Curic Extensions: Face Knife

So please let me see some quotes of it

Why SketchUp Plus 's mirror tool is exactly the same as Curic’s instead of TIG’s ?

Why don’t you ask them? Or have your lawyer ask them? The SketchUp discussion forum is no place for you and Curic to solve these issues. It’s clear that there is or was some sort of partnership between yourself and Curic (Your VBO Solutions website advertises Curic plugins). The two of you look extremely petty right now, and this is the opposite of how to gain a larger customer base.

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You can make better things, not that bad cloning. What a shame. A famous developer with legendary plugins can even do that and sell it. What do you think?

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As a SketchUp extension developer myself, I can say that not every developer is aware of all the extensions ever created.

For example, Curic has created lots of extensions that have been created before…Most of us have created an extension like that.

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Dont feed the trolls - its a useless discussion…

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I didn’t say “make”. I said “clone”.

I think that SketchPlus is an amazing set of tools offered in one place at a very affordable price.

I think that Curic has made some innovative and helpful extensions.

I have spotlighted both of their work in official Extension Inspection videos in the past.

I think that refusing to allow your free extension to run because you have an issue with another paid extension is shooting yourself in the foot. I for one would not uninstall an extension with dozens of features that I paid for so that I could run another extension that does one thing that I downloaded for free.

Those are the things that i think.

Just so no one misinterprets my thoughts, I like and respect the work for both mind.sight and Curic.

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That’s the point. The same as me, I will not uninstall my paid Curic set if some free plugin ask me to do it. People can have their choice, it’s clear.
.
And I think Curic has the reason to refuse to support.
It’s fair.

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Curic has every right to do what they want. All I am saying is that the course of action they have chosen may not be the best course of action if they want to be supported by the community. As @DanRathbun pointed out, it is not good form to search for others namspaces. One only need scroll through this post to see what posts hearts are being given to in order to see where the community leans.

I, personally, am disappointed because I was looking forward to using and showing this extension in a video. Given that it will not run, I can’t offer that, any more.

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The only one thing I think Curic was not right is he should better let user know the issue before they download the tool.

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Curic has a record of releasing extensions that interfere with other extensions (see the discussion about the pie menu, for instance). This time it seems they have done it on purpose.

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Hi everyone,

I was initially very happy to see all of the notifications regarding my post and assumed there was an active discussion about the usability of the tool. However, I see things have unfortunately gone off-topic. (a real boomer).

Regarding this issue, I have made an announcement on my official Facebook page, which I will post it here again for everyone to know.

I am not a professionally trained developer, so perhaps my understanding of the rules for copying, versus learning and developing a tool is a bit different than others. My main background is as an architect, and in this field, intellectual property is inherent in design. Another architect designing a building on the same street, which looks very similar to mine, would be considered taboo.

I use a similar architectural approach when designing my extensions. I focus on efficiency and high user navigability, as well as using aesthetic aesthetics, which brings freedom and natural usability. The goal is to free the end-user to create without obstruction from input boxes and complex settings. This is not an easy task, as it takes a lot of careful planning to develop tools that are both useful and fun to use. This is especially evident in tools like Curic Mirror, Curic Align, and Curic Axis….

I took a lot of time to create a new and unique workflow for each tool. This is the same for many other top developers. It is not just about another person creating tools that perform the same task as my tools, it is the replicating of the approach and design of the tool’s workflow. I spent a lot of time and energy developing these tools and them for free to the community, only to see almost all of them included in a commercial extension by someone released I once admired. Not only that but they are being marketed as the “missing tools” for SketchUp as if they never existed previously. I could not help but take that personally.

The pop-up message in the first release of Curic Face Knife was a response to what I initially felt was an injustice. It was a message to other developers, to say let’s be creative and develop to bring new and novel tools to the community instead of profiting off of an existing body of work from another developer.

In hindsight, I have decided to be the bigger person and release an updated version that removes this message. I apologize for any inconvenience and hope that you can understand my position as I was left with very little recourse and acted out of frustration.

Thanks again for your interest in my tools in one way or another.

I would appreciate it if we could drop it and not discuss this any further.

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curic4su, you did everything right.

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If another developer accuses me of stealing and insults my integrity as a developer on a public forum, this discussion is not over. It’s time for some actual facts rather than wild accusations. What are the facts?

  • The curic tools in question are align, mirror, axes, & deep select. You accused me of including ‘almost all of them’ (that’s 25+ free curic tools) in SketchPlus. That is false and slanderous.
  • All SketchPlus code is 100% written from scratch. No code has been copied from any developer.
  • I have been accused of cloning the curic mirror tool. I just watched your mirror tool youtube video for the first time now. The curic UX for mirror is significantly different and more complex than the SketchPlus mirror tool. In fact, the UX for our mirror tool is based on the Artisan active symmetry plane tool…from 2011!
  • I agonized for days for how to create an align tool in SketchPlus where all types of alignment could be performed with just one tool rather than several. I remember the day I conceived the idea of the alignment box UX. Later, I discovered there are similarities with the curic align plugin but this is purely coincidence because we both took the same approach to focus on “effiiency, high user navigability, aesthetics, and usability”. The entire design premise for SketchPlus was to create all of the features as easy-to-use tools with a pleasing user experience and no input boxes. You had similar goals for your plugins which is why we arrived independently at a similar design solution.
  • I am being accused of cloning the Curic Axis tool. I just now watched a video about the Curic axis tool. The UI / UX is significantly more complex than SketchPlus although the tools share some functionality. I have wanted to create a tool for changing the axes of a component to preset locations for more than 10 years. Curic apparently recognized this need as well and beat me to it.
  • I just watched a video of Curic’s Deep Select plugin for I believe the first time. This plugin is much more complex and has more features than SketchPlus Deep Select Face so why am I being accused of copying it? We’re talking about a simple face selection tool.

