The reliability and overall future of Sketchup plugins:

[eneroth3]

Some interesting thoughts here and I agree extensions could be more visible and that there could be more curated overviews/lists of extensions.

However some of these things are not practically possible. We can’t really purge extensions from EW when there are several similar ones. Which one should we keep? The first one by the developer who came up with the idea? The more advanced one with extra functionality. The one that looks and feels most SketchUp, is easiest to use but maybe doesn’t handle as many special cases? How is any of these developers going to feel when there hard work is removed because someone has made something similar? Will that developer feel incentivized to keep making extensions?

I think we should take a step back to define the problems and then look at possible solutions.

[endlessfix]

@eneroth3 's solid tools are a great example. In many ways the extension is very similar to an existing functionality, and does similar things that other extensions like BoolTools does. Yet there are subtle differences that make Eneroth Solid Tools indispensable to me, I would cry if it were removed. Perhaps others use a different similar extensions due to some subtle difference that suits them better, we all have slightly varying needs and interface desires. I think the key question is, “Who gets to decide?”. I would argue that the market decides and I decide for myself. And, how do we inspire independent programmers to keep improving on the status quo? We let them be guided by their own inspiration to build a better version of anything they like.

I’m all for organization and clarity, but not at the cost of variety of choice and continued improvement.

[MikeWayzovski]

Where there was once a functionality in the Extension Warehouse to download all (like the SketchUcation tool) it is now gone. I change computers, forgot which extensions where installed etc. Having to cope with all the developer’s support site and remembering which email address I used at the time of purchase is also a hassle. This actually kept me from updating to another version in the past.

There should be a more convenient way to ‘memorise’ the setup or ‘persona’ (as it is called in Affinity).
This should be controlled by Trimble and not through third party hacks like Fredo’s LOTT and Curic’s Toolbar, IMO
There should also be a way to control it for IT in larger companies (Which extensions should be installed, how are they licenced?)

Extension Warehouse, SketchUcation, Smustard, self-written extensions, even ‘snippets’ should be more managable in the Extension Manager.

[AK_SAM]

Yes I completley agree some housekeeping is in order!

Back in early SketchUp days it was all about the Makers and the Innovators. SketchUp had a “indy” vibe about it that meant people kind of overlooked all the issues. It was a cheap/free, simple tool to accompany 2D CAD. But come to 2021 and we have all matured. SketchUp (Pro) also needs to grow up in some areas, starting with tidying up its toy box

There is a tonne of stuff that can be improved, I think, quite easily, to make the extension ecosystem what it should be - User friendly and easy for people to realise the full potential of SketchUp Pro. I think it’s sad that most Pro users I’ve met only have a few extensions installed.

I dont agree that a Purge is needed, but maybe it can take the form of a refresh to the way the extension warehouse is served up, and also an audit of older extensions (ones that are simply broken or totally obsolete).
Maybe a new policy that after 10 years of no development, the IP/code becomes open source? what is the policy there anyway?

My issues with Extensions all step from the fact that the low quality user experiences taint the whole sketchup user base and brand. That “brand” also matters to me, since I am a SketchUp professional and dont want to be seen as a DIYer when pitching for work against people using Autodesk. And of couse I want the popularity of Sketchup to grow.

Trimble aren’t adding much each year in terms of new functions or tools… I guess they feel they don’t need to. So, since SketchUp (out of the box) is way too simple, we do rely heavily on extensions and should expect to do so gong foward. But there are some common, serious and ongoing issues that need to be resolved…

Every year there are extensions that just stop working. Some of these are pretty useful (3d Treemaker) and have no replacement options. (I will be maintaining a SketchUp 2017 copy just to keep that one going.) Some arent available in the Extension Warehouse (or SketchuCation). The developer probably never returned the email inviting them to join.

Some extensions don’t follow current behaviour for SketchUp (eg still refering to Plugins, Layers, Google Earth) and a few functions like the Eneroth Face Creator not making all new faces point upward toward the camera. Some extensions are just obsolete for most users… I figure they were probably made to add features from Pro that were missing from Make or Free (<v 2017).

I get plenty of errors on startup when there are outdated or incompatible libraries (eg FredoLib or TT_Lib ). Why can’t these be bundled with the extension RBZ??? @thomthom Why do we have to maintain two seperate ones?

