‘Trimble Connected’—Bacus Discusses SketchUp 2015 and Growing Trimble Roles

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JB: Trimble Connect today supports a wide range of file formats and that will increase in the future. I doubt that our industry will ever be fully satisfied by a single file format— there is just too much diversity in the construction process to really standardise on a ‘default.’ Our strategy will continue to be as open as we can possibly make it. A designer’s data should be theirs to work with in any way they wish. And they should be free to use whatever tool suits them and their work the best.

AFR: We noted in our review of version 2014 the lack of IFC Import. Now people can go round-trip with IFC using SketchUp. How critical was that for your architectural users? Did they also find the one-way out limiting or was this just a portion of the work that didn’t make the deadline for version 2014?

(John Bacus):  You’ve heard me pitch the idea before that IFC is but one of many “classifications” that SketchUp users now have at their disposal, though it is certainly an important one in the construction industry. IFC import into SketchUp satisfies a different set of requirements than IFC export did, but both are important for a fully functional IFC-based workflow.

AFR:  Now that you have IFC import and export, what might be next for IFC and similar formats? Could BCF be on the horizon as well?

JB:  I can’t speak to future development efforts, but you should always expect us to spend development time supporting popular open standards in every way that we can. BCF is supported by Tekla BIMsight today, where it provides a neat way to share comments and issues on projects.

AFR:  There are some cool things going on with photography using Trimble equipment and SketchUp. What kinds of possibilities exist that you can talk about for the future of SketchUp?

JB:  Trimble has a wide range of powerful scanning and photogrammetry equipment, but there are still significant challenges in converting the data into a usable 3D model. We’ve done a number of integrations now that make it easier to move data into SketchUp so that it can be used to make functional 3D models more efficiently. We’ve worked on tools for laser scanning and now in SketchUp 2015 tools for working with the new V10 panoramic cameras for photogrammetry.

02 – Image showing SketchUp 2015’s new connections to ‘Trimble Connect’ formerly known as GTeam by Gehry Technologies. (image courtesy Trimble, All rights reserved.)

AFR: Are there any items about SketchUp 2015 and Trimble that you would like our audience to know about…things that might be getting overlooked by the press and users?

JB:  SketchUp is now one among the set of “Trimble Connected” applications, and this is a pretty exciting development from our team’s point of view. Trimble Connect represents a sea of change in the way that SketchUp users can collaborate not just with one another, but also with other partners and stakeholders throughout the design, build and operate lifecycle of buildings and infrastructure.

Using the new Trimble Connect extension for SketchUp (available today for free on our Extension Warehouse), SketchUp users can publish their work for use by others as well as reference models from others back into their own models. This capability, combined with a rich system of coordination and commenting, makes SketchUp far more powerful than it ever was by itself. This is the beginning of something really important.

AFR:  In terms of M&A’s do you see Trimble picking up any key SketchUp community developers in the future? Or perhaps bigger developers producing very good SU plugins or tools?

(JB):  I can’t, of course, speak to any M&A activity that we might consider, but you can see that we’re growing increasingly aggressive as a team. We have already hired two of our Ruby developer community’s top developers— and we put both of them to work improving the Ruby API and other related efforts.

The response to Extension Warehouse has been remarkable. In fact, we’ve just passed two million extensions downloaded, and velocity is not showing any sign of slowing down. I think our efforts with SketchUp’s developer community in the last two years have already begun to show significant benefit to the user community. The depth and capability of SketchUp extensions has really improved— and we have a growing number of professional extension developers.