Well, I think we all agree user controlled fill colours as a native capability would be a good enhancement… however that is achieved… in practice for me I assign section fills in plans and sections by a default fill color and rely on specific independant 3d detail cutaways to explain materials , if I need to denote materials in general plans and and sections I just use text codes… and or separate the materials by tag and use “colour by tag” style… not ideal but workable… nevertheless putting up my hand for independent fill colour control… PS Skalp uses fill by tag and seems to work fine…not a programmer but it would seem simple to implement as the interface elements already exist , just needs a toggle to turn it on/off… then again SU development is pretty slow… now looking at “Snaptrude”
After start ditching Vectorworks and do all in SU & LO, this is exactly what I am looking for.
I believe Sketchup needs to compete with other cad giant such as Revit, Solidworks etc…
and this is a fundamental function must be capable of in order to be able to produce legitimate drawings.
Hi every one
I have used SKALP for 3 or 4 years.
Works BUT was
1/ very slow
2/ creates invisible Groups from slices (reducing a lot performance)
3/ Bugs very difficult to solve from time to time
4/ Section naming really difficult to handle
6/ Bad slow and difficult choice of hatching colors or textures
7/ …
I stopped
SKALP is not updated any more
I will not use Curlic plug in (works kind of the same)
COLOR / TEXTURE / PATERN (CTP) by TAG is obvious
- You never use more than 10 or 15 (CTP) on plans and sections
- If you have many layers that have same fill (CTP) you just need a TAG multiple selection to assign
- You need as well to be able to sort TAGS by (CTP)
That’s all there is to it.
The problem is that SKETCHUP native sections plans may not be designed to recognize the TAGS of the elements that are sliced …
To conclude, no improvements in SKETCHUP since a long long time.
I don’t think there is someone there doing any dev any more.
So I’m not expecting anything.
And I think SKETCHUP is bound to disappear
Trying hard to find a proper training on blender…
Best whishes
ok.
well, good luck on your endeavour,
cheerio.
That couldn’t be farther from the truth.
So long. I hope you find what you’re looking for elsewhere.
Hi Dave
Reading this thread, I’ve just installed Rhino … : fantastic, real easy to handle, precise fast much faster,
Cheap perpetual licence…
Interface is extremely clever, all tools can be accessed by menu, icons, side bar, shortcuts, direct command typing … !
Watched 2 hours of training on VisualARQ, just installed cant say yet but seems really easy and as intuitive as sketchup
It’s going to take some time to get rid of my habits, but seems really MUCH more efficient
Don’t know how and why I never tried
PS : Both have a 90 days of free trial …
I’ll tell you more in a week if you want
Regards
No need, thanks. I’m happy you’ve moved on and found something better for you but I’m not looking to change anything. We can just say good bye now.
OK Dave
“We can just say good bye now” …
Are you sarcastic ?
I Love sketchup.
I have used it for so many years (since version 8)
I’m very fast and efficient on all my project using it (not the best but for sure).
No harm, true that new features have drastically decreased after 2012.
I’m not the only one complaining.
And I have no time to start learning again etc…
Just letting you know that I managed to modelize very accurately my tiny last project within 3 hours in Rhino / Arq (geo localized etc…) whereas I was never able to do so in blender.
Good bye and best regards
I know several folks using Rhino. They often comment how I handle so many projects with such a high LOD. Rhino, while powerful is simply not fast or capable enough to produce what I want for my projects.
I do this by creating two scenes, one is the model with a simple white fill, the other is a Section Cut Face group that I use to design the inner layers of walls, paint or texture as I want, and add every little detail I need.
This method allows us to have simple up to 1:100 drawings, by using the view of the model only and overlay the section scene in Layout for bigger scales where you want to see details, hatches and colors.
You can even use LOD by using different styles (flat shaded or textured) and even tags for details that you turn on or off in a scene or directly in Layout layers.
The possibilities are limitless but there’s a lot of work needed.
Sketchup should definetely facilitate, but I don’t think I will ever loose the need to have a stacked viewport of the section group.
Ahhh forgot to say !
Drag and drop any SU file (library 3d warehouse) into RI
you get embedded or inserted block, RI trying as much as possible to convert meshed into volumes
No bug
I don’t think there is a post about a very details of other software should be appearred here, not related to your love with SketchUp. It’s just simple not a right place.
I’m approaching 60 also and I simply have no desire to change since I can produce so much with SU and LO with my current setup. It really comes down to workflow for speed. As I’ve stated so many times, the biggest problem people have with speed in LO is they vector or hybrid render entire models and try to have one document for an entire set. I rarely have a page render after a file update more than 30 seconds, simply because the portions I hybrid or vector render are limited to a section plane of isolated elements that render almost instantly. Everything else is raster rendered which prints beautifully on 24x36 format using mainly 1/4" scale.
The friends I know that use Rhino have been using it for many years and swear by it, but they simply cannot produce as many projects with as much detail in the same amount of time.
On the subject of fill color problem, I isolate specific scenes in SU where I want a different color to be achieved at the cut via a different styles. Walls are a dark gray, detailed elements like cabinets, doors, windows and trim are a different style with a light gray. These scenes are hybrid rendered and stacked over the raster rendered floor plan. The speed with this approach renders nearly instantly.
I’m glad my videos helped! Thanks.
yup, scene stacking in layout with various fill colours seems to be the workaround for now.
as for the field of view, in order to have “shallow” section not showing all the way to cornwall, an architect friend whose files I worked on a few times uses a plain white face.
basically like that. parallel to the section plan.
only visible on the scene it’s supposed to be seen.
I mean, it’s not stupid if it works.
I never use a sarcasm warning as it takes the edge out but another thing to hate the internet for is that many literary style features, including sarcasm, do not travel well over the wires or wireless links.
You can also use a hybrid method setting all tags to full transparency so the section cut is the only thing visible…aka “the Donley Method”
This method deals with visibility well, if that’s the user’s main concern, but creates a lot of unneeded geometry on DWG exports and heavier vector PDF’s if that matters to someone reading this thread.
I would use other methods if DWG is, somehow, an output users need.
@Sonder this advice isn’t directed to you, of course, but it’s directed to users that might be reading this thread and might consider using this method.
I like OP’s mock-up. If I could make the example section on the left with native SU without a multistep-Donley-workaround, that would be a dream come true.
You mean something like this? Not with SU native tools though - this was done using Curic Section extension.
Yes, I used Curic Section in my example too. I just agree that OP’s 5-rule mock-up would be able to do the same thing and that it would be nice to do it without an extension in native SU. Curic Section is great though.