Hi Sonder, luckily you can’t compare SU to most CAD software, I love the way SU works and and L O V E the philosophy of LayOut. However, SU works like a charm, LO works choppy. Editing text, dragging dimensions, moving objects etc, is (most of the times) irritating slow. But I just have to work with LO as I’m only using the SU package for my designs, not using any other CAD software to communicate with clients, builders and instances. LayOut is essential in my workflow as an architect and it is still not a pleasure to work with alongside SU. I really, really can’t understand why it’s still not ‘solved’ after all these years…
And I know, there are all sorts of workarounds, I use them all.
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Well seeing as how one has to pay extra for things that are included in Form Z Pro (and to some degree in Form Z Free) I disagree. Things like Sub-division, NURBS, parametric stairs and roof tools and a built in rendering engine to name just a few. Also Form Z seems to have just bought a well known CAD program to perhaps use as a new draft tool (we’ll see about that one). Not saying one is better than the other, I prefer SU myself just pointing out some differences.
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I’ve yet to see a set of CDs from Form Z. That’s why I can’t compare it to SketchUp Pro.
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I like to mirror around points in the drawing / model. So flipping requires establishing the location duplicated and flipped objects by moving afterwards or adding guides or edges to define the plane of mirror. I also like to be able to mirror any geometry while I work, and flipping-moving raw geometry is problematic. We can work around it but mirror seems a basic function for design, just like offset, move, and copy operations. When you mirror on a diagonal you can place the object (for example) along one wall, accurately along the adjacent wall.
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No way would the things I’m asking for make SketchUp bloated or look like expensive CAD. They would actually allow us to avoid having to use those CAD apps. I’ll give you examples:
Sections could be multiplane or two sections should be able to be active at the same time without the need to insert the inside groups and components. This wouldn’t bloat SU.
I have advocated on a style per object per scene system several times in the past. Everything white while the building would be textured. This is also a no bloater. It’s just a very powerful SketchUp feature made even better.
Have folders for scene manager and allow us to have scene tabs filter out scenes so it becomes smaller. Similar to include in animation but would be an exclude from scene tabs. Another no bloater.
Search for in model components. I never used that search field for accessing 3d warehouse, but I’d use it to fiter out components from the component list. Having Trimble Connect functionality for reloading also work on local files. Warn when a component needs reloading or when someone else in your team is editing one of your xrefs. How’s that bloating anything?
Auto UV unwrapping, for texture painting and the likes. It’s such a creative workflow that no CAD system has. SketchUp for artists needs this desperately and I’d love to use it in my creative process too, as an architect. A bit of a bloater? Maybe, but certainly not CAD.
Import DWG should split each layer into a different group and tag it correctly. Layout viewports shouldn’t export to DWG as a single CAD layer, but each of the generated lines should be assigned a layer matching their SketchUp tags. Also Layout is exporting files that are in meters to CAD in millimeters. This is a bug that was recently introduced and creates havoc here. It should be meters. No bloaters here either.
It should be working already. We have IFC import and export and we have the classifier. However, what a mess! They just need to work. IFC hierarchy must be respected in an export and a tutorial that we should follow to have seamless workflow and interoperability should be available. But don’t forget at least a single workflow should be possible without the need to resort to external plugins. This doesn’t bloat either. What’s bloating SketchUp is a classification system that doesn’t work but exists already.
Could this be linked to the IFC workflow above? Could we generate a report based on material areas in the model? Could it be nicely organized into something that can be read and integrated into external XLS files that a team can easily manage? I don’t know, it’s a very opaque system that I could never grasp, therefore bloating SketchUp. It should be as simple as SketchUp so it works and therefore doesn’t bloat it.
I don’t even know where to start but as soon as you start trying to find tangents you’re doomed. But then you. Have all the breaking of circles into arcs and all sort of stuff that happens. This should just work better but I don’t know how… Too complex and hards to handle and I use curves a lot in my projects, so I know how painful it can be.
This one goes inline with the one above. Too complex to describe here, too painful to deal with in SketchUp. Unbloat this please, by spending time trying to solve it.
I don’t really care much about this. Just open doors without having to setup dynamic components and stuff like that.
Allow component states to be different pere scene. All windows closed in scene A and open in scene B. No bloat here either.
Just allow us to attach a PDF file to a window component or a link to a site. Honor that when exporting to Trimble Connect and Import or export IFC files, allow us to organize this data in an IFC standard way. Just fix the classifier, after all… You wouldn’t use this one for sure @Sonder but it wouldn’t bloat SketchUp, it would only allow it to integrate in BIM workflows.
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Fair enough, I know it can be done but I’ve only played with it on some 3D designs.
Some of the items you list I have also requested like a scene manager with folders.
However I don’t think either of us are programmers so defining bloat and complexity in programming may be deeper than you or I can understand.