The toolbar/menu system sucks…there’s little consistency about where things go into menus , and little ability to change it (do I really want more stuff added to my right-click context menu? Or hidden under the Draw, View or Tools menu?). I do want the ability to create shortcut keys for key functions, or arrange their icons into a customised tray. Somebody (trimble) needs to make an “Extension menu manager” extension.

A lot of the popular extensions bundle about 12 different functions into one thing… I don’t want 12 things, i usually just want one or two of those functions. Stop giving me 10 useless and confusing things that clutter my menus.

Most extensions dont have a very good help menu or any references to know how they work. Architect Tools by ThomThom is a good example…(magnet?..contour tool? No explanation given.)

I certainly dont wan’t someone’s idea of a “Menu system” complete with it’s own (ugly) pop-up windows and a “Extension Warehouse” ( @ChrisFullmer …update and change your stuff please!..its broken)

The process for obtaining, licensing and updating extensions from 3rd parties is still very haphazard…providers have their own stores, processes and policies, and it’s a chore to have seperate accounts/maintenance plans with numerous extension providers, generally for trivial amounts like $8/year (or worse, $8 per seat, per year, at a non-consistent time). I just avoid those paid extensions and probably have about 10 paid ones that i never use because i cant be bothered with the EULA temrs or getting a refund, or theyre just not very good (Natale Zappia and Chuck Vali…).

With respect to Sketchucation and any other 3rd party source… Trimble could create something like the App Store where there is one authorised source and higher standards for how extensions integrate with SketchUp. I think as a Pro userbase, we expect a bit more class. I also think learning SketcHup’s more advanced functionality would be much much easier if extensions were better quality and (as I keep saying) bundled so that all archtiects can install the “30 best tools for architects” and have them on hand, so that some consistency is created across a particular industry.

I am getting really concerned with installing files from small extension developer websites, especially those involving credit card purchases (using company credit cards) and I dont think it will be long before our IT department simply ban the download of RBZ files to our company PCs. Some of them even use .EXE installers. Hacking is rife in 2021 and small websites like that are easy pickings for hackers.

I absolutely would love to pay $10, to $100ea for quality extensions using a APP STORE type process.
As soon a somebody makes a really average extension for free, it takes away the incentive for somebody to create a professional-grade extension (eg Chris Fullmer’s Color by Slope - it’s okay…like it barely works…but a few tweaks and some better processing code would make it 10x better for the professional).
The Adobe licensing model is okay, eg, you can install Creative Cloud apps and buy stock photos all through the Adobe subscription plan. Trimble have enough resources to create a similar setup for Connect, SketchUp / Studio, and the Nearmap Hi-Res imagery, etc.

Actually I’m not sure what will happen over time if Trimble keep hiring all the top extension developers. 3 of the 6 most prolific have not apparently published anything new since joining Trimble. Natale Zappie (4th of 6) has apparently retired.
Can we expect the same level of development in extensions now that a large amount of the userbase has been shifted to Web or Shop, which don’t allow extentions? I would hope that developers oudl go bak through the Warehouse and find those popular little ones that may have been free, but give them an update and sell them for $5 to pros. Except that theyd have to compete with the free version…hmm…
Or may be we need Eneroth and others to busily start making 100s of awesome extensions, from scratch, that they then sell to us as the “Official Trimble SketchUp for Architects extension suite” at $150/year/seat. I would buy ten.

[eneroth3]

@AK_SAM

Maybe a new policy that after 10 years of no development, the IP/code becomes open source? what is the policy there anyway?

This can’t be done retroactively and if the EW terms of service state we can take people’s IP, that could scare people of. But we could perhaps do more to encourage people to make open source extensions.

@AK_SAM

My issues with Extensions all step from the fact that the low quality user experiences taint the whole sketchup user base and brand.

We have published UX guidelines for extension developers. Some things are quite advanced to implement but other things actually saves the developer work by reusing the logic SketchUp already provides (e.g. unit handling).

@AK_SAM

Every year there are extensions that just stop working. Some of these are pretty useful (3d Treemaker) and have no replacement options. (I will be maintaining a SketchUp 2017 copy just to keep that one going.) Some arent available in the Extension Warehouse (or SketchuCation). The developer probably never returned the email inviting them to join.

