Prevailing thoughts on Technical Problems

Things are changing, excuse me for being impatient, but its taking a really long time. And skewing in a direction that, leaves most people with little to no control over things we should have control over (I think).
I just wrote a post about the new Glowforge "3d laser printer"

It looks amazingly useful and easy to use.

Much much better software and use of modern hardware and software to enable amazing things.

The prevailing thought has been for the longest time:

 "It should be hard"

I have never understood this.

People all up and down the chain of engineers and company management for dozens of companies putting out tools (like laser cutters but dozens of others) don't think about the time and effort value of thier customers. The software is terrible, it barely works, it's frustrating and time consuming. More of a hindrance than a help. You Have to stay within these parameters or it won't work AT ALL.

Why should it be hard?

I don't get it. Good on Glowforge for putting in the work to make using a cutter easier, its long overdue.

The bad skew I see in this is; everything is in the cloud. Which none of us users have any control over. Even worse, if you are in a less fortunate geographical situation, your machine may not work at all. I know local server management and image processing has distinct disadvantages, but what if glowforge (one day) goes belly up. Like so many abandoned music services suddenly their servers go dark.

Ease of use: Good, finally
Cloud: So So
Another thing I can't fix myself: Bad..

Sketchup Ruby Scripts

I've been designing some things in sketchup...
It's been a struggle at times.

Today my friend Ben told me how he was getting a ruby script to add-on to sketchup.

I wasn't sure if I wanted to go through the trouble.. Then I find this..

The Engineering Toolbox

This plugin adds standard and custom parametric components that you can add to your sketchup models. Things like piping, I-beams, standard bulding lumber and so on...

I found that plugin Via Ruby Library Depot. Which literally has hundreds of sketchup ruby plugins...

Two of note to me are Tomatoes and Woodwork both of which should make designing cabinets and desks and other such furniture and fixtures MUCH easier in sketchup. :)