Struggling with SketchUp or myself?

True. But people are here to help (I hope) and if there are specific problems you have you might get direct answers.
Although SketchUp was/is developed for the “building” industry, not specifically for machinery, I don’t agree with you that it isn’t accurate in that field for what you mentioned:

And do you know any machines that have such accuracy??

It is you who the precision is dependent on, and it is up to you to control the bloat. Draw by numbers. Purge.

SketchUp can display 6, but what is the practical difference? Do your builders know the difference of 1.999999 and 2.000000 inches? Contrary to what you claim, that is a millionth of an inch. If you click randomly, you get random dimensions, whatever the “precision”.

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Unlike you, I have mostly used CAD software consecutively, though I did use SU alongside AC for quite a long time. I have been using CAD almost since I started out on my own in 1988, so quite a long time. One thing experience tells you is that it takes a long time to get truly proficient. So if you are using lots of different CAD programs alongside one another, I would be surprised that you would have time to learn any of them in enough depth to use them commercially. But maybe you have superpowers!

Many of the people commenting here are highly experienced, long term, users of SU, and ones who spend a lot of time helping others who have problems. I don’t suppose any of them would bother replying if their feelings about SU matched yours. So you are barking at the moon.

As for the accuracy issue, I don’t think you can possibly mean what people have taken you to mean. I don’t know about engineering, but building rarely works to a tolerance of much closer than 5mm, so if my output is correct to even 1mm, I am overjoyed.

SketchUp is as precise as you ask it to be. It will draw anything to any measurement you type in. To several decimal points. If you don’t realize this it’s not the softwares fault.

Likewise, snapping is 100% accurate. If the inference shows you’ve aligned to a point or edge, you can bet the farm on it. If you’ve found otherwise i can guarantee there is a good explanation why, and it isn’t a shortcoming of sketchup.

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exept maybe for length snapping being on by default…

I was talking about inferencing, not length snapping. You left out the context :slight_smile:

SketchUp is incredibly accurate.

I use it to draw Glass Structures straight onto existing buildings modelled from Point Clouds and then I use Layout to detail the individual glass panels.

The panels often weigh 200kg or even more, a crane is usually required to lift them into place, and they always fit perfectly.

SketchUp is amazing.


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I understood that length snapping can interfere with inferencing, as in that when you have an inference lock, and you move your mouse ever so slightly while left-clicking you get a length-snap instead…
If not, my bad!

Me Too :slightly_smiling_face:

You will find a large number of user of SkethchUp who would find this opinion laughable, and you would find many counterexamples to your view in the work demonstrated repeatedly by people on the forum, and in the Gallery category.

Complete buildings for construction, town planning models, 3D printing models, detailed models of woodworking projects, mechanical engineering drawings, theatre set designs … Sketchup can and does do them all in experienced hands, some using Layout as well, others not.

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I bought the new “SketchUp to Layout Book and Course” just to improve in those areas…thank you for bringing that up!

If you need a little help check this out, it goes back to 2015 but he has established his work flow over decades. Maybe it is your limits that have held you back over the years you have been using the software ??

His name is Nick Sonders and with SketchUp and Layout creates multi-million dollar homes. Proof is in all his videos he freely offers for anyone willing to learn.

What you don’t know or can’t comprehend has nothing to do with your right to complain about what you don’t like about the software.

The videos are free and provide a enormous wealth of proven technics.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTKmwiTEdQ8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMtJ0GIbm3A

This thread is funny as I always struggled with the “precision”-doomed files imported from DWG. Often the files created by AutoCAD were drawn by people that ignore that they drew in 3D space and even a “supposed to be flat” plan has lines that are stretched in several z-levels because it is based on a point cloud drawing, or that the snapping inferences were faulty.

Now I hate files exported by Revit because they are uselessly heavy, the fbx export fileformat generates complex remeshing of simple cylinders (a nightmare) and Autodesk uses proprietary material shaders so the fbx can only import 1 material (I need to modify the materials with 3dsmax before creating an all-round fbx file). A simple wall or floor get split in tens of layers so modifying the geometry is nearly impossible in another software. I usually spend my time remodeling in SU all the models I get from my clients that were done in Revit. And no, I don’t want to spend 4000€ for a revit license just to move a wall or delete a window… :smiley:

Fusion360 is great for mechanical modeling, btw. But I agree that SU is veeeeery slow in development and that without the addition of the wonderful plugins/scripts from 3rd parties, it wouldn’t be my tool of choice.

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If the materials aren’t correct and you have to re-apply them anyway, you could try DWG or IFC instead of FBX as the go-between format. And ask your clients to use another detail level setting when exporting (to get rid of the unnecessary wall layers, for instance).

I’ve asked that thousands of times (lessen wall layers detail level, remove doors & hinges, remove lavabos, WC, fire hydrants, door / window handles, etc.) but I think that the level of knowledge of Revit isn’t the same everywhere… I tried DWG /IFC export, it’s good for cylinders export but you lose weither the compo/instancing or the materials. There’s no better option, you always lose something. But this is another story…

This is the level of work I get out of Sketchup. Ya, there are aspects of it I complain about, but there’s nothing I cannot model with it.

I’ve used microstation since the 1980’s. i tried Revit and hated it, and AUTOCAD is just Microstation in another guise (or many would say the other way round, but that’s it from my perspective). I was still trying to model in 3d in Microstation in 2004, and then stopped when i found SU. I took me a long time to realise that SU is actually more than accurate enough for anything i do, and while the projects i work on now are much smaller (houses rather than shopping centres and airports) but i can’t honestly understand criticism of SU for accuracy (?!). If you want 16 decimal places, use the SU “Chemical Engineering Template”. What’s that? there isn’t one? Maybe there is a message there…

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Absolutely correct. I have a short seminar that I run in architectural circles in my region and consistently shock professional architects as to the power and potential of SketchUp. Design, visualisations, AR, VR, council drawings, construction drawings etc Others are busy with 3D printing and CNC routing via SketchUp. A super little program…if only Layout could have some time import from the developers - it works but could be much better.