Cute story…change the character’s name and he could be me! I’m with you. I have no need or desire to use SU on an iPad.
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The processing power of today’s handhold devices is great but you need a proper mouse and keyboard to model. Maybe you can plug those into the pad though. What is really needed for a pad to be a professional tool and not a toy however is the ability to run desktop apps. I’d rather see that than each and every professional software having to create and maintain a separate version for handheld devices. Also, we already have SketchUp viewer for simply showing designs during meetings and such.
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[quote=“MobelDesign, post:43, topic:26541”]
each desk has a Dell Precision desktop… …Archy also has a personal Dell laptop[/quote]
Since your ‘story’ is specific to Arcy’s setup, it would be helpful if you could ask him for model numbers 
There is nothing that a mouse can do that an Apple Pencil can’t also do (and sometimes more). Keyboards have been available for mobile devices for some time now. So it all really comes down to the software design. Just keep in mind that an app that robust isn’t developed overnight, so working on it now would be to their benefit if they don’t want to fall behind, since other companies like Shapr3D, uMake and AutoDesk already have powerful mobile apps out.
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Very funny.
I don’t remember which models he has, but I’m sure they’re much more powerful than iPads, whatever they are.
if a tiny device with a digitizer stylus pen is desired, wouldn’t be e.g. the MS Surface Pro the already available answer?
Additionally with up to 16 GB RAM (iPad Pro: fix 4 GB) and a intel Iris Plus 640 graphics roughly twice as fast as the iPads GPU.
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How old are they? (your best guess)
The new 10.5 iPad pro is actually faster, and has a much, much better screen (120Hz, much brighter, and has a better color gamut). Apple and MS keep going back and forth with who has the best.
Nope, the new iPad Pro has a 12 core GPU. The benchmarks are even higher than some Macbook Pros. You must be thinking of the older iPads.
The story said:
but I don’t know which year of the future the story is written in.
As I said above, it looks exactly like a MS Surface, but doesn’t come with a keyboard.
Instead you need to buy it separately for 160US.
However it (Smart Keyboard) is the same kind of low profile keyboard (but lacks the touchpad that the Surface has.)
It works with a pencil (99US) which also may need to be purchased separately.
I do not see any USB connectors for mouse, but all models have Bluetooth 4.2.
They are 10.5" and 12.9", so as big (or nearly) as some MacBooks.
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I am not a “Mac person” (and never will be.) I’m not advocating,… just being understanding.
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This thread (and feature request) is not at all about “the already available answer”.
And, being a Windows geek since Windows 1.0 (and before that the original 4.77 MHz IBM PC with PC-DOS… remember this days?) … yes, I’d choose a Surface (if I thought they were worth the money, but I don’t. I would buy some other touchscreen detachable notebook instead.)
But this thread isn’t really about my choice of Windows platforms. It’s about whether Trimble should translate their code to iOS, and if so, how would it be deployed.
Since it (the iPad Pro edition) has an optional keyboard, and I know people who prefer pen-like pointing devices (I remember even I used a cheap pen mouse with AutoCAD back in the mid-90s till I wore the button switches out.)
So I can understand why Mac lovers would want a portable SketchUp edition for the iPad Pro.
But, understanding the Mac end user’s point of view, doesn’t mean I advocate that Trimble should do this “just to keep up”.
In fact, as a policy, they’ve never tried to “keep up” with AutoDesk or even any of AutoDesk’s individual products. SketchUp has been called “the UNCAD”. The workflow, the keyboard shortcut system, etc., was purposefully designed to be different than that of the traditional CAD products. This is part of SketchUp’s design philosophy.
Anyway, … if the number of iPad Pro owners out of the total number of SketchUp licensees gets to a point where it economically makes sense, then they could implement an iOS edition.
But “economically” means that the cost is paid for down the road somehow. Firstly it should not be too expensive, to translate the core Objective-C or the my.sketchup code to iOS code. (I’d think the latter would be quicker and simpler.)
If the cost is offset by desktop SketchUp Pro licenses (even if it’s given free to Pro licensees,) and this helps increase licensee sales, and therefore encourages the application support,… I’d not complain (even though I’d not personally benefit.)
But I am not in favor of just implementing this free for all, just to “keep up”. I’ve seen a multitude of companies and CAD clones who tried this, disappear from existence.
If it is economically feasible for a paid iOS app for anyone, (regardless of desktop licensee,) and these sales offset enough of the development cost, then again I’d not complain either. (Perhaps this route of a paid app can give desktop licensees a discount, ie the 2 licenses are “bundled” into one price?)
