Upcoming Change to Add Location

Trimble is now aggravating this problem by blocking posts that point out to the community that Trimble has breached its contract with people fwho paid several hundred dollars for a license to use SketchUp AND THE HIGH QUALITY IMAGERY that was available when the user bought the license. Censoring the information posted in this forum in an effort to prevent users from learning they have legal rights and remedies is not the solution users need or deserve.

Contact me directly if you want more information. Trimble is blocking my posts.

Frank McIntye
(970) 618-3424
frank@glenwood-cleanenergy.com

1 Like

[details=How posts get flagged and hidden …][quote=“FrankMcIntyre1951, post:217, topic:40953”]
I see that Trimble has hidden my post …
[/quote]

Not true. It says quite clearly:

This post was flagged by the community and is temporarily hidden.

This forum runs the Discourse engine, and is hosted by Discourse servers.

Community members (with sufficient privileges) have the ability to flag posts as “off-topic”, “spam”, “inappropriate” (ie violating the guidelines,) or administrative action required (with reason / comment.)

So the idea is that the community itself polices the forum to a large extent, reducing the time that admins or moderators need to deal with many little things. So (according to certain admin threshold settings) a given number of certain types of flags by community members, result in posts being hidden, and transgressors being notified (so that for example they can modify the tone or naughty words etc. in the “flagged” post.)

The flagging button appears at the bottom of each thread, and below each individual post (but is often hidden beneath the ellipses, which when clicked displays a set of seldom used buttons.)[/details]

2 Likes

My post was clearly not “off topic”, “spam”, or “inappropriate”. I did not use foul or abusive language. Rather, I pointed out Trimble’s deceptive method of getting people to pay for an upgrade. I further pointed out that Trimble has breached its contract with users who paid for a license to use SketchUp, along with the full functionality they had reasonable come to expect based on their past course of dealing with it and the language in the so called “notice” of a change that falsely suggested that buying an additional upgrade would preserve access to the full featured product.

I am sure there are any number of features in SketchUp that some users use and that some don’t. And apparently the geo location feature is not one you need. But this topic thread addresses a huge problem for a significant number of users who rely greatly on it.

One of my prior seemingly innocuous posts was also flagged for unknown reasons. I guess the idea here is that we want to have a constructive dialog about how to resolve the deficiency in the new imagery. However, I see value in allowing freedom to vent so Trimble can better understand the degree to which this has impacted people. While I felt I had enough notice that something was going to happen, I was truly shocked at the loss in functionality, or at least the degree to which functionality was hampered.

This really seems like an opportunity for a third party to step in with a plugin. I’m disappointed Trimble did not put the word out to developers and have a solution ready for prime time if they were not going to make a reasonable replacement solution available themselves.

5 Likes

[details=Didn’t say it was (or wasn’t) anything…][quote=“FrankMcIntyre1951, post:220, topic:40953”]
My post was clearly not …
[/quote]

Didn’t say it was (or wasn’t) anything. Just explaining how Discourse engined forums are designed to work.

That does not mean members always properly assign flags.[/details]

2 Likes

Then Trimble needs to remove the flag from my posts. Especially since there is no disclosure as to who assigned the flag.

2 Likes

Google deprecated the custom terrain service which was serving terrain to all versions of SketchUp. There’s no public announcement for that because SketchUp is the only product impacted. The fact that service was turned down is part of the reason we can no longer support Add Location in older versions of SketchUp. Another reason we can’t support Add Location in older versions is, Google constructed the feature in a way that violates Google’s own terms of service (funny but true) as well at the standard terms of most other geo data providers. As part of our divesture agreement when we were sold to Trimble, SketchUp was indemnified from violating Google’s terms for 5 years. That protection ends this month. SU 2017’s Add Location is implemented in such a way that it does not violate the terms of service for the providers we are leveraging. While I’m not an attorney (like @FrankMcIntyre1951 who by the way, admitted in a public forum to violating SketchUp Make’s EULA yet continues to threaten to sue Trimble), I’m intimately familiar with the legal aspects of this transition.

There were a few other Deprecated Google products which were mentioned in this thread. The big one was Google Earth Enterprise product. The solution there was to use the open source Cesium platform. And it now sounds like google is open sourcing part of their own GEE platform. ***I want to caution though - Google is still not giving away their map data with derivative rights. They open sourced a platform which developers can use to serve and view geo data those developers own or have rights to. The other product that was deprecated was the Google Earth API..

8 Likes

@Bryceosaurus, Very good information Bryce! Thank you.

(You realize this thread is creating a lot of QanAs for a FAQ page ?)

1 Like

On at least 5 occasions you have made two posts in a row in this thread. Perhaps they are flagged because people consider that flooding. I haven’t flagged any of them myself so I can’t tell for sure if this is the reason but it’s one possible explanation.

2 Likes

I flagged you even before you disclosed your credentials…

I felt you were behaving like an ‘ambulance chaser’ rather then a genuine user with a issue…

others obviously also had misgivings about your post’s…

john

2 Likes

This is HORRIBLE news. Not having access to 3d terrain with satellite images will really be a missed feature. Is there any hope of having 3d terrain added later on?

2 Likes

In what sense can you possibly consider me an “ambulance chaser”. You are apparently not impacted by the degradation of the Add Location feature. But many people are. If you aren’t affected you should stay out of the discussion.

2 Likes

If you have seen two posts in a row on this thread it is because I am attempting to respond to a comment on the first post. As someone who is new to the forum I may be making technical mistakes in how I post my comments. But the comments themselves are valid complaints about how Trimble has breached its contract with users who paid for a feature that has since been disabled.

2 Likes

@Juantxo, how do the changes effect Skelion and your user base?

john

1 Like

I’m interested to know, too. It seems like this would have a detrimental effect on a lot of plugin developers that use mapping and terrain as a basis for their products. I decided against Skelion because I find it easier/quicker to just use components to place solar modules on roofs, but I did use a number of plugins that are pretty useless now that my workflow has changed. On the other hand, I found a couple of plugins that help with my new workflow.

I would love a plugin that would explode a selected image, group, or component all the way to raw faces and edges, make it all a component, then lock it. That’s it. That’s ALL I want it to do (with a single keyboard shortcut).

You get 3d terrain right now with 2017.

I should have clarified, 3d terrain by using the “get location” tool with the satellite image mapped on the terrain.

Barry,

I have SketchUp Pro 2017 and 3d terrain is not an option. Any tips?

All I can get is a location snapshot.

A quick question, that may be off topic.

Why will this thread automatically close in 14 days while others close 3 months after the last reply?

3 Likes