The way it seems Double Cut works is that it generates the hole as a pushpull alike geometry, uses intersect faces, calculates what is inside the hole, copies or remembers it somehow and regenerates it later if the hole changes. This could be done with any “hole shape” or negative shape, as long as we can somehow understand what is inside the “hole” and store that somewhere.
It’s like a parametric boolean for solids and nonsolids.
I wouldn’t mind that this would work only with solids though.
He’s saying that compared to other 3D modeling software, the UI for SketchUp is much easier to understand.
And while there is always room for improvement, demanding that the UI change when you don’t fully understand the tool to begin with is not a great place to start. Lots of things in SketchUp are done specifically to avoid cluttering the interface, and changing them could take away from that simplicity that SketchUp excels at.
Never say never. If I can understand exactly what is needed or wanted I might be able to cobble something together that works and fills this niche. Email me more details and I will give it some serious thought this weekend. My interest is piqued.
Interesting - are these custom modified Flex Windows? They look great!
yeah… but 89.3% of Photoshop Pros use no visible tool icons on the screen at all. Only amateurs need buttons.
I do like the idea of hidden tool icons (flyouts) for SketchUp.
I also like the idea of Extensions menus that Pop Up/expand when needed so you need one button to activate the extension, and then the Extension’s toolbar is active until you’re finished using it. And if you want it active all the time you could “Pin” it to avoid it being hidden next time.
I think some extensions do this, but not consistently (and theyre usually on the wrong monitor or hiding behind some other window).
What if extensions could have their own slot in SketchUps tray menu?
or how about a Compact mode - ? Means less scrolling..
SketchUp’s trays do seem to waste a lot of screen real-estate compared to other software interfaces.
I get that Sketchup was originally a "my first 3d software’
But we have Web/Free/Education for that, and it has a different interface.
Pro can be allowed to be a bit more…professional-focussed?
actually since they made all the icons very minimalist a few years back, it’s not by choice but necessity really 
yes. that.
with QT in 2023, there has been a certain… dilatation of the toolbars and trays in SU. everything takes a bit more space, more padding. re-arranging stuff like you show would make it more compact yet still useful to work with
“I had no idea about the Ctrl + ‘-’ trick in 2-point arc mode. Super useful!”
I’m trying to find out how this trick works… does it enlarge or reduce the number of segments?
I don’t see anything happen when selecting and hitting Ctrl +…
I haven’t read all the way through this thread so I may be repeating stuff. Apologies in advance.
The three top requests are interesting. Layout Improvement is an obvious enough one. LO has become a lot better in recent times but there is still a lot that could be improved. A native bevel tool is also not much of a surprise given that it is something that is often needed.
Advanced Modelling Tools is more of a surprise to me. It smacks of bangs and whistles to me. Nice to have (for some) but hardly essential. I sometimes worry that developers actually like bangs and whistles because they can be quite exciting (Live Components, anyone?) and give resellers something to shout about. Maybe it’s just me, but something that makes doing the mundane easier and quicker is surely of much greater value in productivity terms? That has been achieved with the updated Flip tool and with the Copy function. It’s things like that that really float my boat!
Faster for me just to type what I want.
You type it in the measurements window? Isn’t that the only way?
You just type. Don’t click into the window.
You can click the short cut plus and minus thing and go by increments of one, but I usually go from 8 to 48 to 120 so it would be stupid to use the clicky shortcut.
Nearly 10 years old (?) but still relevant I’d say:
And this video by Matt:
I’m not sure I agree - out of 25 possible options, many of which have been discussed on this forum, it’s the 2nd most requested improvement after improvements to Layout. While it’s not something I personally would have picked, there’s clearly something there that the userbase feels is missing.
I do think that currently creating walls, then creating openings, then adding the things in those openings (doors, windows, etc) is pretty time consuming, especially if you’re a new user. Plus, then if you have to make changes, there’s a lot of manual work, so I do think there’s a place here for a more advanced toolset.
When I first created the Truss plugin back in 2015 I was just excited to be able to create some realistic trusses. There was no edit feature or parametric ability. I actually wasn’t intending on going too far with the thing, it was kind of a novelty at first. My first thought was, “Dang, this is cool.”. However once I realized that there was some potential utility and an actual need for this plugin I then also quickly realized that to make it useful it needed that parametric ability, without the ability to edit, it wasn’t much better than manual modeling .
The same holds true for walls with doors and windows. Inevitability you are going to want to move an opening, delete it or modify it in some fashion. Manually modeling a wall, especially with all the details like framing, trim, casing, sheathing, cladding, gypsum, blocking and insulation is already time consuming enough, but if you need to modify an opening in that wall after the fact it just becomes downright tedious. Hence parametric advanced modeling tools (ie. Extensions) almost become a necessity for an efficient and timely workflow. Why work harder than you have to? Also who really has the time to burn modeling all this geometry in a production environment? At least that is my thinking, work smarter, not harder.
I’m not saying my extensions mesh well with everyone’s workflows or that they are the best thing since sliced bread but compared to manually modeling all that geometry they do provide some obvious advantages.
This one in particular makes a ton of sense to me - there’s no reason for all this empty space to be in here, and it takes up a lot of the already limited real-estate on the side of the screen
Those are relatively low poly windows of my own creation. I was trying to remember when I first started making them, thinking it was 2007~8 ish. Hunting through my file, I found out the first one was dated 2003 and SketchUp version 3:
I agree, don’t fix it if it ain’t broken.
Kind of my beef with the new red and blue icons. I actually prefer the legacy look, there was nothing wrong with it.