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+1
Dan, I wish there were a “double-like” button, or something more satisfying than just “liking.”
I consider this an excellent, informed, balanced response, and to all poor forum-browsers stumbling through my rambling posts in this thread, feel free to forget everything I said and consider Dan’s post my exact opinion 
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the panel of the Surface 4 produces 140% of the sRGB spectrum beating the iPad Pro with 122%, modeling outdoor the 477-nit display of the iPad Pro might be helpful but the 396-nits of the Surface are not really far away.
nope, the Iris Plus 640 card pushed to a phenomenal 109,678 on the 3DMark Ice Storm unlimited test vaulting over the 52,353 from the 12-core GPU of the A10X. Multiple cores are in general not everything, clock frequency and internal architecture is important too.
keyboard and connectivity of the Surface is better and being limited to 4 GB RAM with the iPad Pro is not nice though, but pricing is cheaper.
same for the Surface.
same for the Surface.
evaluating the development for an additional and likely less performing platform (sales wise) as e.g. iOS (or Linux) does obviously not happen in an ‘airless room’ but considering the already available (main stream) platforms. Being aware of this, production ready systems (aka the answer) already covering the demand for a mobile device (aka the real question) is surely relevant for Trimbles decision finding.
You are looking at the old iPad Pro with the A9X. The new A10X processor is a whole new ball game. The new iPad Pro has ProMotion and a 120Hz display, which is literally 2 times better than the ms surface (which is only 60Hz). The surface doesn’t have ProMotion technology or even anything close to it. As far as the color gamut goes, while (as you mentioned) the surface uses the old sRGB, the iPad Pro uses the new DCI-P3, which covers 25% more colors than sRGB does. It’s worth noting that high-end monitors and 4K UHD TVs that support DCI-P3 technology often costs around $1000.00. TV manufactures started supporting DCI-P3 around a year ago for their highest models. The surface still uses the old sRGB spec. But what about screen brightness? That’s where the ‘nits’ spec comes into play. As you mentioned the surface has a nits brightness of 396. However the iPad Pro has a nits brightness of 600, again, almost two times better. So I guess I should thank you for proving my point
That’s a bit of a red herring because the 3DMark benchmark is used only for gaming, and SketchUp is not a game. Also just because a device scores higher in arbitrary benchmarking doesn’t mean it will be faster with real-life tasks. Regarding the more cores of the new iPad Pro vs. the ms surface, a single-core CPU can only perform one single task at a time. This is where multi-core CPUs come into play. For software like SketchUp multi-cores allow multiple processes to be run at the same time—increasing your performance. Having more cores is more important (for 3D modeling performance) than hyper-threading. They are not so important for gaming, but for a 3D modeling program like SketchUp more cores would be very important.
Another red herring. The iPad Pro uses iOS (mobile apps developed in Swift) and the surface uses full windows. For multi tasking in windows having more RAM is important, but a mobile OS like iOS uses RAM much more efficiently, and 4GB is close to overkill. If the iPad Pro ran OS X instead of iOS then your point would be noted, but here it’s comparing bananas to apples (no pun intended). This has to do with the fundamental difference in the way windows handles memory for programs, and how iOS handles memory for apps. iOS doesn’t use Java. Windows does. Because of this windows needs to perform a task called ‘garbage collection’. This is where the memory gets recycled once it’s used. It requires over 4 times as much memory in order to perform the garbage collection process, so memory use isn’t as efficient in windows as it is in a mobile OS like iOS.
nope: iPad Pro vs. Surface Pro: Which Is Best for You?
nope: iPad Pro vs. Surface Pro: Which Is Best for You?
comparing the OpenGL output, regardless if benched with a 3D Game or a 3D Modeler, enables surely a rough performance comparison of one GPU in relation to another.
The A10X of the iPad Pro is a triple core CPU (with 3 additional helper kernels not used for high performance tasks), the intel Core i7-6650U of the Surface Pro 4 is a dual core CPU.
nope, 3D modeling operations are serial by nature, therefore multiple CPU kernels won’t help anything for modeling operations of every common 3D modeler as e.g. the recent SU (rendering raster data is another thing).
Important is the free working memory in connection with the working memory SU needs to load and handle a model, which is likely to be a similar amount across the different platforms because always e.g. the same file format needs to be used. With the enhanced multitasking of the upcoming iOS 11 this will tend to get more important anyhow.
the Windows kernel does obviously not use Oracles Java programming language, internet browsers may use JavaScript… a completely different thing.