If you tell two people to design and manufacture a hammer and a screwdriver…and they both want to make the tools simple, and easy to use, they are both going to end up with very similar designs. Why? Because these tools are simple and fundamental. There is nothing unique or overly special about them. In the same way, the tools in question (mirror, align, axis) are simple fundamental 3D modeling tools that have existed in various forms in various applications for decades. These are not patented or copyright because they are not unique and too simple. It is absurd to be accused of cloning the mirror or align tools. I wrote BoolTools in 2008 and since then the SketchUp Team created the Solid Tools, eneroth released her version of the solid tools, and there have been others as well. Did they clone my BoolTools? Of course not. Boolean tools are fundamental 3d modeling functions.

You can’t compare an architect designing a building to designing a simple plugin like mirror and align. This is completely different. If two architects come up with the same building design, clearly someone copied the other. But if two software developers create a simple fundamental tool and both place a high value on user experience, chances are good that they will come up with a very similar end product.

Curic, you have written some excellent tools and, like me, you care very much about designing an enjoyable user experience. Free tools and similar paid tools can co-exist. We must let the user decide which one they prefer. Like you, we put a ton of time and thought into designing the tools in SketchPlus because we have similar values as a developer. In fact, we tried to put it in even more effort than usual because we knew that our plugin would be ‘competing’ with some great free options like yours.

If you want to discuss this further with me, please send a PM. Congratulations on the new face knife plugin. It looks like another highly useful and well design tool.

Finally, please don’t take the ‘missing tools for SketchUp’ tagline as an insult. SketchPlus is marketed to new SU users who often feel that many fundamental tools that exist in other apps are ‘missing’. The tools are ‘missing’ from SketchUp core, not ‘missing’ from the Extension developer community. This was never meant to be directed at the Developer community.

Dale

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This is shaping up to be like the music industry song copyright battles over similar music sound and lyrics.
Hang on folks there may be more to come.

I don’t think (and don’t hope) so. All has been said that needed to be said on the forum.
Please sort this “stolen” issue out out of public sight, (not on the forum)
Personally I think lots af things that people (you all) do on a daily basis, when being creative, could be considered as stealing little ideas when you dig deep enough.

( Watching other people’s video’s excludes what you have just seen for future use for yourself, :thinking: )

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“Good artists copy, great artists steal.”

  • Pablo Picasso &/or Steve Jobs
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I know this is off-topic and apologise for it but I can’t resist to say that one should be careful to use architecture as example for the issue in question.

Historically, new architecture has come out of precedent architecture. It is not my opinion: history shows that it is so. Imitation is inherent to architecture. Ed Bacon, in his book Design of Cities, showed this and called it “the principle of the second man” whereas whoever comes to build in a given place looks around and picks up elements from the older buildings. His example is the Piazza della Annunziata in Florence but it is still true today.

The accusations of theft of intellectual property in architecture are generally flimsy as only an exact copy would be classified as such. Literal copies are virtually impossible in architecture, as different site, scale, program and technical availabilities make even an intentional copy to become a unique design.

Or would anyone accuse Arne Jacobsen of stealing SOM’s Lever House scheme when he built the Royal SAS Hotel in Copenhagen, admitted by himself as having been inspired by the former? By the same token, did Le Corbusier steal from Schinkel’s Altes Museum when he designed the Parliament building in Chandigarh?

Thanks for bearing with me on this one.

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uh :cold_face:

everyone chill… im not a developer but a use of all the wonderfull plugins for sketchup and im very greatfull for the work of all devs…

the way i interpret the situation after reading all is that i hope that both of the parties realise that maybe all is a misunderstanding of a dark sort… lets fokus, bring back the smile apologize to each one another and put the “situation” in the past

we need every single one person who is able to do what curic and whaat can do, which is creating great plugins :relaxed:

i hope you guys can work it out
maybe out of the situation comes a cooperation or some other sort of friendship really!

best, fa

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Yea I agree with you bsfranza. @Whaat I definitely see you and @voquochai point of views. I think that Sketchup plugins are a jungle, there is seemingly very little organization/collboration between developers and what they make. That’s my point of view anyways from the developers I talk to personally. I think that the future of Sketchup somewhat relies on how plugin developers do or do not collborate with each other moving forward and how plugins are created and released. This ties into some of my issues I brought up in the future of sketchup plugins post I made, which wasn’t well received because people took things out of context where as I was just presenting ideas to be disucssed. Some of the ideas touched on how there are many plugins that do the same thing, this is frustrating in a way, for me I have over 300 plugins downloaded and in my use regularly as a design professional. @Mark, I think Sketchup needs to continue becoming more and more involved with how plugins are created, developed and released because it seems as if the community of developers are all to each their own in a way. Brain storming sessions and more communication between developers seems like a great idea that would only push plugin development forward. It’s a jungle out there with how developers do things and it’s not great for sketchup in some ways and it is great for sketchup in other ways. These seemingly “duplicate” plugins which are essentially the same as another one existing, for me is quite frustrating. As I use around 300 plugins, I can confidently say that since adopting the use of Sketchup for my business about 5 years ago, single handedly the hardest thing to learn about sketchup is first of all what plugins are out there to use which would tell me how powerful sketchup can be for me, how to use them and than navigating through a ton of duplicate plugins where one plugin does essentially what another plugin already made does and has stopped being developed on. This has easily been the most frustrating thing about learning sketchup and I also think having many duplicate type plugins is bad for sketchup, confusing for sketchup users, etc…

I hope things like the points I’m making above become more streamlined down the road. I’m sure they will with time.