Most extensions should, at least in theory, just keep working. We are very hesitant to make API changes that could break anything (even bad API usage). The exception is extensions using a compiled Ruby C extensions, like renderers.

@AK_SAM

Eneroth Face Creator not making all new faces point upward

This is actually an example of how we didn’t want to change the API because it would break other extensions. Personally it’d be quite nice for me if the API just matched the UI behavior for face creation. However, a lot of extensions explicitly relied on the faces being reversed on the ground plane. An extension that draws a face and then pushpulls it into a box should ideally first check the normal of the face, but a lot of developers identified the consistency of this weird behavior without identifying it as weird, took it for granted and assumed it would never change, which became something of a self-fulfilling prophecy. When the time came, we couldn’t change it.

@AK_SAM

I get plenty of errors on startup when there are outdated or incompatible libraries (eg FredoLib or TT_Lib ). Why can’t these be bundled with the extension RBZ??? @thomthom Why do we have to maintain two seperate ones?

We don’t recommends “support” extension. These two exist for historical reasons, but luckily I don’t think there are more. (We’ve also discussed improving load error handling; stay tuned)

@AK_SAM

The toolbar/menu system sucks…there’s little consistency about where things go into menus , and little ability to change it (do I really want more stuff added to my right-click context menu? Or hidden under the Draw, View or Tools menu?). I do want the ability to create shortcut keys for key functions, or arrange their icons into a customised tray. Somebody (trimble) needs to make an “Extension menu manager” extension.

The current menu system isn’t ideal, and while I can’t tell you about our future plans (hint hint), we do have guidelines for where extension developers should place their entries. Long story short: only use context menu for things that are actually context related. Prefer Extensions over other menus (unless your command very, very closely relate to specific native commands, like if you want to expose another Entity type to the View menu).

@AK_SAM

A lot of the popular extensions bundle about 12 different functions into one thing… I don’t want 12 things, i usually just want one or two of those functions. Stop giving me 10 useless and confusing things that clutter my menus.

Agreed. Do one thing and do it well. This gets extra messy when you want one or two things out of two “super” extensions, and the other 7 tools overlap between them.

@AK_SAM

Most extensions dont have a very good help menu or any references to know how they work. Architect Tools by ThomThom is a good example…(magnet?..contour tool? No explanation given.)

Our guidelines do recommend implementing the instructor (along with a code example you can copy and paste from).

@AK_SAM

The process for obtaining, licensing and updating extensions from 3rd parties is still very haphazard…providers have their own stores, processes and policies, and it’s a chore to have seperate accounts/maintenance plans with numerous extension providers, generally for trivial amounts like $8/year (or worse, $8 per seat, per year, at a non-consistent time). I just avoid those paid extensions and probably have about 10 paid ones that i never use because i cant be bothered with the EULA temrs or getting a refund, or theyre just not very good (Natale Zappia and Chuck Vali…).

We’d all love if EW could get some resources to… actually be a good service that people want to use.

@AK_SAM

With respect to Sketchucation and any other 3rd party source… Trimble could create something like the App Store where there is one authorised source and higher standards for how extensions integrate with SketchUp. I think as a Pro userbase, we expect a bit more class. I also think learning SketcHup’s more advanced functionality would be much much easier if extensions were better quality and (as I keep saying) bundled so that all archtiects can install the “30 best tools for architects” and have them on hand, so that some consistency is created across a particular industry.

Currently we review for technical issues, like load errors and clashes with other extensions. Breaking the undo stack can be seen as both a technical and UX issue and is also cause for rejections.

I’m open for reviewing this policy, but we also don’t want to scare of hobbyists who one day could become great developers (although I’ve had to accept extensions that I hope no user ever finds).

Having a specific category for higher standard extension, that is optional to apply for, could be a solution!

@AK_SAM

Actually I’m not sure what will happen over time if Trimble keep hiring all the top extension developers. 3 of the 6 most prolific have not apparently published anything new since joining Trimble. Natale Zappie (4th of 6) has apparently retired.

Personally my publishing rate dropped quite a bit already when I started making commission extensions for living. It was the highest when I did my internship in architecture and extension development in my spare time both increased my productivity at work and was difference enough to still function as a hobby.

