The reliability and overall future of Sketchup plugins:

SketchUp Pro
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Hey everyone, please read the 2 paragraphs immediately below and if you’re not interested in giving feedback, no worries, thanks for your time:

There are many things that need a big update within sketchup natively that I can see, I think that the plugin developers are what hold this company on its shoulders for serious users who are most likely professionals and seek efficiency in their design workflows and therefore I think the future of sketchup for professionals is based on the plugins available to sketchup users and the incentive for plugin developers to continue developing and do more updates more regularly than they have.

I’d like to share three major problems I see that relate to plugin development and was hoping to get the feedback from the community and it’s developers on what they think about the concerns I’ll share below. I think some housekeeping is in order and I hope that this thread is considered by developers and taken seriously. The concerns I’ll share below are in part a continuation in my efforts to make sketchup better, stemming from the original thread I posted about the layout petition. LAYOUT PETITION: Status: CLOSED - Trimble Response Posted May 27th

1.) Duplicate plugins creating a mess and most likely having a damaging impact on developers incentive to develop quality plugins:

Why this is a problem:

  • Duplicate plugins makes a messy ecosystem of plugin options for new users looking and veteran users

Impacts of fixing this issue:

I think if plugin developers could be more thoughtful on what they choose to develop and base their creations on the plugins that already exist, the plugin stores would be purged of duplicate plugins that do the same thing as another and I think this would give more incentive to develop more quality plugins for sketchup. I also think that this would make it easier for new users and veterans to navigate these plugin stores to find just what they need and not seeing duplicates of plugins that do basically the same thing or have very similar tools within the plugin that another plugin tool already does.

3.) Plugins that should be merged with other plugins or old code given to other active developers to continue developing:

Another way to purge the plugin stores of duplicate plugins, would be if there are plugin developers who have retired mostly or completely from creating plugins for sketchup; I would wish that the very useful plugins out there of which are still very useful but haven’t seen an update for 5+ years, could be given to another developer who is active in the community and taken over to continue being developed.

3.) Many plugins that haven’t been updated in 5+ years:

Why this is a problem:

I feel as though this is mainly the fault of the sketchup team and not taking control or incentive and prioritizing how to overcome this issue. Because of this, I think this has created a lack of incentive for developers to continue developing at a steady pace and not letting plugins go un-updated or undeveloped for 5 years +. There are so many plugins out there in sketchucation or extension warehouse that haven’t been updated in nearly 5 years, that alone is a concern for the future of sketchup plugin development for me and it makes me nervous as a user who relies on sketchup when I see nearly a hundred or more plugins that haven’t been updated in years.

Here’s why I think this has happened:

  • There is no place directly on the sketchup website that highlights the most powerful plugins out there and shows the true efficient potential of SketchUp to new users.
  • Plugin developers are also not highlighted directly on the sketchup website, again making it hard for new users to understand the true power sketchup has with plugins.

Impacts of fixing this issue:

If sketchup would have a place on the sketchup website that showcased the true potential of plugins and highlighted it’s developers, this would bring in more new users into sketchup increasing it’s popularity and increasing sketchups revenue and abililty to hire on more staff to get more done with their products in terms of internal development, more people would now know how powerful sketchup really was to them and by highlighting developers more and doing it directly on the website, the financial resources of developers would increase and give them more incentive to develop more plugins and do updates more reguarly, perhaps hire employees to help them develop plugins, etc, bascially boosting the potential for more plugins to be developed, updated and maintained.

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I wouldn’t like to pay more for SketchUp in order to put in place an useless plugin censorship system. I won’t buy a Mac, either.
BTW, age and usability don’t correlate when talking about tools. I use some simple plugins that are more than 10 years old and fulfill my need quite well. My hammer is probably 100 years old.

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Interesting feedback. I don’t think I mentioned creating a censorship system, just instead pointing out how unorganized the development of plugins is and how it could be purged and how changes could be made to benefit everyone that uses sketchup.

I think that if there are almost a hundred or more plugins on these plugin stores that haven’t seen any updates in 5+ years, doesn’t that speak to the overall incenctive that plugin developers have to create and update there plugins more regularly? I don’t see this issue with a cutting edge platform like blender, this is why I think this also largely has to do with the lack of sketchups involvement and marketing campaign to keep incentive high for developers. A plugin that hasn’t seen an update in 10+ years might be super useful still, I definitely agree with that, but when one finds tons of plugins that haven’t been updated in years, it just goes to show the lack of motivation that developers have to contiunue updating plugins and making them even better.

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“Organizing” and “purging” would probably mean limiting development to licensed plugin developers only. If that is not censorship, what is?

Essential Meaning of purge

1 : to remove people from an area, country, organization, etc., often in a violent and sudden way purge a country of an ethnic group = purge an ethnic group from a country

Some people endorse Blender, but does anyone model with it? In the numerous posts in this forum showcasing the wonders of Blender, not one model displayed was created by the poster in it. Either it had been modelled in SketchUp, or it was a generic “great architecture” model that has been circulating the Internet for decades, probably created in early 3D Studio.

