Thank you Justin.
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Justin writes, “What you’re describing is the ability to “edit” the model that was created with different modeling quality and different modeling methods in a different software.”
Sorry, but no. Here’s an example. If I go to say TurboSquid and download a pile of 3D models, 80-90% of them won’t display correctly in HItfilm, or at all. Hitfilm is not designed to edit 3D models, it just plays them.
Except that it often can’t play the 3D file, or even see them, because there are no reliable 3D data transfer standards which Hitfilm can be coded for. The Hitfilm guys try, they do their best, and sometimes it works, but more often it’s a FUBAR experience.
And so, and here’s the important part, as a result I won’t pay to upgrade past the demo version of Hitfilm because I can’t count on 3D files working in it. That’s the price an immature industry pays, lots and lots of lost business, because people lose confidence in the system.
But anyway, it pains me to debate you Justin, as you are such a super helpful cool guy who I really do appreciate. If you don’t agree and wish to have the last word, that’s cool with me, and I really do wish you the very best.
Try exporting CAD Nurbs models into Blender. Very difficult and for some objects there’s a ton of cleanup. That’s because CAD programs have a different internal data representation than mesh surface modelers like Blender.
And CAD of course works great for superior accuracy, something which polygon modelers can never quite achieve. With poly modelers, renders are much faster overall and they create much more topologic meshes which work better in games and animations.
And SketchUp also has a different internal data model then Blender, so of course there are going to be translation errors. SketchUp does realtime surface Booleans, which allow it to create simple looking models and for it to render in a specific way.
There are huge and wicked problems trying to accurately and perfectly convert everything to Blender, not the least of which are custom split normals. Somewhat similar to the issues CAD model conversion faces.
FWIW, I think SketchUp files convert admirably.
If you really want to do the best job (but not even perfect) at 3D conversion, get Polytrans by NuGraph.
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Nah man, I’m good. Good luck with whatever you end up using
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Ones that are “correctly” modeled do. I just love getting one and half of the faces are flipped. Those render so well…not! 
this is also a nice one:
https://kitchenplanner.ikea.com/gb/UI/Pages/VPUI.htm
you can even buy the stuff
Blender is simply amazing!
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This looks interesting:
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And… generative algorithmic modeling
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And…
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I bought K Cycles last week, its a Plugin to speed up your renders. I was skeptical at first but it really is running at double speed, maybe more havent had any issues so far either https://blendermarket.com/products/k-cycles
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Hi DougO,
Thanks for contributing this information to the discussion …
We appreciate your report on the general attitude/moral of the staff that you experienced when you worked for Trimble. Maybe I missed it, but what are the dates of your Trimble experience?
Did you happen to have any insights into how big the SU team was, as compared to the LO team? This information might be useful and relevant to the discussions that this thread Host will shortly be having with Trimble.
If you can help, please do!
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I’m not sure of the value of anything that I can add to the conversation. Really this is a discussion that needs to happen between the SketchUp userbase, and those in Trimble who can influence the future of the application.
Happy to tell a random story with no real direction or purpose though.
My Background
I was managing the SketchUp desktop apps for a couple of years until late 2019. Prior to joining SketchUp I established Trimble’s UI/UX strategy and UX design community across the wider company, and spent much of my career defining core parts of the Trimble ecosystem enabling humans from multiple industries using multiple tools to be able to collaborate… What does that mean? I love to make things work together, across teams, across divisions, across products, between professions.
Within SketchUp from about 2017 this meant using my UX skills to connect to the customers more deeply, and to bring the architecture applications closer together to enable cross app workflows. We interviewed a number of customers in in-depth interviews, to understand nuanced workflows, needs, and identify areas where we could have the highest levels of impact on those professional workflows.
During this time we also changed a lot about how the team operated, and how we delivered software. You will see now that the product is released a lot more often, and behind the scenes this also meant earlier engagement with customers via alpha access to new features.
There was no SketchUp or LayOut team. Everything we did was for both.