For the record I’ve published 4 new extensions after starting at SketchUp a bit over a year ago (Eneroth Object Scale, Eneroth Difference Report, Eneroth SVG Exporter, Eneroth Project to Face) and made another 5 path updates (Eneroth Material Extractor 1.0.1, Eneroth Reference Manager 2.2.2 and 2.2.3, Eneroth Open Newer Version 1.0.7, Eneroth Align Face1.3.1).

[thomthom]

I’ll make a response with two hats here, first as an extension developer and then as a SketchUp team member.

---

@ArayaCAD

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 think so. Many extensions are small and specialized. If they function well, why update it? Updating for updating sake doesn’t make sense to me.

I’d like to add some context to why I’ve made extensions throughout the years. They all allowed me to speed up my own workflow in my previous job as a 3D artist. Writing extensions has never been my job, they were an artefact of workflow optimisations I made to my real job. And a large part of SketchUp’s extensions are created in similar fashion, by “power users” who’s main job isn’t “software developer”. But they chose to share for the sake of the benefit of the community.

When talking about maintaining extensions I think it’s important to keep this in mind. It’s very different creating commercial extensions that you sell to make a living from the ones that isn’t. Time available is very different from the two types.

@ArayaCAD

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?

I really don’t see what issue the last update for an extension is if it’s not malfunctioning. Such a discussion on a general basis will not be constructive IMO. Instead we’re have to talk about specific extensions and the reason “why” one want an update.

@ArayaCAD

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.

I’ve had to create extensions that behaved similar to existing, but with some key difference that made sense for my workflow. Some of the power of extensions are how specialized they can be. Making generic tools that fits everyone is a very big challenge, and some times the differences are not compatible with each other.

Having options means you at least have a choice. It’s a luxury IMO. I think the underlying discussion to be had here is “how can extension discovery be made better”.

@AK_SAM

I dont agree that a Purge is needed, but maybe it can take the form of a refresh to the way the extension warehouse is served up, and also an audit of older extensions (ones that are simply broken or totally obsolete).

I really don’t see the need for such curation. I’d rather have the option instead of someone making that choice (assuption) on my behalf. Again, I think this is a matter of how extensions are organized, promoted and discovered. And area that has lots of room for improvement.

@AK_SAM

I get plenty of errors on startup when there are outdated or incompatible libraries (eg FredoLib or TT_Lib ). Why can’t these be bundled with the extension RBZ??? @thomthom Why do we have to maintain two seperate ones?

I have 50+ extensions. TT_Lib was created because so many extensions shared so much similar functionality. When there was a bug in one, I would have to fix it in all others where I’d copied and pasted the same logic. So I made TT_Lib, which allowed me to create faster and be able to fix/update faster. Ideally the distribution system itself should handle dependencies, but that never manifested. And I’ve moved away from extensions using TT_Lib the recent years. In fact, several that I have updated have been detached from TT_Lib.

@AK_SAM

Most extensions dont have a very good help menu or any references to know how they work. Architect Tools by ThomThom is a good example…(magnet?..contour tool? No explanation given.)

This is an example of me writing tools to automate my own workflow. I could choose to just keep it to myself, but in the end I just published it because even though it’s not perfect it has proven to be useful. It is also an example of the difference between a commercial extension and a free one. With 50+ free extensions I simply don’t have the time to give all of it a proper finish and polish. I wish I could, but I can’t. That being said, my free extensions has always been available on BitBucket or GitHub - open for improvement. Unfortunately such collaboration hasn’t really manifested well within the SU extension developer community.
To all you extension users out here: keep in mind that developing extension take time. Supporting it, answering questions take time. A lot of time. For someone to keep doing all that work, for free, expectations should be moderated. And I really wish users would invest some of their own time to “pay back”. For instance, a few weeks ago Alejandro Soriano reached out and helped out with high DPI icons for QuadFace Tools. Something I never had gotten around to do myself. That is something I’d like to see much more of. Within the sphere of free extensions, offer more help rather than make demands.

@AK_SAM

Actually I’m not sure what will happen over time if Trimble keep hiring all the top extension developers. 3 of the 6 most prolific have not apparently published anything new since joining Trimble.

