Must be at least 20 years ago for me. I was working for a firm and had employed a draftsman to help me. We were using Autocad at the time and he introduced SU to me. It’s the intuitiveness that gets you. I could see huge uses for it in helping to work out and demonstrate tricky geometry that would be hard to draw off the bat in trad 2D CAD. At the time, I didn’t think it would replace Autocad in my workflow but about 10 years ago, I realized that some people in USA were using it for everything. I read some books by a couple of them and never looked back.
Although there have been some very useful improvements since the early days. the core software does not seem to have changed that much. You could see that as testament to how good the original idea and implementation was, but you could also say that development in later years has been a bit remiss. That is in part to do with changes of ownership I expect. AFAIK there is nothing that seriously competes with SU even after all these years, but I can see that there could be in the not too distant future.
The simple answer may be that it is not core. The software was developed in open format so that others could add refinements which would suit some but not others.
Back in the bad old days, when I used Autocad, I remember making a complaint much like yours. I was asked if I realized that what I was asking made complete sense - for architects. But as the vast majority of users were engineers, my requirements were likely to be drowned out.
So the question is always whether to make the software try to cater to everyone’s whims and end up with a hard to use, super-bloated program, or do you keep it simple but adaptable?
I think the functions I mentioned I suggested were quite simple and needed I think and don’t think it would bloat the program. I think the almost comic icons of old and extremely simple UI were made so simple to not scare away people inviting widespread adoption. I think they could be hidden in the way sandbox is. I am not saying you are wrong, I just assumed SU would be an almost usless for engineers?
Getting this thread back on track…
Back in the early to mid 2000’s I worked for a sheetmetal company that used Solidworks, Inventor, Autocad and Radan.
We had a supplier recommend Sketchup for it’s simplicity in creating concepts and presentations and I’ve never looked back. At every company I’ve worked for since, I’ve insisted they purchase a Sketchup license to run alongside whatever software they run.
I use it daily for floorplans, visuals and conceptual designs and I don’t think I’d ever want to use anything else.