Update the UI for SU Pro 2020

Surely if a component is nested within a component you can have a + to expand … ok now I’m seeing the issue… one component can have 50 instances of a single component

Still wish there was a way to group them and give the a hierarchy.

Yes! Well spoken @TommyK, thank you. If the past indicates the future, delete “2020” from your thread title. All of your GUI suggestions (except perhaps no 8) are valid, needed, or sorely needed, and worth pursuing in some form.

Just as an example, Entity Info is a dialog panel one cannot live without, especially when solid modelling, e.g. for 3D printing. Just a few quick tweaks would enhance its information value considerably. A simple thing like always reporting the active selection’s number of groups and components that are solid and are unsolid would be most helpful. Why does Entity Info not do that? But then again, maybe “one text row ought to be enough for anyone”.

Granted, many of us relish lingering on in the early noughties. The GUI:s may have been somewhat crude, perhaps, but still they had a kind of hand-made, grayish je ne sais quoi. Wasn’t life somehow sweeter back then?

– Hey boss, how about this quick UI concept?
– Not so fast, junior. Let me first test it on five cuboids… Sure, it works. Just ship it.

Then, nothing is so permanent as a temporary solution.

Anyone who has tried serious work on even the most well-organized and well-instanced hundreds-of-megabyte, multi-million-edge, several-ten-thousand-group skp will realize that a positive answer to the question “Can I do that in Sketchup” is contingent on patience, and an almost biblical deal of it. Methuselah may rejoice, but files like this are the bread and butter of many a firm. Here, it may take a good ten seconds waiting for the group command to successfully group a cube. I once did a boolean subtraction that took 45 minutes (it came out successful). The snail is in the works because legacy intersect insists on checking everything against everything, instead of doing a simple initial space hash and a fast reject of irrelevant geometry. Ho-hum.

So, one underlying explanation as to why these GUI and performance improvements are still lacking in Sketchup is simply:

Trimble product managers do not routinely use Sketchup to solve pressing, difficult, real-world problems applied to complex models.

But this is exactly what we average Joe users have to do.
If product managers had to, too – they would have fixed this long ago.
Or they would have gone as mad as we are.

@jbacus Thank you. However – it is not that there aren’t limits to the amount of model complexity that a 3D modeler can handle. It is that other 3D modelers can display and edit complex models much faster. We just want it in Sketchup. Sketchup’s basic premise is excellent. It’s gold. Sketchup works great on simple models. But neither its performance nor its UI handles complexity gracefully.

And this has almost nothing to do with Sketchup’s basic premise. It has to do with its current core geometry engine and lack of attention to UI polish, as they relate to managing complex models.

Sketchup should feel like child’s play when creating geometry – but like a jetpack when managing it.

For me, this is what the sad forum rage concerning “subscription models” and “ecosystem junglification” is ultimately about. From a user perspective, as long as the API is good – modelling performance and UI polish should be Trimble’s big focus for Sketchup. Take a long hard look at whence you came. And, give us this.

https://cdn4.techly.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Success-Kid-Blank-799x423.jpg

Please let me know if I can help.

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This kind of exists. Components that are solely used within components that are linked to external files are by default hidden from the In Model view. You can show them though by choosing to expand the list.

I agree 140% with what has ben said here.

You may want to change the title though so we don’t get the monochrome UI with indistinguishable icons and compulsory fly-out menus for all drawing tools in the desktop version too though :stuck_out_tongue: .

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Layers can now be ordered by color on Mac, giving you an Ctra possibility to organise. An improvement, but still a long way to go…

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I would love to see a total overhaul of the Layer system, if the UI is in for significant changes. From the years-long wishlist thread:

Although I haven’t taken much time to think through how this might be affected by the new Dashed Line layer type. That being said, “layers” aren’t really layers and this also feels like an old, outdated system of organization, even if strictly in name.

Additionally, when it comes to UI, I’m dying for system-wide organization.

(I’m about to move setups again, not looking forward to rebuilding all my preferences for the third time in 12 months…) (And not to mention, switching between Mac and Windows. So many small unique menus!)

As an aside to styles and UI, I think the Style Maker/Materials Editor could use a serious upgrade. I’ve never really understood how they integrated and I have spent a significant amount of my time materials-editing saving and resaving versions where I accidentally had the wrong settings.

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A monochrome UI could easily be worse than the current multi colored one.

It will take some clever design innovation (and lots of iteration) of the UI to integrate all the interesting extensions.

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I was referring to the web interface, which would be a disaster if added to the desktop version.

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Single-compact window UI, just like AutoCAD or iWork suite on macOS

you read my mind… could not agree more on each point!!!

only if it’s ‘single screen’ aware, and allows splitting when using multiple monitors…

john

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Exactly, just like AutoCAD for Mac, you can drop off a “panel” (let’s say, layer window) from the main window

Yes PLEASE!!! But i don’t think Trimble is listening :frowning:
The UI is so so dated.
Also by improving the UI you could speed up the Startup which currently is terribly slow with opening up all the plug-ins, etc.
If they carry on ignoring it, people will start moving away to other equally good and better alternatives which are more affordable or even free like ‘Blender’ which even includes 2 render engines.
Currently Sketchup is not worth the £120/year maintenance fee with virtually ZERO real functional improvements. They just rely on the Plug-In Developers to sort out all the problems and that’s not on!
Sketchup 2020 is my last try with Sketchup… and then if no real improvements… it is time to move on… Sad but true.

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Agree completely - the Materials interface in OS X is an unusable mess for any kind of organized workflow heading to rendering.

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I think the one that makes more sense is Adobe Creative Cloud. Their UI for MacOS is quite intuitive, offers the dark mode by default. It is a single UI but broken up into panels which are un-dockable and conformable to any multiple monitor space needs and unique user experiences. And they have worked for consistency between the two OS’s. Please Sketchup, you are doing a great thing working to aid the professional power base, but the UI really needs an upgrade. You have maintained the connection to the free user, but for us who use this software 50 to 60 hours a week the UI really is like riding a 10 year old bike.

k Brooks

Another UI update I would like to see is a section cut manager. The ability to select or activate section cuts through a menu/panel (maybe similar to lists like Layers or Outliner) without having to orbit to see the cut and then realign to set the scene would be helpful. There are of course ways of getting around this using plugins to commit views to temporary memory and recall them or other ways, but activating, sorting, etc. cuts is pretty unwieldly. It could also (potentially-- I don’t know if it’s a technical conflict) resolve the idea of multiple active cuts requiring groups.

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Outliner already shows section cuts and they can be selected from there to avoid orbiting around and such.

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I did not know that! A new development since I’ve been heavier on the CAD side of late. Thanks :slight_smile:

You can also context click on the section sut in Outliner and get to Align View and the other controls as if you were doing it in the model space.

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:open_mouth: A significant upgrade! I missed more than I thought last year.