Sketchup and COLLADA as modeler and scene description?

[pwagner]

Hi.

I am writing my master thesis and would like to use Newton as physics engine to do some simulations. As I was trying different things I encountered that Newton should be able to read the COLLADA file format and I was wondering if Google Sketchup is a modeler which can be used to produce such a file. Have you any experience in using Sketchup and is it even possible to attach physics within Sketchup's COLLADA export? I already found the plugin SketchyPhysics wich seems to do a similar thing but I coldn't get a satisfying answer to my question. Hope you can help me.

Best regards

[JernejL]

I think your question is more along the lines of "can sketchup export collada" - which is what you should ask the sketchup community.

If you build a collada file importer, you can run that simulation in newton easily.

[Julio Jerez]

I beleive SketchyPhysics is a Newton Plugin fo GoogleSketchup

teh dScene has a Collada plug in too, you can satrt tehre if you want.

[pwagner]

Thanks for the answers.

I think your question is more along the lines of "can sketchup export collada" - which is what you should ask the sketchup community.

Yes I think you are right but this way it seemed to be more reasonable. A Sketchup programmer don't has to know about physics and physics engines but a physics engine user who was once at the same point (how to model and save scenes) maybe knows about Sketchup.

If you build a collada file importer, you can run that simulation in newton easily.

As I read some of the forum postings and even read about Newton on the COLLADA website I thought an importer would already exist (hopefully an exporter, too)!?

So if you don't use Sketchup or COLLADA which modeling tool and scene exchange format would you prefer if you had to chose (programming is not an option as I'm trying to create an environment even for dummies!)?