LAYOUT PETITION: Status: CLOSED - Trimble Response Posted May 27th

Commenting on this is a bit off topic but… I’ve used skalp for a long time, I have stopped using it for a simpler workflow… Still use it once in awhile though.

Except that the first Mustangs were under powered, and the solution to the power problem was to license the engine from the Spitfire. (One of my favorite stories from WWII history)

Actually, solving the problem by not re-inventing the wheel, and licensing the solution that already exists from elsewhere isn’t a bad idea. When Steve Jobs first left Apple, he founded a new computer company, NEXT, with the mission of making a system like the Mac that ran on a more robust OS based on UNIX. After years of Apple working on a complete rewrite of MacOS and reaching the point of disaster, they brought Jobs back, he threw out all the work they had been doing, and used what they learned at NEXT to build MacOS X on Unix.

My fantasy is that Trimble approach Todd Stanley and license PowerCADD in some way as the engine for SketchUp’s 2D companion. Todd is struggling to make PC 64 bit, and Trimble is struggling to get Layout’s feature set and speed even close to PC. Trimble got SketchUp through acquisition, why not a 2D package as well. Seems like a win-win to me.

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I don’t think you have to duplicate anything. Just send your SketchUp or LayOut output to AutoCAD or other drafting software that is fast and has the proper tools.

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Robb,

Or Alfred will make a bridge that will allow PowerCADD to use SketchUp or LayOut more directly.

(We could get booted from the forum for commenting on a third party solution).

Peter

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Yea, not a bad idea at all. Looking into partnering is often an interesting method to look into and could make sense if done right and done right with the right people. Although I doubt that will happen, looking at all the options is always a good thing. To me it should be about making the best products that a company can make first and foremost and sometimes that involves partnering due to capacity issues or other issues. Definitely an interesting idea.

Alfred said he did register with Trimble/SU as a developer, though his comment is that SU Team doesn’t know him from Adam, while on the other hand he’s already on a first name basis with the people at Form-Z.

I try to be careful and constructive with comments. For example, instead of saying “Don’t use Layout, use something else,” it’s more constructive to say “I really like this feature I use in another package, and it would be nice to have that feature here.”

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I do share some of the frustrations with LayOut. I have adapted my workflow to work within its limitations, I guess, so I don’t feel as much pain as I used to when I first started out. But I feel its limitations, definitely.

I’ve had contact with the SketchUp team in person over the years, and they are generally on the user’s side - many of them started off as users in the first place. They need everyone’s support and that’s how we’ll get a good product. Having had experience with them behind the scenes, the team’s approach is promising. That said, I don’t think they are supported enough by their parent company, Trimble.

Trimble is a big company, and if you watch this video of CEO’s talking about Trimble, you’ll notice how SketchUp barely features in their (25 minute) film. Sketchup is a strange fit into a company whose products are very much engineering based.

My guess is that the people high up in Trimble just don’t know what they have in Sketchup. Sketchup’s creative-leaning and small company customers are completely different to their other customer base, so they probably don’t even understand us! I would very much be up for drafting a letter to the CEO of Trimble, signed by as many users as possible to recognise what they have in SketchUp, and its potential. It’s those people who need to stump up the investment into developing LayOut.

So, I say yes for petitioning, but let’s pick the right person to petition. I would say the Trimble CEO, Robert Painter. And someone will need to be the contact in case they want to engage in conversation.

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Great comments @TommyK , thanks for pitching in.

Thank you to everyone pitching in their comments so far on this thread, whether you agree or disagree with certain things, it’s good to see the effort.

I suggest Mark Schwartz (sh)could also be addressed

I wonder if comparing Trimble (extremely selectively) with a hot ticket games developer and a state of the art hardware company is appropriate. I haven’t looked at the income streams and market valuation but I would guess we are in very different territory.

I read that Trimble, or at least their SU team, do read posts and keep abreast of what people are saying. I suspect that they would only take on board suggestions if they chimed with a current direction of travel and maybe the feedback they get from other sources. The forum must represent a tiny slice of their user base.

Really? Well, maybe, but you could say the same of Apple. And yet, despite the general superiority and reliability (ooh, I can hear the rumblings of avid PC users already!) of their kit, they are nowhere near toppling the PC/Windows market, no doubt partly because of cost and partly because it so hard to overturn established market penetration.

But hey, I am one of those who have complained about SU/LO shortcomings before. I do agree that a well balanced and positive criticism does at least have some chance of being taken seriously. I worry that those who are happy with workarounds and are averse to highlighting defects are just more likely to have to live with them forever.

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Owning the market is not something that is users would like anyway. A company that owns the market stalls development and increases prices.

I like SketchUp a lot and the current pricing is still fair.

Layout was made in Google’s time. SketchUp was a side kick app, layout was a sidekick for the sidekick app. It was conceived as a way to create simple 2D output for better presentations of SketchUp models. It was designed as an illustrator app with some CAD features like dimensions and labels. For fast presentations, mostly raster based, it was and still is enough.

However, it was these CAD capabilities, that made people like me look at SketchUp differently. With the small projects I had I decided I would ditch CAD altogether.

I did it and do not regret it. As my projects increase scale and complexity Layout is showing it’s failings.

Layout is fundamental for me and I would like it to work much better but I believe the team is aware of that.