Christina is still creating and updating. So am I, but I focus more on SUbD and Vertex Tools, my commercial extensions. Simply because I don’t have time for all the rest. Before I wrote extensions as part of my job. Now SUbD and Vertex Tools is done on the side of my full time job. Even then I still write new onces (TrueBend) and update existing ones (noticed how TT_Lib is still working, even though it needs an update every time SketchUp’s Ruby version updates?).

@AK_SAM

now that a large amount of the userbase has been shifted to Web or Shop,

[Citation needed]

[tt_su]

And now for my other hat, as a SketchUp Team member:

The User Experience of SketchUp extensons:
This is something we’ve been taking more active steps towards improving. We’re providing more tools and examples to developers. As Christina mentioned, we have started to publish UI/UX guides with a goal of making the experience of using extensions more aligned with SketchUp itself. This is a huge undertaking and will take time. We also recently initiated digital Extension Developer meetups to broaden our reach and tighten the feedback loop. Key part of being able to propagate things like UX/UI guidelines. Over the coming years you will see many changes towards improving UX and quality of extensions. Even with free extensions made by non-professional developers we aim to provide tools, documentation and guides that makes it easier to create quality, consistent extensions.

Extension maintinence
This is something I’ve been thinking about a lot. If the developer community was better in making use of services like GitHub and adding open source licenses to free extensions I think it would aid in making the ecosystem more robust. By being active on GitHub and accepting pull requests developers could collaborate on extensions. Might could reduce some of the duplication. But more importantly, having the appropriate license to free extensions, such that if an extension developer “retire” it is possible for someone else to pick it up and keep it running. This hasn’t happened by itself among the community and I think we (SketchUp) need to get more involved in nudging people. For instance, we could add links to source GitHub repos on Extension Warehouse, making it more visible for where once can get involved in helping with the development.

There’s also room for improvement on how extensions are discovered and maintained. For instance in how extensions are migrated from one installation to another.
Personally I’d like to see a way for users to create “bundles” of extensions. As in choosing a set of extensions on the warehouse and grouping them in a collection that can easily be installed in one click. One could even make each collection have it’s own URL so users can curate and share links to a bundle that they find work well for different workflows. Lots of opportunities here.

@AK_SAM

I think it’s sad that most Pro users I’ve met only have a few extensions installed.

Also something we’ve been focusing on recently. And we should be seeing more towards this. Again this falls into discoverability of extensions. One small step we made in SU2021.1 was making the Extension menu always visible, and moving the Extension Manager and Extension Store menu items there. Intent was to provide a clearer discovery path for new users. It’ll be interesting to see the stats going forward, hoping to see a noticeable bump.

@AK_SAM

The toolbar/menu system sucks…there’s little consistency about where things go into menus , and little ability to change it (do I really want more stuff added to my right-click context menu? Or hidden under the Draw, View or Tools menu?). I do want the ability to create shortcut keys for key functions, or arrange their icons into a customised tray. Somebody (trimble) needs to make an “Extension menu manager” extension.

I agree, fully! The current UI doesn’t scale well with extensions. Another long term project we’re looking into.

[ArayaCAD]

@monospaced , these are good points, I think things could be a bit more thoughtout though before releasing plugins now and into the future?

@TDahl haha, it’s a good point I guess.

@Cotty , @Anssi , let’s read ansii’s statement below ok:

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.

Replying again to ansii’s statement and now to you cotty. Cotty, I said my piece, in reply to others I might say a small snippet of my piece to another user and reply to see what the user thinks based on my response and end it at that. There are people above who’s comment I liked and I don’t agree with but left it at that, so I don’t appreciate being accused of not letting people share their thoughts, because I certainly am letting people do that. I also definitely don’t appreciate being accused of thinking that banning sketchucation is a good idea, I never said that, and I never even thought or considered many of the dramatic things ansii said in his big initial reply to my post, this is only what ansii has come up with and made it seem like that’s the solutions that I’m thinking in my head about and basically telling me what I’m trying to do here. I don’t appreciate any of that, the subtle or direct accusations. So if you guys could keep things in context, than please read what I posted again and notice that I’m simply trying to point out some pain points that I think we could improve on and asking for advice and the thoughts of the community on how we can change things. No need for all the drama, it’s ridiculous, keep it constructive and without these hardcore accusations of what I’m thinking. You’re welcome to ask me instead of accuse me.

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.

