Sketchup 2019 Feature Requests

Trimble have a higher revenue, maybe they could buy Autodesk?

2 Likes

Hah, I would rather autodesk take over because they basically give away everything for free too students.

Autodesk offers free student license for almost all their products, all you need is college email. They apparently do not check if you are still in college so I still have free access to all their products. 5 years now.

Its actually a genius marketing strategy because everyone becomes ‘dependent’ on autodesk products and autodesk remains #1 in US

Hi RLGL,

Yes, I’m aware of this SU-VIDEO TUTORIAL & this workaround, however its exactly that. Not too keen on messing around with my layer system, but a workaround all the same. Checkout other SU tutorials on my YouTube channel.

Over & out,
CJT1963

There are some boxes that could easily be put into a toolbar alternative to clean up the screen. For instance Soften edges, entity info, Layers as a drop down etc can just have a toolbar equivalent. Also, put I plus sign where the scenes will be to easily add the 1st scene instead of having open up a window. That would just leave materials and components windows . Then make the colors/materials a native Sketchup UI element and then have something similar to the web based Sketchup with palettes that autohide on the side that pop out when you hit the side with your mouse like Autocad .

The colors has to be integrated into Sketchup. For materials and for adding text, using the Mac colors ui, creates a very clunky process.

1 Like

…like SketchUp on Windows. :wink:

Zoom automatically scales to the open component. There are soooo many times that I open a kinda small component. If I am not careful to be hovering over that object, before zooming in/out, it will zoom at the scale of the entire model which is usually waaaayyy too fast for the little component.

Also add a “hide rest of the project” setting under component edit. That way if your component has multiple parts, you could hide the entire model but see the parent component/group. This would end up being the most used view for me.

Yes or like Windows :slight_smile: Give Mac users some love

Non destructive subtractive modeling. For instance you could add a cube that was a semi-transparent color which when moved to overlap another model it would non-destructively subtract a hole. That cube or whatever shape could be moved at anytime and the hole would move with it. This would be great for adding doors, windows or just things that you want to cut full holes. You would include the subtractive model in the window or door etc… block. The subtractive geometry would have a setting for what layers it would subtract from. That way it would not subtract the window/door geometry on layer0 but would subtract from the wall layer.

1 Like

I started a “pre feature request” thread on this a couple of years ago.

Some of the replies are hard to understand because one contributor to the thread - who did valuable stuff - decided to take his marbles and leave the forum - after deleting ALL his content!

1 Like

Yeah, there are multiple aspects of SketchUp’s UI on Mac that users have complained about for years to no avail. The Materials window (which is really just a patch to the macOS color chooser) is at the top of the list. But regarding the pop-out palettes, be careful what you wish for! The easiest way to provide that would be to abandon the desktop UI for both Mac and Windows!

Yea I am just making my yearly request. Maybe some day they will listen :frowning: I kinda wish that Adobe would buy Sketchup. They need a 3d modeling program and Adobe does a great job of keeping Windows and Mac versions in sync and adding new features. I feel the main problem is a lack of support from Trimble for Sketchup. At least that’s my conspiracy theory.

1 Like

Oh geez. Yea programs like Fusion 360 and Unreal Engine have non-destructive negative geometry. It would really fit well with Sketchup simplicity. Yea it could be part of the solid tools and just call it the “Negative” tool or something. Then you could pick the group and turn it into a negative and maybe a window would pop up to pick which layer or layers it subtracts from. It would be soooo useful and would help maintain solids. They would probably need a view setting to show or hide negative geometry too. Or it could be part of the hidden geometry but just a different color. I would prefer a different setting.

My impression is that Trimble actually provides a lot more support to SketchUp than Google ever did. The issue is that their priorities about where that support goes are very inscrutable and rarely include updating the Mac GUI.

2 Likes

Yea I do not get it then. Maybe they need to reduce the funding unless they start adding new compelling features? Maybe they are getting way too comfortable then and just sitting back thinking of 3 things per year that they can fix. Ok new conspiracy theory :slight_smile:

If you read through the latest “future of SU” thread and possibly check out Trimble’s websites - you may come away with a different impression that they are much more likely to have quite ambitious plans for SU as part of their overall strategy.

2 Likes

Where would I go for that?

Forum thread - [Sketchup Pro Future? ](http://Sketchup Pro Future? )

Trimble link - https://www.trimble.com/

Contextual keyboard shortcuts – i.e. allow duplicate shortcuts – or combine certain shortcuts in the preferences menu, such as flipping:

Keyboard shortcuts are not allowed to be shared by 2 functions, even if they would never conflict.

For example, I would love to have a keyboard shortcut for Flip Along > Red Axis, which I could use for items, groups, and components alike.

But there are actually separate shortcuts: Flip Item, Flip Group, and Flip Component. 3 contexts * 3 axes = 9 different shortcuts. Flipping geometry is a common action, & a keyboard shortcut speeds it up a lot.

I tried manually editing the preferences file but the duplicate shortcuts were reset by SU.

3 Likes

I think allowing the same shortcut to numerous different commands could be quite problematic, and automatically checking winch ones exclude each other could be rather difficult to do.

What could perhaps be done is to internally identify the the shortcut target by something other than the name path to it. This would allow for the shortcut system to view two exclusive, similar commands as one and the same, and have the shortcut trigger which ever is available at the time. It would also allow for shortcuts to work regardless of what version you launch SU in.

In practice this would mean “Edit/Item/Flip Along/Group’s Blue”, “Edit/Item/Flip Along/Component’s Blue” and “Redigera/Objekt/Spegla längs/Komponenten är blå” all are regarded the same, and gets triggered by the same shortcut.

Another benefit by not identifying commands by their name internally is that the names can be rephrased, e.g. be corrected in the translations, without shortcuts stopping to work. For instance the Swedish phrase claiming the component is blue could be corrected.

1 Like

this could be achieved if arrow key ‘Flip Along’ functionality was added to the ‘Select Tool’ active selection…

i.e. Select ‘object’ >> Up Arrow for Flip Along Blue, etc…

john