LayOut Performance
Let’s be honest, LayOut is cool, it’s important, it does things different than other apps in the same space, it completes SketchUp like a chairlift completes a ski resort.
Let’s also be honest, it’s not a secret that there are performance challenges, it’s a common piece of feedback from the public, and is feedback that should continue to be provided if it’s important to you.
If SketchUp performance is hard to solve, LayOut’s is a bit harder. Every page in LayOut represents multiple SketchUp model views. Think about that for a second, If SketchUp is rendering a viewport, it’s a single viewport. If it’s in LayOut it’s going through a number of extra complexities to make it 2D, allow for things to remain selectable, measurable, interactive etc… it’s non-trivial.
Some of this is raw technical performance, the low level complex number crunching math that holds the universe together. The stuff that you can’t always just keep tweaking (and rebuilding is a long process). I have no insights into any of this kind of work except to know the people in the team and how passionate they are about methodically doing some of this hard nuanced work.
Efficiencies alongside Performance
Part of my research and strategy around improving both SketchUp and LayOut was to look at hrs of effort spent by professionals to get to an outcome.
If using the interface is frustrating due to come performance challenges, how else can we support speed to outcome, alongside some of those other frustrations in an end to end workflow.
Linestyles, Tags, Tag groups (folders), Style overrides… These were all LayOut features. Many of them show up in SketchUp and are useful for SketchUp users, but they are all layout features, designed for LayOut users, to solve LayOut problems, and improve the speed of getting to LayOut outcomes. We calculated how many hours a year these workflows can save users, and it was significant.
Oh wait… SketchUp and LayOut users are the same people. So really they were features for users, and not for either SketchUp or LayOut. They were all features that celebrated the combination of SketchUp and LayOut together, making the sum of the parts better than the individual.
Sometimes we did things just in one app. Like drag and drop file import into SketchUp (How annoying was that before having it)
The team
SketchUp’s leadership changed since my departure. They are passionate about LayOut. In fact I can’t think of anyone more passionate about LayOut.
Trimble’s leadership also changed since I left, the former CEO was great for the company and grew it to what it is today via acquisition, bringing all the pieces under one roof. The current CEO has a different background, and I truly believe is the person to now pull those pieces together and strengthen each of them.
Summary
- Keep providing your feedback directly to Trimble
- Keep fulfilling your contracts as users and stay vocal, you are the customer, they are the service provider
Stay optimistic, regardless of everything else. They are all real people at the other end, and they care. Trimble is very diverse, and non-heirarchical. It’s not a top down organisation. So there is no evil person at the top saying yes, or no to anything. Therefore the people you want to talk to and influence are those that are working closer to the product, the middle levels, they are autonomous and enabled. There is no evil corporation. Trimble is a collection of companies that have been bought together around a series of interconnected problems.
Doug
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hahaha, no doubt
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No, I don’t think you get his joke lol…
Good discussion. Thank you.
I am just starting to learn Blender and I am planning to use it together with SketchUp.I should learn Rhino too as many of my co-workers use it, but there are not many things I can not do with SketchUp, so I can not see the point. I don`t see enough advantages in learning a similar software to SketchUp from scratch even if they try to bully me into it… It’s weird, but they make you feel that they are somehow better because they use Rhino…It’s very upsetting.
But I am here to react to Chippwalter’s comment.
I am just getting familiar with Blender, but I can clearly see that if I want a 2D output of my 3D creations then I will need additional software as the ArchiPack looks too basic. I heard that there are attempts to develop add-ons to cover this, but so far I haven`t seen much progress.
SketchUp layout is challenging enough and I still use ArchiCad for more sophisticated drawings and CNC files.
I am an architect, currently working in the film industry, the design we produce here goes many ways, most often 3D printing, CNC, and sets of 2D drawings for construction. Sometimes we only do visuals - which I need to get a grip on, hence I am planning to learn Twinmotion and Blender.