Again with the generalizations and accusations. Where did I say that I want trimble to remove most of the plugins? Like where are you getting this from? I never said that. To clarify, I am really pointing out that I think plugin developers could be a bit more thoughtful so that we don’t have as many duplicates. Purging all duplicates or things like that might not be the answer, I was however just trying to point out that having duplicate plugins out there a) makes things hard to navigate for users, and b) I do think it impacts the quality of plugin development as @AK_SAM also points out in a similar way. I think if we had less duplicates than we would have more quality plugins because people would be designing only exactly what was not existing and people really needed and therefore taking care hopefully to design the best options we could for users. However, that too might not be the best choice, maybe it’s a hybrid and maybe there is good information on all sides, your side, mine, other peoples, etc. It doesn’t have to be so one sided as you’re making this seem and I’d appreciate that when you or others respond to people that they lower the accusations and instead turn to asking questions to keep things positive and not so stressful.

[ArayaCAD]

@tt_su @eneroth3 and everyone else for responding, thanks for your feedback, a lot of good points in this discussion now.

@AK_SAM totally agree with you on a lot of what you say. The context menu probably could be a lot better. The place where extensions go can be found under tools dropdown, or extensions dropdown, etc, that is definitely a mess those and the context menu.

I think a lot of what you talk about sam has to do with incentive and I do blame trimble largely for this. Trimble is the facilitator and therefore if they took more initiative with some of these things, got developers together many years ago to look at things like this more often, etc, we wouldn’t have such a cluttered and messy ecosystem. One plugin developer or person like me shouldn’t have to write a post like this to get the ball rolling on some of these things to be fixed, trimble should be doing this and facilitating this kind of debate years ago, @Mark . For 2021 and the place we are at in comparison to other companies gui of their apps, etc, I feel like it’s really messy and because I now have an idea somewhat of the processes and focus points internally, I feel like things are certainly messy in this regard and this is why I raised this post. I think trimble has to start taking more responsibility for getting more done, there is a lot that needs to be done, A LOT and I personally think it needs to happen sooner. Hiring more people seems to be exaclty the problem as I look into the future and understand how much is on your plate. I don’t know exactly what’s on your plate your being (sketchup) but it sounds like you guys have too much to do now and so hiring on more people to help is what’s needed if things will go faster than a snails pace in the future.

I know one extension developer who I know everyone in this thread knows, and he has told me he thinks a lot of this is a mess, a lot of what you’re talking about @AK_SAM .

Actually I’m not sure what will happen over time if Trimble keep hiring all the top extension developers.

this quote above is from sam @Mark and I couldnn’t agree more. I have seen fredo put up a plugin in an afternoon based on feedback I’ve given him, so what is going on with sketchup natively? Mark there are so many things we needed a long time ago and yet the feature updates for sketchup and layout are seriously pathetically slow in comparison to what fredo can do in a day for example, regardless of the excuse of it’s complicated and lots to do, if you can’t get enough done because things are too complicated than you need to hire on more people to help to improve sketchup. If fredo can put up a plugin in a day than why can’t you hire on 2 or 3 people to just develop better tools for sketchup? This alone even just one person would seriously improve sketchup so much faster. I think that alone could make a huge impact for users, is that possible to get that kind of thing going soon? 1 person that doesn’t focus on developing for the web, or any of these other background things and just improves sketchup and layout features for example… Eneroth has a great plugin for managing scene tag visibility that doesn’t work with tag folders and it’s almost useless for me in some ways because it doesn’t work with tag folders. When I messaged her she said she didn’t have the time to update it since recently aquiring a new job with sketchup at the time. So what exactly are you guys doing than internally and this is super frustrating for me, if fredo can put a plugin up in an afternoon, and I’ve seen it more than once, than what are you guys doing internally? Sketchup could use a lot of upgrades in general and a cleanup that is strategized and well thoguhtout and tries to please all users feedback like what @Anssi and others talk about, all things should of course be considered. We need these things now, not 2 years from now and this is where I really think priorities need to be set properly, someone has to put their foot down and hire on others to get these things done, it’s a lack of resources the way I see this and it’s so painful to continue in this direction. Even if a bit more gets done this year or next as a result of the layout petition push, there is so much more that should happen and I do hope someone will put their foot down and get this ball rolling much faster. So much of my personal time has been spent to try and provide feedback internally and I think sam brings up so many good points. As I mentioned, I think one person that literally just improved sketchup features for example could make a huge difference, there should be other people that cleanup the extension menus, organizes sketchup, sets up a webpage on the sketchup website that showcases plugin developers and the best plugins, etc.

