Appreciate you taking the time to explain the issue clearly and frankly.
What I find most frustrating is that with the recent change, users of previous versions of SU Pro (in my case 2015) are now shut out completely from ‘Add Location’ functionality.
So the degradation in image quality is somewhat of a moot point for me.
@Ellen I’m from Alaska and started geomodeling there. I remember that some areas didn’t have very good terrain imagery available. The digital satellite companies generally focused on more populated areas for high-quality work, because it costs them money to do what they do and they want sales. I’d be curious if you find a good alternate source (and please share it!). To be fair, though, it might be more accurate to say that Google broke that feature of SketchUp, not Trimble. The depreciated Google Earth API also messed a website project of mine, as well websites of many other people, so this Google decision certainly isn’t just affecting SketchUp.
I wonder if the best solution might be for an Extension maker to create an option-rich paid Terrain Extension. For SketchUp to make the very best imagery available in every option preferred, the price of SketchUp would likely have to be increased for cabinet makers and stage designers and all the users who don’t need terrain, and it might not have many options. However, if an Extension solved this clear user need, then SketchUp could stay affordable by using the current terrain, and an Extension might provide more terrain options and customization than SketchUp could ever offer. Small Extension companies often innovate faster, as well, which is why SketchUp is so flexible (I’m a big Extension fan).
I like the idea of people paying for only what they need.
Meanwhile, how do people get TIN models with imagery without SketchUp? Aren’t there paid options out there which could be converted and imported into SketchUp?
users of previous versions can obviously upgrade to the recent version… yes, no pretty ol’ operating systems or plugins.
I’m in exactly the same boat.
For me the thing that makes it unusable is that the 3D toggle no longer works. Only the 2D snapshot appears. There is no 3D terrain. I live in a mountainous region, and the 3D terrain was very helpful. None of the projects that I work on have flat sites.
The imagery seems similar to the way it was before. No complaints there. My problem is that there is no 3D terrain. Remember how you could toggle between flat terrain and 3D? Now it’s just gone. I even tried grabbing a location from the middle of Anchorage, and it was still just a 2D snapshot with no 3D option. If I find an alternative, I will certainly let everyone know.
Uh-Oh, @Ellen, I tried it and found the same results. I grabbed a slice of downtown Anchorage where C St becomes the bridge over Ship Creek, as it’s a popular geographical area where there is also a noticeable elevation change. It’s totally flat. I checked Layers, and there’s no Terrain Layer.
Oh, SketchUp… this is my hometown… Alaska is seriously bumpy, and if that particular slice of Anchorage doesn’t have terrain, then it seems unlikely anywhere in Alaska will have 3D terrain from SU. Not that the GE terrain has ever been accurate anyway, but it gave a rough start, at least, and that was always handy.
Ellen, do the USGS guys near APU provide terrain model data? Or contour lines, at least? If I teach a SketchUp class in Alaska this summer, this is probably going to come up. Please let me know if you find any workarounds from any source, paid or not.
I’ll look into that next time I’m in Anchorage.
Just to save people digging through that thread… The take away is that our terrain data does not currently exist above 60 deg north latitude. That unfortunately means there is not terrain data in places like most of Alaska, Northern Canada, Scandinavia & Siberia. We’re looking into data sets that will allow us to fill that gap.
Bryce,
I too have to respond and say the new “geo-location” resolution is pure garbage. I tried today to “grab” a location in downtown Los Angeles and the results were terrible. I ended up having to grab a screen shot from Bing and scale it to fit —throwing away the SketchUp result underneath.
I use SU everyday for the film and television business and this recent change is a big hurdle.
I’m in the film business in Los Angeles and we all depend on good resolution location data to plot our build sites. This recent change to the satellite imagery is a big bummer. I too will have to find a new workaround —and fast!
FYI the reason for that the max is largely controlled by the launch location such as Vanderburgh
Hello,
I am instructor of SketchUp at Middlebury. We have professional and Make licenses that we use in our computer lab for 30 students. I teach two sections a year.
Geo-modeling is the main activity I teach. The strength of SketchUp was that you could determine all the information about a building without being there.
The new satellite imagery is way too low resolution for Digital Globe. (I also teach remote sensing) You must either be losing a lot of the data or are paying for less than 50cm spatial resolution.
Last, we need the date and time of the imagery to determine heights of buildings. With the Google API, you could always pull it from Google Earth as a last resort. Now that we don’t even know what sensor you are using, it’s impossible to do this.
Please fix this big gap, I have already had to remove it from the two courses I teach in the fall.
I am using the same workaround, but I’m afraid I am losing a lot of accuracy.
I’m an architect in San Diego, and I’ve been relying on the geo-locate function for two things: sun data and terrain data. While the sun data obviously still remains the same, the terrain data is so loose and fuzzy that I can’t use it in my models anymore. This is a REALLY big deal; fine when the software is free, but not so fine when you pay $800 for it.
Since they knew this was coming down the pike ever since Trimble purchased Sketchup, they should have been spending their time either finding a suitable substitution, working out a deal with Google to continue, or simply not provide the terrain data in the first place. It was a very bad idea to simply use Google for years without planning for this transition. I guess they just assumed it would all work out, and you know what happens when you assume…
I just wanted clear up some of the confusion about the differences between imagery import from PlaceMaker and the imagery imported from SketchUp’s Add Location tool. This is regarding imagery only, not 3D terrain. PlaceMaker does not import 3D terrain data.
Below is an excerpt from the PlaceMaker FAQ.
PlaceMaker imports the highest resolution and most recent imagery available from DigitalGlobe. PlaceMaker’s imagery has a maximum resolution of 30cm per pixel while SketchUp’s Add Location tool (currently) has a maximum resolution of 50cm per pixel resolution which can only be achieved by using maximum zoom on a very small area prior to grabbing the location. SketchUp’s Add Location tool imagery has the advantage of being color corrected and post-post processed to remove haze. Unfortunately, this post-processing can negatively affect the sharpness of the imagery.
The biggest difference is that PlaceMaker is able to seamlessly import the highest resolution tiles available from DigitalGlobe over your entire area of interest while SketchUp’s Add Location tool can only import a very small area at max zoom level.
Maybe all you USA centric guys are spoilt…
I have never used Add Location for an serious terrain modelling in SU.
If I need an accurate site I go into google earth [pro is free] save images of the area of interest at highest res…
then take into SU and using a known distance or measuring one in Google earth I scale up the image to the matching dimension.
3D terrain in Google Earth is I think at 90 metre sampling so useless for any accurate site modelling and I think vertical error can be 3m either way if not more
so then it is a matter of survey plans and converting 2d contours into 3d mesh.
Not a particularly challenging process