Sketchup Pro should combine Sketchup and Layout into one cohesive program. That would speed up workflows like crazy, instead of having to go back and forth and reloading and re-rendering, and being very sad waiting and waiting.
Also, in Layout is it possible to turn off anti-aliasing? I.e.: AutoCAD style? That way when we’re looking at vector rendered views in Layout it wouldn’t slow everything down to a crawwwwwwwllllllllll…
The concept of levels feels strange to me in Sketchup.
The concept of sections though, is another story. Levels are based on height. Sections could be based on their planes.
Instead of working on heights you’d be working locked to a plane (sections or faces). It would be only a matter of locking the orbiting with a toogle as we have for parallel/perspective modes and saving this state into a scene as a part of the broader camera settings properties.
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Related to camera movement:
orbit locking toggle via shortcut and icon and a saved state for certain scenes.
allow for more inferences to work well on edges and faces perpendicular to camera in parallel perspective mode.
Solve these two issues and we can easilly model in plan view, as we do in 2D software.
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i think people should remember that sketchup is used for many different things. Not just architecture. The plugin feature is a great thing to allowed built your software with only the tool you need. I wouldn’t like my sketchup to have a bunch of feature for a different field of work that not everyone need. Thanks God it’s not the case right now… and I hope Trimble keep it this way.
Maybe a new category for this forum should be created: Plugin request. that would clean a lot of request in this actual forum. I can imagine the nice endless reading sketchup team have to do while reading this forum.
Nicely put @JoeDrafter, it has been mentioned many times before that there is a huge difference between features and plugins. Unfortunately people continue to assume everyone wants what they want or in many cases have missed.
You can request plugins, and usually when explained well, and they appeal to a developer, they appear very quickly.
And that is as it should be.
The true beauty of SU is the core simpicity.
It works! It is easy to learn! It is difficult to Master!
Every extra feature adds to its complexity and startup time.
Plugins/Extensions add to the core, in a direction specific to the user.
There are many features of SU I would happily remove as I never use them and many Plugins I would Include as Core, but both those lists would never match anyone elses.
Consider carefully what your feature request entails and how important it is outside your sphere of influence. Check whether there is already a plugin that does what you want, or can be modified for your situation.
Make sure you know what is already available and understand that what you ‘need’ doesn’t always match what everyone needs.
All in all, for everyone thinking about a Feature Request, think about it.
Is it something for everyone or just something you wish worked just the way you want, have you checked if it is available as a plug in or even a built in thing you have missed.
Should your idea really be a built in part of the structure or is it something that works perfectly as a periferal tool.
Sketchup team should make their own policy and filter of the topic. Plugin developers could look at it for ideas too if they want.
How would a regular user decide what should be a plugin and what should be a feature?
I understand a feature like the floor level based modelling is exclusive for architecture, but thinking on it as a lockeable orbit tool makes it good for everyone.
So, even if a feature request looks specific, thinking about it in a global way, may lead to good things for all kinds of modellers and still keep sketchup “aparently simple” as “it aparently is”.
There’s a great difference between simple and simplistic, looking simple and being simple, between simple and basic or simple and fully featured.
Sketchup is simple in a lot of senses and very hard to use in a lot of senses too. It has a lot of features that are much better in SU than in other software because they are simple, but it has some features that work poorly because they are simplistic. It also lacks a handful of features in what regards to standard 3D modelling world stuff…
Why not both? However by adding too many, too specific concepts to the core SketchUp will much much harder to understand for new users. You can compare the SU interface to the one of Revit where everything (including features such as Design Options, Exchange Apps and Communication Center) is thrown at you at once. In SketchUp you start with a very simple program and add features as you go. That’s the whole concept.
Regarding the level feature I think you should create a new post and specify how you’d like it to work and what use cases it has and then a plugin developer might pick up that idea.
I was thinking how the concept of Levels could come to Sketchup based on the users fields.
Currently if we add a label on a model vertex in LayOut it will show the X.Y,Z coordinates from the origin point, so maybe if we could have more option in the Label menu (in Layout) to display the coordinate for the selected point (X,Y or Z) based on the location for the Axes in the selected Scene, then in Layout we could add our custom levels shapes to the scrapbooks which could contain a Label with Z coordinate tag (Z coordinate from the scene axes), then we could drag these scrapbooks on our SketchUp model and move the transparent label header for the desired point.
I’ve asked for that before. That is not a real change in Sketchup but imho a simple change in LO. I actually think the reference to scene axis is handy, but I do think there should also be possible to establish a value to subtract or add to the X, Y or Z coordinates of a point. I also think any on face point could be trated as a vertex when you reference it in layout so that we can get the levels of an horizontal slab, for instance, by picking any of it’s points and not having to search for a specific endpoint or edge.
Take a look here:
I love working with Sketchup, but feel like I’m being forced to move towards Revit 
Anyway, a couple things that would really help are:
Ex-Refs - for obvious reasons.
Layer grouping - as it would really help to toggle view on groups of layers.
Please don’t take this as a complaint.
There’s a new plugin Cross Reference Organizer, and from the same developer, Layers Organizer, which does both of the things you describe.
It choked on a huge model I tried it on (over 15 million edges, and 240 MB) - in the sense that it took a very long time to update a cross reference,
but did finish after about an hour - but works well and as quickly as File Import or component Reload on smaller models.
Search the forum for ‘Cross Reference’ for a recent thread by the developers, or go to http://lasuapps.com for more information.
The zoom is generally very smooth, perhaps you are missing some information on how to use the zoom? What exactly are you experiencing, maybe a tip might solve your sickness . 
New users have Make and Educate to learn on 
I would want them to remain simple, definitely.
Education is Pro with another license, it’s the same version really. Also new users don’t have to be hobbyists, the first time you use SketchUp could be at work with SU Pro.
The main program needs to stay simple and intuitive. This is what makes SketchUp great in the first place. That said there can be all kinds of complex features as long as they don’t get in the way of first time users. Advanced features could come as pre-installed extensions with no visible toolbar, like Advanced Camera Tools or Sandbox Tools do. This way it’s easy to just show the toolbar when the functionality is needed but it doesn’t distract new users from discovering the core functionality.
Menu ribbon, similar to AutoCAD or Microsoft.
Please No! I use Sketchup Make on a little laptop, I’m already struggling for real-estate, and even wish Trimble would move the menu bar into the tray. Sketchup needs to be many things to many people, and it needs to be simple to use and learn. I’d be happy if the 2018 version didn’t introduce new features, but instead fixed the outstanding issues.
I agree. I hate the ribbon.
there was a ‘Ribbon’ extension shown somewhere here in the last couple of days [ if you really want it ]…
over the years when this has been requested, the majority of your fellow Windows users have screamed NO…
I’m on a mac and would prefer the Team not wasting time on a Windows only Ribbon…
john
One of the things I love the most about SU is how it follows plain old simple UI conventions. You don’t have to get used to new menus or thing about what category something belongs to, it just uses what already exists and what works great! I wish the ribbon menu had never been invented.
I’m a Fusion 360 user and they did something which I think will suit most people to find their SketchUp command. I’ve paste link to a short video. Would love see that in SketchUp 2018.
