How many users does the SU community have? (potential number of freelancers for project work)

Hi,

I wonder how many freelancers I potentially might find in the SU community for remote project work. How many users does the SU community have?

Best

Are you asking about freelancers for extension development? Or do you want to know how many SketchUp Pro users might be available to do some freelance modeling work?

I want to know how many SketchUp Pro users might be available to do some freelance modeling work.

OK. Then this doesn’t belong in the Developers forum. I’ll move it.

I expect you’ll need to provide some details about the project before you get much in the way of takers.

It’s basically about drawing & extruding up to 50.000 houses / buildings.
The drawings are based on previously scanned “2D emergency floor plans”.

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Is that 50, or 50 thousand ?


And site statistics are at the bottom of the “About” page …

https://forums.sketchup.com/about

50 thousand

Okay, what format is this data in ?

Sounds like a job for one of @jimhami42 (Jim Hamilton’s) scripts.

Input format could either be flat image (file from scanned paper plan, or photo taken, or .PDF) Probably not very often clean CAD files from the Architekt himself.

Output format from SU not fixed yet, because post processing systems are not properly defined yet.

I suspect that you asked the wrong question, because the actual number of potential SU users is very likely to be far more than you could put to work. I suggest you identify what it is you want to have done (even if only in broad terms) and indicate a proposed time frame and potential remuneration. You will probably receive more offers than you can easily field in short order.

Keep in mind that a detailed inquiry will result in more cogent responses.

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Probably thousands of freelancers in general and upwards of a few hundred on this forum alone.

However as much as I would like to take your money, the job you are describing sounds like it could be automated or scripted at least, probably by one clever person rather than lot’s of people manually importing images, tracing and extruding.

Even a conservative estimate (if you have all of your images or resources organised perfectly):

  • 1 building every minute (including importing image, building, saving file and organising)
  • 60 buildings per hour
  • 480 buildings per day
  • 104 days for 50k buildings

Average day rate $200+ gives you something over $20,000 for the project!

I would try some sort of automatic tracing to get vector graphics. I don’t know if the trace feature of illustrator can be used in some sort of macro. Once vector data exists it should be possible to extrude it automatically, given all ceiling heights can be made the same.

Btw, for formatting numbers in a unambiguous way, BIPM recommends a (thin) space is for digit grouping, neither a dot nor a comma as they are both valid decimal markers. (See section 5.3.4 https://www.bipm.org/en/publications/si-brochure/section5-3.html)

50k houses is a lot! Surely, many of them will have floor plans that repeat? Or do you really mean 50k unique plans?

WinTopo Pro (incl. batch processing) might by an interesting option to convert raster formats to vector-based DWGs.

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Hi,

thanks a lot for all your replies!
I will definitively come up with a propper requiremnts document - promised.
I just wanted to sound the community out on potential interest.
As it will be a mixture of “plain modeling” and “scripting”, where shall I post the project request later on?

Yes, the project will handle 50k different “buildings” - more precisely “hotels”.
The level of detail will probably be as sketchy as rescure floor plans are:

  • no interiour
  • only outlines (rooms outlined by a wall)
  • no doors (just “open wall”)
  • no windows (just “open wall”)
  • the individual floors piled to one “sketchy building” at the end

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