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sketchup importer for ac9 coming soon?

aahatimo
Newcomer
fresh from sketchup's newsletter it looks like they will be demonstrating both su 5 & a sketchup importer for ac9 at the aia convention in vegas.

from may newsletter:
'....We're previewing SU5 at the House of Blues Music Hall on Thursday (May 19) evening.

Thanks to our great development teams, there is a new ArchiCAD 9 plug in. Our own Kevin Durham will be demonstrating in the Graphisoft booth (#4020) at scheduled times each day.

We're also really excited about co-hosting a bash with Apple on Friday night in the Islander Room (G-H), on the lower level of the Mandalay Bay Convention Center. The Apple Architecture by Design gathering will give you Mac users (and future Mac users) the chance to see the how well SketchUp and a few other tools work for architectural design on the Apple platform. Register at:
www.seminars.apple.com/go/architecture05 '
tim hanagan
aaha! design studio durango, co
27" retina 5k iMac 4ghz i7 os 10.13.6 m395x 4 mb, 32gb ram, 512 gb ssd ac 22 current
15" retina mbp 2.6ghz 1mb 16gb ac 22 current[/size]
16 REPLIES 16
stefan
Expert
Yes, read it today in the SketchUp mailing.

Good news. The old convertor had it's problems but was a good effort. Too bad it was not more supported by the SketchUp people...

Now I still have mixed feelings about the necessity of such an add-on: SketchUp is per definition a geometric modeller and not a building modeller. Any effort to translate the model automatically into something using building semantics is prone to interpretation errors. You have to model in a very specific way in SketchUp to be able to turn the "mesh" into something using walls, floors and roofs.

But it might help some people so it probably has it's use.
--- stefan boeykens --- bim-expert-architect-engineer-musician ---
Archicad27/Revit2023/Rhino8/Unity/Solibri/Zoom
MBP2023:14"M2MAX/Sonoma+Win11
Archicad-user since 1998
my Archicad Book
Anonymous
Not applicable
I think Graphisoft should buy Sketchup and use its interface with ArchiCad. I mean it would be cool to be able to show/cut/annotate floor plans and sections in 3d space and also to create the stories right there. Then we would still have all of the power of the 2d views and database as well. The simplicity of Sketchup in 3d with the power of ArchiCad and its database. That would be a powerful combo.
stefan
Expert
outpostarc wrote:
I think Graphisoft should buy Sketchup and use its interface with ArchiCad. I mean it would be cool to be able to show/cut/annotate floor plans and sections in 3d space and also to create the stories right there. Then we would still have all of the power of the 2d views and database as well. The simplicity of Sketchup in 3d with the power of ArchiCad and its database. That would be a powerful combo.
The Idea is not that bad for 3D-modelling.
The realism of the idea is something else... SketchUp is "only" a geometric modeller (point, edges and faces). The ArchiCAD 'prisms' and 'boxes' etc... don't exist in SketchUp. SketchUp only has points, connected by lines and (if they are coplanar) faces that are filled in.
It's very core data model is completely different from the GDL-based ArchiCAD. So it seems highly impossible.
--- stefan boeykens --- bim-expert-architect-engineer-musician ---
Archicad27/Revit2023/Rhino8/Unity/Solibri/Zoom
MBP2023:14"M2MAX/Sonoma+Win11
Archicad-user since 1998
my Archicad Book
Anonymous
Not applicable
I guess what I mean is that Graphisoft would have to buy the rights to use the interface ideas.
Thomas Holm
Booster
I just got this info from @Last Software, Inc. (the SketchUp People)

"Graphisoft has been developing, with some help from @Last, an ArchiCAD plugin. Graphisoft will be launching, distributing and supporting the plugin. The plugin has been announced but it hasn't been released (kind of like SketchUp 5)."

This plugin has according to announcements been demonstrated at the National AIA Show in LasVegas. Hopefully, it will be released soon on both platforms.
AC4.1-AC26SWE; MacOS13.5.1; MP5,1+MBP16,1
Karl Ottenstein
Moderator
aahatimo wrote:
from may newsletter:
'....We're previewing SU5 at the House of Blues Music Hall on Thursday (May 19) evening.
This event was (for me) the biggest blast of the expo... drinks, food, live band, and SketchUp 5 announced and demo'd on a big screen above the band and on all of the tv's around the whole bar/venue. Mark Sawyer and the SU crew (about 15 of them) took the stage at one point in the announcement. Quite the show! (Their booth was continuously very busy, too.)

Photo attached.

Karl
su-hob.jpg
One of the forum moderators
AC 27 USA and earlier   •   macOS Ventura 13.6.6, MacBook Pro M2 Max 12CPU/30GPU cores, 32GB
Karl Ottenstein
Moderator
Here's a photo of the @Last/SketchUp booth from the AIA Expo in Las Vegas.

Really impressive and effective booth design. The screened panels above the booth were live projections of demos happening at each corner of the booth, and could be seen from quite a distance in the cavernous hall, drawing continuous crowds.

Mark Sawyer, CEO (and previously with GS), worked the crowds continuously along with a large staff. Sales seemed brisk.

Karl
One of the forum moderators
AC 27 USA and earlier   •   macOS Ventura 13.6.6, MacBook Pro M2 Max 12CPU/30GPU cores, 32GB
aahatimo
Newcomer
karl,
thanks for the update, looks like a blast! did you see a demo of the su5 import into archicad?
how was the apple & graphisoft shows / booths there?
tim hanagan
aaha! design studio durango, co
27" retina 5k iMac 4ghz i7 os 10.13.6 m395x 4 mb, 32gb ram, 512 gb ssd ac 22 current
15" retina mbp 2.6ghz 1mb 16gb ac 22 current[/size]
Anonymous
Not applicable
Karl, folks, any new word on this? I've checked the SU website and found nothing, and my dealer/reseller keeps sending me emails about this, but his site is blocked here in China (lord only knows why). What would this plugin offer that we can't already do?
I wonder how useful importing SU models into AC could be? I have found SU works only for really conceptual stuff, I wouldn't start out making a building model in it and then trying to import that into AC. If one needs only import a SU concept model to use as a guideline for further AC modeling, that can already be done with 3ds, as Karl has mentioned elsewhere.

I have found that SU is more useful downstream from AC. I export AC models into SU all the time. That way they are accurate and contain lots of easily modelled AC elements that are actually very difficult to accurately model in SU. In SU I can clean up the extras lines and junk that make AC elevations and sketch renderings so troublesome, and I can add any modeling flourishes that are difficult to make in AC (chimney caps, e.g.)

I suggest that anyone frustrated with how AC models look in 3D/elevation try exporting them to SU for easy manipulation and cleanup. This really leverages SU and AC and the SU results can be reimported as lines or beautiful images back into AC.

PS: the real bummer about this plugin, if it exists, is that it signals that GS is not planning to add a version of SU's wonderfully easy 3d model manipulation tools into AC any time soon. Maxon Freeform is more confirmation of this. It looks as if we will never get real freeform 3d into AC, nor easy 3d manipulation of existing AC elements (other than SEO)but will always have to depend on plugins. The problem with plugins and imported models, as is mentioned may times before my post, is that they lack a convincing 2d representation. How do those swoopy Maxon FreeForm elements look on my plans? Also, when 3d models are imported, they cannot be assigned status as slabs, roofs, walls, etc..., which limits the BIM capabilities of AC.