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If the Ipad were 50x more powerful @ 50% of the cost, I’d be curious. But NO ONE mentioned the main thing — the interface between my brain and the screen/file. How can Sketchup be useful without proper keyboard+‘mouse’ ??
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I use SketchUp just with a trackpad, and even without there being good trackpad support I still manage. If there was good trackpad support, like being able to pinch and zoom, pan or rotate, just with finger gestures, those would all apply to an iPad version too.
The tools could be done in a way where you could have a pop out menu for all tools, but also have your most used tools as buttons on screen all the time. So, instead of clicking on a tool or typing a shortcut, you would touch the button of the tool you wanted.
I think being able to pan zoom and orbit with gestures on trackpad would be a nice thing, even if an iPad version didn’t benefit from that.
As you’re a sage, and experienced, I’m sure you mean what you say, but for me, using SketchUp professionally, though I suppose I could survive with a trackpad, it would lose me a lot of money. The speed and fluency achieved with a trackball and 3D mouse are, in my mind, unbeatable.
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It’s true, I’ve never been professional at this stuff! And I will certainly concede that doing a complex model may benefit from a multifunction mice.
I am also world class when it comes to operating trackpads!
It would be interesting to break down a particular action, to show how you would do it in a multifunction mouse, how in a space navigator device, a two button mouse, a trackpad, etc. Even Wacom tablets.
I recently did get a 3D SpaceNavigator, and it’s a neat device, but it doesn’t feel like more than I can do with gestures, if SketchUp could support them.
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Nope. They don’t even have the correct specs listed.
That’s like trying to compare between two sports cars, racing them on different racetracks with different drivers. Different benchmarks focus on different aspects of the CPU. Prime95 in benchmarking is CPU stress testing, Cinebench tests both GPU and CPU tests, where the CPU is tasked with rendering parts of a large image. Geekbench is another CPU benchmarking tool, which provides a single overall score derived from multiple smaller tests, including JPEG, PNG decoding, SHA512 and BZIP compression and Twofish encryption. There’s also SiSoft’s Sandra which is a great way to test memory. WebXPRT benchmarks browser, social media and HTML5. There is also PCMark08 which gives better real world results. The point is that a person would only use the wrong benchmarking tool to show “this or that” if they were disingenuous or had an agenda. It would be similar to a car tire salesman trying to sell someone new tires, just because the air gauge showed their tires were low in air. In 2008 Nvidia famously claimed that high-end quad-core CPUs were overkill using the wrong benchmarks. There are many different categories of benchmarks such as mainstream, web, gaming, and niche. There are also many types of benchmarking, including component benchmarking, kernel, synthetic, I/O. Database, tool (CAD), and parallel benchmarks to name a few. Improperly using the wrong benchmark to serve a certain agenda is unethical. Also benchmarking should be used to test aspects of a device that a user would actually use, and not aspects that a user would not be using.
It’s still a mathematical representation of the surface of an object. While processing may be single threaded, rendering performance is greatly maximized by multi-core CPUs since rendering 3D is a processor-intensive job. For example; a Intel Core i7-7820X Processor would be an excellent processor for 3D modeling.
We were talking about comparing both devices regarding memory usage. The iPad Pro (iOS) does not use Java, and doesn’t need to perform the GC task. It uses ARC which is much more efficient. Windows may not use Java but many of its applications can use it, and the GC process would be used. According to the company that makes Java, it is found on over 850 million PCs. Since iOS is developed in Swift you’ll never see Java being used. GC needs lots of headroom to operate making it inefficient. Also, in iOS memory which is being infrequently used is automatically compressed. This frees up even more RAM and makes its usage on iOS devices even more efficient.
It’s already more powerful than many PCs. Wait a few years if you want it 50x more powerful.
It has a built-in keyboard, and works with any bluetooth external keyboard. The Apple Pencil (their stylus) does everything a mouse does and more, plus it’s more intuative to use.
nope, they do list the correct specs resp. which spec exactly is wrong?
Not everything that limps is a comparison. The 3DMark is a benchmark benching mainly * huh * the 3D graphics rendering performance (GPU&CPU)… improperly using the wrong argumentation to serve a certain agenda is inappropriate (“unethical” …you’re kiddin’).
sure, you’ve got it.
Multicore modelling was promised by the developers of, for instance, AutoCad and 3D Studio when the first Pentium processor was released, with support for multiprocessor motherboards. More than 25 years later, we are still waiting.