Couldn’t agree more. Keep SketchUp mean and lean, but open up the API as much as possible so that any extension is possible. SketchUp then becomes the Swiss Army Knife of the 3D/drafting world, efficient, fun to use and multi-functional.
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The problem with this approach, is that it creates too many options and islands. From an extension developer’s viewpoint, any unfulfilled option or functionality could be solved.
Most people aren’t developers, though.
They just want things to work.
Can you do This or That with SketchUp?
Yeah, sure, just install a ton of extensions, hope they will be kept alive and make sure you know you know how to hack your way through it, because it might be that they are not compatible with each other.
SketchUp could lead in the way attributes are shared, for instance,
every developer that creates an extension that creates objects as ‘Windows’ would create it’s own library for his ‘nifty’ extension, but also needs to add data to the Advanced Attributes for instance, or populate the IFC classification library (Size, Owner, Manufacturer, etc)
BIM - approved
I’d rather have several options/islands, like several renderers to chose from, than one half baked added to the SketchUp core and forced onto all users, including those that never have use for a renderer. The whole options and islands thing gets weirder when there is a default option that you are taught not to use in training.
Extensions being abandoned is an issue, but the same could actually be said about native features, like the classifier. The good thing with extensions is that there is a community of people that can pick them up and get them working if there is a need for it.
I don’t see how extensions would be more “hacky” than native functionality. Of course there are some questionable-quality extensions that feel strange to use, but there is nothing inherent about extensions giving them such a feel. The problem lies in developers not always having the knowledge how to craft a good user experience, and SketchUp not sharing the knowledge.
Also compatibility between extension really shouldn’t be a problem. Decent quality extensions, like those you find in Extension Warehouse, don’t clash.
If we talk about extensions directly talking to each other, this shouldn’t generally be needed, and shouldn’t be advised either as it would greatly increase the complexity, both for developers and users. Instead extensions should communicate with SketchUp and SketchUp should be the common platform for extensions to build on. In this regard I agree that SketchUp could perhaps do more work to create an infrastructure to share between extensions, e.g. for BIM information.
I haven’t experimented much with BIM and don’t know the current state of it in SketchUp, but this is an area I think SketchUp should “own” the low level functionality, and extensions build upon it, rather than different extensions having incompatible implementations of their own. For instance, instead of ProfileBuilder having its own report tool, it should ideally create data for SketchUp’s own BIM attributes, and all Reporting tools, BIM exporters, analysis tools etc should be able to access it.