Sketchup pro+Enscape issue regarding live rendering of round edges.
I have read all of the (2+ years old) threads on this and want to add my comment for the purpose of both upvoting this subject and also clarifying some stuff.
It is not desirable to add bevels to edges in sketchup. It is possible to model rounded edges quickly using a plugin, but results in additional geometry and models which are hard to edit using the snap function and edits which require moving an edge or vertex within the model.
It also causes (solvable but time consuming) errors in the standard texturing of objects.
It would be far more desirable to have a material option which treats an edge between two faces, within an angular threshold, as a faux-rounded edge at render time.
Beveling virtually everything in my model as a last stage in my modeling process has become a standard within my team and I’d REALLY like to prune off this part of our workflow so we can get back to designing things.
Geometry rounded edges in my interior design scenes account for a massive percentage of the size of my saved SKP files (excluding library assets).
This feature is done in Lumion on what I believe to be purely textured based and has no geometry data calculated. If Enscape incorporated this feature it would speed up my workflow by days.
I’m kind of reminded of the billion or so threads from users requesting that Autodesk stop making Autocad viewport pan/drag operations part of the undo stack…
…and the eyeball rolling replies they receive from +25 years users who demand that they review the post history and insist that its an integral part of their work-flow.
Anyway to all of the “bevel-your-model” people - leaving aside the fact that after beveling in SU I now cannot easily snap to the corners of my model, lose all closed curve data and potentially create geometry issues with awkward corners - a cube has a count of 18 elements, 12 sides and 6 faces. A sufficiently beveled cube has around 1074 (given a moderate number of extra sides). The respective file size is roughly doubled. That means about 50% of my saved data, serves nothing other than the purpose of assisting the renderer.
Not particularly environmentally friendly when you think about it.
furthermore my model is now useless if I want to ship it to the drafting dept to take cross sections from it as the projections are now full of awkward little broken curves, which basically destroy any chances of using my geometry in CAD.
I have also asked for this feature in the voting portal, but it just won’t get added. Even though alot of people have requested the feature in the past.