Many of these items focus solely on architecture/engineering, which is not the only user base.
Keeping SU simple is extremely important as that directly affects speed.
Flipping is best used once an item is set. For instance a door component when you want to mirror its operation.
Scale mirroring works best when you want to mirror about new placement like an outlooker or beam/post.
Mirroring about an angle does require two moves, but the same can be said for acad as you have to also establish the angle about which you are mirroring. Again, I can do this faster is SU.
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And be able to import vector PDF file in SU and insert other vector files into Layout!
As we are not programmers I thought bloating the software meant making it become too complex to use in a simple fashion. As we are also both architects the things I was asking were mostly focused on architectural work.
Even so I don’t think any of those are too complex, they are just very useful or needed improvements in what we already have. Some of these improvements would make some of the stuff we have work well, when sometimes this stuff doesn’t work at all.
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I give up.
Going back to the original question, keep up with what? Folks use SketchUp thousands of ways, but it seems a majority of users do building / architecture.
SketchUp is like Go: easy to play and hard to master. Additionally, when used to design buildings, it requires users have an exact, nuts and bolts understanding of exactly how the building they are designing will be put together. SketchUp has zero hand holds. You want to cantilever a 10-ft deep balcony on 2x4s? No problem. You want to create a 100MB file without a single component? Go right ahead. But if folks are willing to invest the months or years it takes to become fluent in all aspects, yes, they can produce usable construction docs using nothing but SU/LO. The process is enjoyable (in SU) and, most importantly, it supports creativity and allows real-time what-if experimenting, even in later stages.
Of course then there’s LayOut, which is as fun to use as scrubbing public toilets but takes a lot longer.
So can SketchUp keep up? Folks who ask are sometimes the same ones who insist on new features that address their own specific working circumstances, whereas the software’s core appeal is its wonderful simplicity. I honestly can’t think of a limitation of SketchUp for which a workaround doesn’t exist.
From workaround on top of workaround you get from an enjoyable and creative software to a cumbersome, bloated, plugin overblown and tedious workflow in no time.
That’s why people keep asking for SketchUp to adhere more to what they need. It’s only natural and there are a lot of common barriers to the majority of architectural users.
Honestly I’m halfway there with @Sonder as I feel my projects and locations have different approacher and I need other output. If I was dealing with the same issues I’d feel exactly as him and SketchUp + LO would be enough. They are enough but cumbersome after a point
Not sure why? I was only commenting on how I get by without a specific mirror command.
I guess, what I see as “workarounds” is literally just a workflow. I think the years infused by Autodesk has made people think everything is a workaround since you could do something in ACAD. Autodesk is considered the industry standard only because they were first and adopted so widely that competing programs followed suit with similar approaches.
Sketchup is different and requires a different workflow.
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Well I was trying to point out that when you flip objects they have to be moved to the correct location afterwards. and besides I don’t compare to ACAD I use other tools (like TIG’s) that are just a simple operation and not slow at all. The point is I DO want to choose the plane of mirror, I don’t want to have to flip an object then try to position it afterward. Do that with edges and you could have a mess. If everything you do is faster than anything I can name, then I’m not sure what to say next. Speed isn’t what I was thinking about in the first place–it was just the discussion of basic tools that seem missing and make SU seem half-baked to some people (somewhere earlier in the thread).
There. That’s about what I typed and more before I “gave up” because I thought it was getting to be too much! 
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Since you appear frustrated with my comment, I won’t go into it, but with both flip and scale mirror methods, you do not necessarily need to position it after. You would position it before. I only do this with groups and components so maybe that is the issue people are having in trying to mirror or manipulate raw geometry.
How do you position a window before in order to mirror to an adjacent wall around the corner? Or a column from one side of the room to the other? In the case of TIG’s Mirror tool, just like mirroring in CAD, you don’t have position an object before or after. You just mirror the original object.
I’ve just installed Tig’s mirror plugin to see how it works.
I do use Curic’s mirror plugin but only for the most basic mirror operations.
With Curic’s and I think with Tig’s the more ‘advanced’ mirroring that one can do with them seems too much bother and, for me, moving and then flipping or scaling -1 is much easier.
But that’s my use case and I guess other uses benefit better from these plugins.
I don’t see the problem with installing a plugin to mirror - how might a native tool make the operation better…?
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In the case of a window or door, I simply place the component which is glued to the outside face, then flip along the red or green axis depending on the component if it needs to be mirrored. My door and window components contain the unit, frame, interior and exterior trim in one component. I don’t often run into a situation where a column or post needs to be mirrored since they are typically square. For a component like a beam or outlooker, I copy the component to the opposite wall (component will project into structure) then use scale, -1. Even with a command, I cannot see that process being any faster. And, sorry, but speed and accuracy are the keys to profitability in our field, so for me, speed is extremely important.