I’ve noticed several mentions of Trimble Connect on this forum, but I must admit, I’m unclear about its purpose or usage, despite it being part of my SketchUp Pro subscription.
I vaguely understand that it might enable me to share my models with our fitters and suppliers, but I’m unsure of the specifics, particularly how it functions for them.
Could anyone utilizing Trimble Connect in this manner provide a brief explanation of how it integrates into your workflow? This would greatly assist me and others in determining its applicability to our processes.
As a repository for my models so I can access them from other computers, from my iPad, or from my phone. It’s useful because it has version control, allowing you to revert to a previous version if you’ve made a mistake or accidentally deleted something from the model.
To collaborate with other participants in the project. You can assign roles and permissions so that each person can view or download the models. Models created by different members or using different software(Revit, Tekla, IFC, Dwg, Pdf) can be visualized and federated (joined or combined).
To detect conflicts or clashes between combined or federated models.
To analyze model information, create issues for other collaborators to make changes to their part of the project, and to create annotations in the model.
To create views of specific areas.
To consult all the model’s metadata; it has a table where you can see all the parameters associated with each element of the model, including measurements, materials, etc.
So in general, Trimble Connect is a collaborating tool to connect the right data to the right team members. It is the Connected Data Environment (CDE) that acts as a platform between different Trimble applications, and from other software, too. Either by manually uploading files and documents or through API or Trimble Connect Sync, it ensures everyone is on the same page and prevents mis- and overly communicating by centralizing it.
@rtches contribution shows a few ways, and there are lot’s of other examples to be found, too.
What kind of processes are you specifically interested in?
instead of going file / save (or save as), you can go to file / trimble connect and there, open or save your file.
also, when you launch sketchup, on the homepage, you’ll notice that your trimble connect file have a small cloud icon while the local files have a sheet of paper (below the preview, on the right)
I was just interested to understand what it does and what use it could be.
We build glass structures and I draw our projects in SketchUp and Layout then send manufacturing drawings to our metalwork fabricators and glass manufacturers and construction drawings to our fitters using standard pdf’s generated from Layout. That all works great but I know the metalwork fabricator in particular would sometimes love to have access to the model just to understand things a bit more.
I occasionally outsource entire projects where others draw them up from my point cloud surveys, usually using vectorworks but sometimes autocad, and those projects come back to me in pdf format to distribute as above.
Often, they will mess something up and I need to get involved with their model but its difficult because they are using different software. The guy using vectorworks has occasionally sent me a 3D dwg to examine but its usually a mess when I open it up. Its a jumble of unnamed components which is probably a failing on his modelling skills.
Also - its always been a goal to give the fitters laptops or tablets to help on site as this seems like it could be the key.
So he should use the native Vectorworks export to STEP format instead. This format is amongst the 60+ different other file formats that Trimble Connect desktop app can convert to view.:
Are you saying he can export from vectorworks using STEP and include the point cloud data Mike? I wonder how that would work in practice as his files tend to have the point clouds embedded in them so they are often 2GB+. That’s always surprised me as my SketchUp models just link to the point clouds (I use the Undet plugin) and my actual files are tiny - usually around 20-40MB including the mesh created from the point clouds but less than 1MB after I remove the mesh which I always do before drawing everything up in Layout.
He uses a MAC and there is no point cloud plugin available to him so he relies on the native vectorworks point cloud functionality which obviously works but creates massive files.
No, the pointcloud and the step file are separate files. This is one of the examples were collaborating in an open platform comes in handy, all working in their favorite software (you in SketchUp, him in Vectorworks and the surveyor with his scanner) and have them all combined in the viewer as a federated super-model…
Btw, the standard max upload per file is 5Gb, but there is a setting in the register of the desktopapp for pointcloud uploads which you could set to 10Gb or higher.
Let’s not get to technical here (I always say that when I don’t know anything about the subject:) but there are way’s to register or calibrate the scan data for the site in the projects setting of Trimble connect.
For this kind of project, I would simply upload the models and than change the coordinates and rotation of the model, I guess. These settings should be remembered when uploading newer versions.
For larger (infrastructual) projects, the georeferencing coordinate systems can be adjusted.
I have not been able to upload a point cloud to be able to see it in Trimble Connect also using the Windows Desktop application.
What can I be doing wrong?
Probably getting ahead of myself but at the moment I start every new project by rotating the point cloud in SketchUp so that a major surface (usually a brick upstand) is square to an axis and I build everything from there. I cam import the same point cloud into another model or replicate its position by taking a copy of the coordinates and replicating them. Maybe the point cloud can be positioned in the same way within TC.