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Well I think being creative for a moment there is more than one way to tackle something. Many of the duplicate plugins could be purged if as I mentioned, plugin developers could be more mindful of what already exists and tried to develop their plugins accordingly so as to not create another plugin that basically does the same thing as another that already exists. Existing plugins that are decades old could be merged with other plugins so now we could have 1 plugin to download instead of 2 and as this problem compiles, you get what I have, around 300 plugins and 800 tools within all plugins I’ve downloaded roughly. Sure would be nice to have way less plugins than I currently do and would have saved me a lot of time trying to find all of these different options. I think more plugins should host more tools than they do to help cleanup things in the plugin stores, or merge plugins, etc. For plugin developers who are serious about developing for sketchup, they could very carefully consider how each plugin they develop could be added onto in the future or specifically what tools do not exist and are needed so as again to avoid more duplicates. I could think of many solutions right now on how to do this and organize this and I’m confident if sketchup provided a better way to shocase plugins, rally plugin developers into more meetings with the sketchup team (which I believe is in the works) and setup a guide of ethics for example or best practices for developing plugins, we could be a lot more organized in this regard, all of us. Do you disagree? The development of plugins is sort of a jungle, it’s great in some ways, and unorganized in others. Seeing more of an effort to clean things up would be great. Pretty sure everything needs a bit of house cleaning from time to time and it would be nice to see that happen with some of these points I’m making.

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Yes. What you advocate cannot be done without forcibly removing people’s creative work or, in the case of merging it with others, violating their intellectual property rights. Are you also wanting to ban SketchUcation? It is in no way in the control of the SketchUp developers.

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Wow, pretty dramatic comments there. You must be having a bad day. I don’t think I ever implied to do any of the things you’re talking about here. I’m just pointing out that things could be a lot more organized than they are. I know a few developers who are major in the developing of plugins for sketchup who agree on some points, this is also partly why I raised this post is to get people thinking. Your feedback so far from what I’m reading is based on assumptions of what I’m thinking here, I’m just pointing out some flaws and saying it would be great to get them figured out via brainstorming, open disucssion, etc.

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Thanks for contributing.

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Agreed. Plugin age is not the issue. Nor are the number of similar/identical ones. Compatibility is. Wordpress has many similar plugins and each have pros and cons. They solved this by creating a testing and compatibility process. I feel Sketchup could easily do so (if it even has a future). Essentially it is a “Last updated on xxx and tested with xxx version”.

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Maybe it’s just me, but I think that a large number of plugins going untouched for 5 years or more all over the plugin stores, might have something to do with incentive. 5 years is a long time… Is that crazy to think that? Ironically, your comment “if it even has a future” showcases that too even though you do agree with Anssi there. Mabye it is crazy to think that and I’m missing something? I’m also not sure why having plugins out there that do more or less what 1 or even 2 or 3 other plugins do, I’m not sure how that can be a good thing, maybe in some odd scenarios, but certainly some cleaning up of this would be a good thing I think.

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Maybe it’s just: If it ain’t broken, don’t fix it!!

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Yea, I appreciate that devils advocate point of view, I guess I’m always trying to improve things, which to me I think should be natural for any plugin developer and or person involved in making sketchup or layout… I do also think that some things that I’ve mentioned although not broke, certainly seem fractured, but that’s my point of view. I feel like I’ve been around long enough to have some kind of reasonable thinking behind these points as well. I think there is a lot more that could be done in regards to these concerns and I do believe a good portion of the reason some of these things happen is because of the lack of sketchup capitalizing at certain stages over the years and doing what’s needed, as I explained in the original post at the top… I think there is lots to do and what’s wrong with that? I’m not asking you directly tweenulzeven, just asking in general, what is wrong with that?. I’m trying to get the ball rolling on these concerns I guess and looking for people who are interested in discussing solutions and not the kind of mindset that @Anssi has shared, honestly quite ridiculous the assumptions you had their @ansii and the people whoe liked your last comment, what shame on me for trying to make an effort lol? Pretty intense.

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Queria poder opinar tecnicamente mas comecei meus estudos em Ruby e da API esse mês…hahaha. Comecei traduzindo alguns scripts que garimpei pela internet. Eu não tenho a intenção de criar extensões e vender, é mais para deixar o SketchUp mais poderoso e automático. Não trabalho com arquitetura e sim com impressão 3D e modelagens mais mecânicas, enfim de peças. Eu desejaria muito que os desenvolvedores criassem mais ferramentas de desenho, ferramentas pensando mais nessa parte de engenharia que não seja civil. Bom é isso.

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有选择地安装一些插件就可以了,觉得不常用,将其删除掉就可以了.
相似或类似,说明不同的开发者都在试着学习开发的乐趣.
更新与否并不能衡量某些插件的优劣.只有经得起用户的筛选,然后留下比较合适的插件就OK了.
You can install some plug-ins selectively. If you don’t think they are commonly used, you can delete them
Similar or similar, indicating that different developers are trying to learn the fun of development
Updating or not can’t measure the quality of some plug-ins. It’s OK to leave appropriate plug-ins that can stand the screening of users

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Things, time and people, it all changes. How many of these old plugins are made then the dev moves on to other projects and has no intent of updating or they cannot be updated due to the nature they were created and the time it would take to do the update.

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It’s a good thing in all scenarios. It’s competition. It’s choice. It’s variety. The very idea that you have to simply choose one plugin for a function and remove the others would negate all the work the developers put into them. Imagine making a new plugin for weeks just to have it rejected because another exists. Defeats the entire purpose of the warehouse.

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Tell that the the world’s automobile industry. There are hundreds of car choices which are essentially equivalent. :slight_smile:

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Things used to be better, at least in parts of Germany

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so you don’t want to discuss with people with other opinions, is that still called a discussion?

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In another thread, @ArayaCAD, you say you have 300 plugins installed. Here you want Trimble to come and remove most of them. Can’t you determine yourself what you need and what you don’t? In the other thread, you also say that you absolutely need and keep using 250 of them.
There is a maximum of things that a managed environment allows. I doubt if what you wish for would come true, we would even have 100 plugins left overall.

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