybe that’s an option already?
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Nevermind number 2…I just found out that I can do that already!
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You can kind of do this in a couple of clicks:
- Select one face with the material you want to be replaced.
- R-click and “select all with same material”
- Choose the replacement material and fill the selected with it (clicking on one selected will fill all selected)
Note that the selection is dependent on the group nesting - if a surface embedded in an group/component, then it can’t be selected and so can’t be filled. (And if you are in a level, then anything outside that level can’t be selected either)
There may be a plugin/script to replace materials through a model already (It doesn’t seem too complex an operation)
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Provide some “hooks” into the GUI. Specifically, I’d like to be able to take extension windows (like the Layers Panel) and treat them like toolbars - so I can “dock” it, then autohide.
Feature Request:
I double click a lot to repeat a push/pull input. Would love to be able to option double click to push/pull in the opposite direction than the direction I started with.
For example when I move a door opening over 2’ I will push/pull one side of the inside of the door over 2’ and if I want to do the same to the other side of the inside I can’t currently. If I double click the other side the whole opening gets smaller instead of moving over.
Would also love to have some way to organize/group/label scenes. I use 20-30 scenes in a model and the thumbnail view or list view is tedious to scroll/look through. Scene heirarchy folders would be great.
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Going all out here:
Would also like to be able to name or label section planes in my model.
With the Skalp for SketchUp extension you can name your sections:
and you can easily activate the section by its name:
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Thanks for the recommendation. Not quite worth $80 to me just for that feature.
I feel like SU should at least be able to attach a text leader to a section plane, name them in entity info or be able to assign them a color other than grey or blue when selected.
Not sure if it’s reasonable to doable but here goes…
Can Sketchup get more optimized? In video game design, they spend a lot of time near the end of Beta version just optimizing so that the games run smoother with so many polygons and high FPS.
In Sketchup, it feels sluggish. I made a model with a few 100 segment circles and my high end gaming rig that can run Far Car 3 or Battlefield 4 maxed out actually hit a brick wall.
I guess I don’t understand that even though things don’t have to move at ultra high FPS, 3d design actually uses more graphics card and cpu horsepower than video games that display many polygons in motion?
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I agree that this option would be nice, except for the fact that in my experience, it has happened like this without explanation. For example, if I’m creating several shaker doors on a cabinet, I will command one of them to push in 3/8" , then I will double click on the rest of the doors, but every-once-in-a-while, the second one will jump out instead of in. Does anyone know why? I am reasonably sure that it was not because of un-oriented faces
During the years that I have been using SketchUp, the developers have been able to increase performance quite a lot several times. Let’s hope that they still haven’t used up all their creativity in this respect. The problem, I understand, is that in a modelling application the required precision and, for instance, the inferencing system, are much more demanding than what goes on when you play a game.
Anssi
Ah, thanks for the info.
Adding multiprocessor support would be a big help. Let’s face it, models are going to get bigger and more complex.
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I recently talked to a representative of a firm that makes high-end graphics workstations. He looked at me condescendingly when he found out that I still haven’t given up hope of 3D modelling applications becoming multithreaded. It has been talked about since the first dual-Pentium workstations were released some 20 years ago. None have yet been seen. Despite the marketing hype, modelmaking remains a single-threaded process, although some applications use multiple threads for photorealistic rendering, disk I/O and the like.
Anssi
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Wait…
So the reason why 3d modeling seems sluggish to me is because video games use multithreading but 3d modeling programs do not?
Then my next question is why not? Is this just an industry tradition kind of thing or are there technical reasons why it’s easier to optimize video games but difficult or impossible to optimize 3d modeling programs?
I could see where it just saves a lot of money because like I mentioned before, optimization is a huge part of finishing a video game program. Maybe in 3d modeling, there is no pressure to optimize because while modeling, we are more “patient” since we are just designing and building. In video games, you have to play competitively and thus need high FPS.
I’m just surprised than none of the 3d modeling software makers didn’t use high optimization as a selling point to set them apart from others.
Again, maybe I’m missing something like a good reason they don’t optimize?
I won’t speak to video games, but in general unless an application naturally has threads of independent activity (i.e. ones that don’t involve any shared data or depend on each other in any way) it is extremely difficult to artificially factor the activity into threads. Where there is any interdependence, one has to b careful to synchronize the threads with each other. Often the faster threads end up waiting for the slowest one, giving little or no improvement over a single-threaded version. Plus, there are subtle bugs possible that are very difficult to eradicate. 3D modeling such as in SketchUp just doesn’t fit the natural multi-threading paradigm.
modeling, i.e. creating geometry based resp. depending on another geometry is a serial process by nature and therefore obviously cannot be split in several threads as e.g. rendering an image by multiple bandings which can be simply assembled to the complete image at the end of the process.
Hi
Improve SketchUp in BIM workflow with Tekla and more BIM softwares. Such as in Tekla have extension IFC change management I need in SketchUp need tool can import and export IFC file with Tekla.
Thanks
SketchUp Pro is today capable of both importing and exporting IFC-formatted models. In fact, we use a library developed by our colleagues at Tekla to enable that. Is there a particular aspect of BIM-compatibility with Tekla that you would like to see working better?
If you’re looking for more features to support change management, you may want to have a look at Trimble Connect. At its heart, Connect is a version control system for BIM data.
john
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