However, changing Layout will probably mean changing a lot of things in it’s core functionality. It will also mean changing the way it’s toolset works to be on pair with how SketchUp works. That will take time.

So I agree with @TommyK instead of bashing Layout I would make a plea for Trimble to aknowledge how SketchUp is changing, how useful it is for us and how what Layout promises is central to this usefulness but also how Layout lack of polish is the main thing hindering our possibilities and, therefore, Sketchup’s.

Trimble is a huge company in AEC on specific fields.

They bought SketchUp for a reason. They invested in SketchUp web for a reason. They offer us Trimble Connect for a reason. They are investing on the concept of the constructible model for a reason. They are in the BIM side of things. That path is the opposite of the 2D Layout path. How can we make Layout fit on it? Why is it relevant for that path? Why is what Layout does still relevant today? How can Layout bridge the two worlds of BIM and traditional drawing documentation.

Layout lacks a vision that connects it to Trimble’s path. If we have it, then we should show it and forget about bashing which is not constructive and has lead nowhere up until now.

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This is a good point. I’ll chime in with a few words:

You can put all the effort into a BIM, but at some point it needs to be presented or output - its visuals AND information. LayOut is the perfect medium to do this for Sketchup. SketchUp would be a fun toy without LayOut.

In fact so much of the 3D BIM software (Revit anyone?) bangs on about how fabulously easy it is to build the model and most are woeful or complicated when it comes to presenting the information. There is a weakness in the market ripe to exploit.

Why is what Layout does still relevant today?

a) Don’t underestimate the power of paper. Most construction sites run on it, and it is the most direct way to get information about a 3D thing to the person building it.
b) As designers, it is our job to communicate relevant ideas to others - particularly technical information. Information needs to be filtered for particular audiences. LayOut is that filter. There would be too much noise in the model otherwise.

Sketchup helps us design out our ideas. LayOut releases them to the world.

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I am currently a non-avid PC user but at home I started with Macs in 1987 and was a Mac person until the arrival of OS X. By that time I had already been left out in the cold by Apple twice by their switching to a new hardware platform, and with OS X I would have had to start anew once again. With PC:s the hardware and software upgrade cycle has run much smoother. As to quality, one person’s experience is anecdotal, but I had four of my Mac’s motherboards replaced under warranty while (knock on wood) I have had no such failures with PCs.

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I can see your history would put you off Macs. I believe OSX is now 20 years old. I only swopped to a Mac about 10 years ago. I have had three iMacs in that time. So far, nothing like your experience.

I guess my reference to reliability also takes account of things like “everything just works” and reduced liability to viral attacks. You only have to read the many posts here from PC people who have problems installing SU or who have the wrong video card or wrong settings to know of the pain some suffer.

I have a number of computer industry friends. Most use PCs and would no doubt swear by them. But they partly use them because most of their clientele do and partly because when things go wrong, they have no problem putting them right. Maybe it’s a bit like a Model T Ford and a modern BMW. The Model T is much easier to maintain - if you have the kit and knowhow. But it’s more likely to break down in the first place.

But you pays your money and takes your pick. I may be lured back into the PC fold one day…

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layout can be sluggish even with simple vector graphics, there are known bugs with DWG export and the software doesn’ even make use of more than 20-30% of the CPU/GPU resources. I’m forced to keep to about 2-3 architectural drawings per LO file which is pretty boring. I might consider subscription once we can confirm the bugs are gone…

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Yes, agreed. I love using SketchUp but tread when it’s time to bring projects in to LayOut. Sometimes I can’t believe that LO is even part of the package. I often just get someone to do our 2D stuff in CAD and I export 3D stuff from SU because it’s so awful to use LO.

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I still use Layout to produce construction documentation and in all stages of my projects. I still require 2D and paper output and I’m still not using BIM in my everyday as most clients don’t even know what it is.

My point is not about me or the market that needs 2D output, my point is about the market that Trimble is trying to address and what’s the use for Layout in that market. Either Layout finds usefulness and meaning in that market or Trimble will not commit to it.

SketchUp has a lot of potential in that market. Layout just comes with Sketchup.

While my market is still 2D and paper based, the future of that BIM market seems closer than ever and it is a paperless and 3D model centric workflow.

Besides that, Trimble has been pushing towards features in Trimble Connect that are also capable of a 2D workflow integration with Tekla. Trimble Connect seems more inline with the future to me. I would honestly rather have a way to have Trimble Connect output standard 2D output, in a streamlined fashion, from a SketchUp model, than keep using Layout.

Layout is and will still be cool for some presentations, but I just wished I didn’t need to use it for documentation.

Of course if it changes deeply, it can even be linked with a Trimble Connect workflow. To have Layout as a fast, and streamlined, desktop documentation companion for Trimble Connect and Sketchup would be even better.

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PC 4 life simon…

Surely we must be travelling towards a world that is increasingly 3D, if only virtually. What does that mean? It means that as we get devices that are affordable, easy to use, reliable, powerful, and site friendly (in construction terms), so the necessity to have paper drawings will fade. I can imagine the day not far off where every site manager has his own tablet and can look at and interrogate a working “drawing”. Which will in fact be a working 3D model. That model will be a virtual copy of the real building but virtual. Components will have attributes attached that allow you to find out about specification.

This is not a dream. Much of it is possible right now and SU goes a long way to addressing it. The remaining problems relate to having the right hardware and the skills necessary.

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