I agree with Justin. For architectural design, SketchUp is very good, mostly, because it’s fast. It;s perfect to quickly mock an idea and it’s fun too …many of my colleagues use Rhino, which looks amazing, but in the early stages it’s soooooooooooooo very slow…
The workflow between Sketchup Layout and Sketchup (refreshing scenes and dimensions adopting to the changes - up to a point - is something that is not matched by many other softwares (ArchiCad and REVIT are capable of doing this, but they are designed for new build with standard windows/furniture and all…they are taking away the joy from designing.
So - as Justin always says - there is no one software for everything. We need to learn many. The challenging thing is to figure out which one.
So…Which software and which workflow would you recommend learning for developing in set design/ set concept design and construction drawing workflow?
@_kimga I do the kind of work you are describing, primarily in SketchUp and Layout, including direct output for 3D printing and 2D tool-paths (CNC router, water jet, plasma, laser…). And yes, SketchUp can output true curves for manufacture. ConDocs are done in Layout, it’s a powerful combination.
You are resurrecting an old zombie thread with no activity in over a year, PM me or start a new thread and we can discuss your questions further.
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I notice that software continues to develop around the world and within industries and I try to read about what is going on across my field of interest (Architecture).
Here we are in Jan 2024 and I have seen all of my programs change in the last 5 years and a couple I have trialed but not purchased such as Enscape which changed a lot in 2 years just before Chaos purchased it. and since then also notable development.
Lumion has made steady but not outrageous progress in 5 years and still lacks a large number of what many would call fundamental tools for the user such as lens and camera types and tools and so on.
D5 Render has come along, Revit has been steadily but maybe not notably developed but that is visible.
We are at Blender 4 + already with the next chunk due by around mid year. I have only used that since the start of 2023 and seen just enormous changes in that program, huge development steps forward across the entire program environment.
While the SketchUp development team might well be doing good work, the level of visible development since I began only a few years ago, seems difficult to really say is notable. It does not seem to be going forward - it might be behind the scenes but as a casual user it does not seem like there is much going on.
I like Sketchup Pro - I like how SU works but I confess that now, the main thing about it is I can do something useful with Layout in a limited way like dimensions and sheets additions and drawings, and to be fair as of right now and despite a few more Add Ons in development that is not really practical in Blender.
I agree there are some amazing creative minds using SU and plenty of examples of outstanding output and normal commercial enterprise so if there are so many good people doing good things with the program, why is it not being heavily progressively developed ?
Progress seems glacial.
A good example is the lovely MindSight Studio plug-in “Bevel”
For me this type of tool should automatically be in every version of Blender as should the solid modeling tools for example.
This is one area where many other programs thrash SU for functionality and plug ins for things like sub division surface modeling really should be part of the program base in 2024.
It might well be that the developers see the SDK / 3rd party developer community as a critical part of SketchUp existence , feeding potentially, many mouths, however if I look at just a few 3D modeling programs that are not AutoDesk owned I see amazing development and amazing tools. Blender is but one (perfect) example.
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Just a random test with Blender and Sketchup…
I’ve been using Sketchup Pro for a while now, and as my interest towards modeling grew, I thought - why not try out Blender, as it might come handy in some of the situations where Sketchup feels a bit limited.
Now, several tutorials later - it feels like sure, there is something nice in Blender as a program, but as many say - the learning curve feels veeeeery steep.
Obviously, I had to go through the infamous “Donut tutorial” by Blender Guru. That was fun, even though I had to go through several tantrums and hitting my head to the keyboard 
Frustration was real. I kinda got through the tutorial, couldn’t finetune the lighting as I wanted - don’t know it was a bug or what, couldn’t rotate the lights properly. Setting up the camera was a nightmare, and at some point I just had to stop. All right, got at least a half-decent rendering out. PHIEW 
DONE!
But wait a minute!!!
Couldn’t you do the exact same in Sketchup? Right? Challenge accepted!
This is what I got. Neither outcome is perfect, but I guess I learned something new in both programs. (Blender+Cycles Sketchup+Vray)
If you have done similar tests between the programs, please share 
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