It’s been three weeks since we began collecting your SketchUp Questions and Ideas and we’re excited about all you have dreamed up! You may have noticed John Bacus, SketchUp’s product manager has been actively responding to the top ideas each day, and directing users to continue the discussion in the SketchUp Help Forum. Definitely take a moment to look at these threads and put in your own two cents; it’s extremely helpful to the SketchUp team if you continue the dialogue! As for now, we’d like to provide you with some more in-depth responses on a few of the most popular ideas.

Ruby and Plugin Management

Many of you have suggested that SketchUp should have better Ruby and Plugin management. We’re really jazzed by the success of our Ruby API and the developer community that has adopted it. So many people have written incredible new tools for SketchUp! However, this has been so successful that it has really outgrown our original management system inside SketchUp. We can see the need for a built-in plugin manager to help users more easily install, uninstall, and identify which plugins they currently have installed. This was a popular suggestion the last time around, and we’re excited it’s risen to the top of the list again. We too acknowledge a need for this feature. Please share more thoughts on this discussion by visiting the thread in the SketchUp Help Forum.

We’ve also seen a related suggestion, which is to have a SketchUp Store for plugins and scripts, etc. We too would love to see a web-based repository for Ruby Plugins, and hope we can find a way to either build one for you, or help the community do it themselves. In fact, the community has already began to take this on. At smustard.com, you can find a substantial repository of SketchUp’s plugins and scripts.

Can SketchUp be made “LargeAddressAware” so we can use up to 4GB RAM under 64bit OS?

This is a peculiarly technical request to have made it to the top of the ranking, but we think folks probably voted for it in the hopes that it would increase the amount of memory available to SketchUp when it exports large raster images. You’ve heard us say before that 64-bit and multicore processing aren’t good fits for improving SketchUp’s performance, but we’re always looking for new things to try. Our compiler guys say it is doubtful that the “LargeAddressAware” linker flag will provide the sort of dramatic improvement you hope for (these things are seldom a panacea), but we’re looking into it.

Dynamically Link Files: “Xref manager”

Another popular idea is to dynamically link files. This feature would be similar to the X-ref manager that many CAD packages offer. After further discussion in the SketchUp Help Forum, it seems like the root of this feature request is the ability to divide a complex model among multiple collaborators so that each collaborator is responsible for a different piece. Ideally, this would also take the load off the master file by distributing the file size onto its cross referenced files.

In response to this idea, we first want to make sure you are aware of the current functionality SketchUp does support for cross referenced files. That is, the ability to create a unique SketchUp file from a component. This file can then be worked on separately and reloaded into the master file. To learn more visit an article in our help center which describes Saving and Reloading Components. However, even with this functionality, we acknowledge there are limitations which can make collaboration challenging in SketchUp. We appreciate your feedback, recognize SketchUp has room to grow here, and we’re eager to look for ways to improve collaboration!

Camera That Sticks to a Drawn Path

Lastly, we were somewhat surprised to see this idea towards the top of the list, but it’s a great suggestion nonetheless! This is the request to “Introduce a camera that sticks to a drawn path (line, arc, circle) for exporting smooth movies.” We agree this would be neat and we’re excited this idea has generated some good discussions in the SketchUp Help Forum. Our team has learned a lot from the expanded discussion, and we hope you’re learning a thing or two from the discussion as well. Specifically, make sure to check out the several workarounds posted by our SketchUp Sage in this thread. These ideas should give you a workable solution to get started with immediately.

Have you read about an idea here that you strongly disagree with? Would you like to see something else rise to the top of the list? It’s not too late, but don’t wait long, SketchUp Questions and Ideas closes October 1st!

Late last year, we introduced our Facebook Page (facebook.com/gearthblog) to you and showed you a variety of ways to connect with us. Over the weekend we crossed the 2,000 member mark on Facebook, so I thought it’d be a good time to again highlight the ways you can keep up with the latest geo-news from Google Earth Blog.

Beyond Facebook, we offer a lot of ways to stay connected. Here are the other ways to stay informed:

RSS Feed: I personally follow hundreds of feeds, as its a great way to keep up with sites that you enjoy. I use Google Reader to manage the feeds, as it’s a pretty slick system. With more than 21,000 subscribers, our RSS feed is by far the most popular way that people use to keep up with our site. Here’s a quick look at how Google Reader works:

Twitter: To keep up with us via Twitter, just follow @gearthblog. All of the new blog entries get posted there, along with a few other tidbits. In addition, I monitor that account very closely and will respond to any messages sent our way. You can also choose to follow me (@mickmel), Frank (@FrankTaylor), or Frank’s Tahina account (@GoTahina) if you want. In addition, the Geo list now has 55 people on it that you can follow to really keep up with everything geo-related.

Email: Last but not least, we have email. You can simply sign up to get our latest posts sent to you via email if none of the other options appeal to you.

Is there some other way that you’d like to receive our info? We’re always open to suggestions. If there’s a new tool that you’re using and you have no good way to get GEB content on there, let us know and we’ll see what we can do.

Not only are we trying to make it easy for you to access our content, but we love to hear from you. Write on our wall, send us a tweet — let us know what’s on your mind.

I’m not yet sure the extent of this update, but sharp-eyed reader ‘Ben’ noticed some brand new imagery in Washington, DC. Not only is this very quick on the heels of the last update, but the imagery is remarkably fresh — dated August 29, 2010.

The block of imagery seems to cover roughly 50 miles in each direction, or around 2500 square miles of the DC area, and it’s incredibly sharp, beautiful imagery.

If you check Google Maps, you’ll see that the new imagery isn’t in there yet. This may be part of a larger update, but I haven’t yet found any other updated cites. If you find any, please leave a comment and let us know.