[MikeWayzovski]

Wow, that’s a lot of words to read (been busy helping endusers getting along with SketchUp the whole day).

@ArayaCAD your first post suggested some ‘improvements’ for your own workflow which included purging extensions and/or selling out developers creative works for the benefit of…your workflow.
You literally say that, thats why I agreed with @Anssi’s reply.
After this was also confirmed by members of the team you keep implying that ‘the opposers’ are bad for keeping the discussion alive ‘for the benefit of SketchUp’ where we could also read ‘the benefit of tour workflow’

I think that is not fair, especially when you take in account the ‘non-paid’ free time that some of us are actually putting in here for a much more longer time than others.

Keep in mind that SketchUp was actually designed to be a simple tool to help designers/architects.
True, one can extend SketchUp to be bloated with zillions of extension/tools to act like Revit or Tekla, but that’s not where it is heading for, we have seen this over and over again with the recent 14 or 15 releases.

Even if you got an answer from Trimble where it is heading, I wouldn’t wait for it if I had a business.
( I gave up my business some years ago)

If I had the time to write so many words, I would probably spend some more time to develop my own extensions😀

[ArayaCAD]

Mike, I’m not going to take away from the thread any longer. There were a handful of things that ansii basically said I said and I absolutely did not, you can reread the post if you’d like. I never said remove sketchucation or remove most plugins, or really implied in general that people can’t give their feedback, none of that. I also have a point of view and I discuss it with others, I haven’t said that people aren’t allowed to have feedback, these comments are ridiculous. Please reread and if you’re still confused you can message me directly if you’d like, I just don’t appreciate the accusations. If you want clarification on waht I think, you can ask me here or in a message. I welcome the feedback, I appreciate hearing everyones point of views and I’m not sitting there disagreeing with everyone that posts a reply. Let’s move on here.

[Kenny]

I think the use of extensions has transformed SketchUp. In the @last days SketchUp was meant to be simply a quick and easy sketching application and was unlike anything else available at the time. The introduction of plugins/extensions has however transformed it to a point where some extensions like PlusSpec almost make it rival Revit if you so wish. It is however up to the individual user whether/how many extensions are installed, ensuring the core function of SketchUp hasn’t changed.

I’ve also encountered on several occasions productivity issues which may be solved by an extension. After posting the issue on this forum or Sketchucation I’ve had talented people like TIG actually write an extension in response at no charge. Try achieving that on the Autodesk forum!

I do however agree the organisation of extensions could be improved, especially when there are lots of them installed. As Eneroth has posted above however, that is being worked on so hopefully in time will address the main shortcoming of extensions. Other than that I’m very happy with the large range of extensions available which makes SketchUp much more productive.

[Wo3Dan]

@Anssi

Are you also wanting to ban SketchUcation? It is in no way in the control of the SketchUp developers.

@ArayaCAD

… reread the post if you’d like. I never said remove sketchucation …

@ArayaCAD, to me that sounds more like a direct question to you from @Anssi.

[stephenerugg]

I am glad your are addressing this, Plugins, have come so fast and so many it has reached a point I try not to use most of them.I do like Vali Architect’s.https://valiarchitects.com/ They work well and are pretty easy to master. Thanks for addressing this.

[AK_SAM]

Thanks very much (also to Thom) for your detailed replies…its great discussion.
.

Hopefully Trimble can find some time/resource to put some “polish” on some of our favourite extensions and bundle them nicely.

In the meantime I might make some suggestions on various extensions and give feedback to developers.
Doing this in a forum thread might be a useful way to make this collaborative…not sure about that.

A while back we talked about the hidden icon menu style… I still favour that. Eg I was using Upright Extruder today and thought how that would be a good tool to be hidden “under” the Follow Me tool. And it should work the same as follow me…ie, select the line, then select the tool, then select the applicable face. (Upright extruder works differently).

These are small things that I bet do not interest a developer to spend time to fix (or are not possible without Trimble input)…but it would be cool if there was a way that their efforts could not only contribute to the official Pro sketchup version, but also get them some income.