More Feedback for GE-Ready Models

[SketchUp Guide Allison]

Hi everybody,

If you've been following the groups, you'll likely have seen me
commenting on one thread or another about a model having failed
processing and not either getting feedback or making it into the 3D
buildings layer. As of today's 3D Warehouse update, you should now
see a "Processing Failed" icon next to any of the models that are in
this state. There's also a help center article (http://
sketchup.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=156327) describing
some things you might try if this happens to you. (Sometimes the
processing error turns out to be something we can fix on our end, so
it's possible that even if you do nothing your model will get
resurrected. We're also working on detailed feedback to help you
pinpoint what exactly went wrong, so if nothing in the help article
seems to apply to you, you might want to wait a bit to get the more
detailed report.)

Additionally, there are new icons for models that are Awaiting Review
and Not Accepted At This Time, so all of your GE-ready models should
have some kind of indicator as to where in the system they're at.
(It'll take a little while for this information to make it to the
search results pages, though -- check the model details page if you're
unsure.) Hopefully this will help people figure out what's going on
with their model collections.

Let us know what you think!

-- Allison

[LOGAN]

That's great news. I'm sure the additional feedback will help people
discover if something is wrong with the technical side of things and
possibly if and how they could fix the issue.

Having the additional icons is very useful because it indicates to
modelers and users alike if an object is Google Earth ready and the
status of the object.

Also a big thanks for the speed of reviewing lately. My latest model
( http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/details?mid=643a2e0d1aecab6b15ad85c62514e590
) has been accepted within a week. It's always hard to guess the ETA
of a model into Google Earth and sometimes it's useful to have some
indication of the progress.

Thanks again!

[Alejandro S. F.]

Really Great!
I was just going to creat a new discussion forum to congratulate the
WH team for the new featrues.
Also i want to comment, that in the last week i upload 2 new
buildings, and today i realized they are on the GE layer, that's
great!
Continue like that!

Ale

On Aug 13, 6:01 pm, SketchUp Guide Allison <allisonfloyd

[olaf]

This is just an older post from me that fits better under this topic:

I want to say a big THANK YOU to all from 3dwarehouse who made the
recent optical changes. The icons make the user interface more
understandable and add a nice look-and-feel.

Great that the changes are visible in all language versions, while
other features are still waiting for translation!

Here are some ideas for inspiration:

- One little thing that is sometimes confusing: When signing in, the
"sign in" button and the "language" button swap their places.
Intuitively, I think the sign-in/sign-out button is always on the
right.

- a "Google Earth" checkbox in the "Search for:" line under the search
box.

- "sort collections by number of models"

- a detailed model list
I would also support the idea of Matthias Basler, to add a detailed
view of collection contents or search results: Instead of preview
images, the user can choose to see columns with more models on each
page and details like date, filesize, status, date of review or
rejection (!)... just similar to windows explorer. I hope this sounds
not to complex and unrealisable, I had more in mind a functional and
light weight list for managing models.

I look confidently into future!

[Scc]

Hi Allison,

Thanks for the heads-up - as well as to the whole team for these
improvements.

I have a very important question however. I visited that Help Center
article and stumbled upon this sentence (at the bottom when talking
about kmz files):

"KMZs can't contain a link to any file outside the KMZ."

What does this exactly mean and why is it so? Is it only for the model
or also for the description? (Note that I do have a model, even
accepted for GE, which contains references to external files - but of
course, don't go back and take it off now, please ;-).

I actually have a "pending" feature request (FR#0205 - if you don't
mind, I won't paste the link here but can send you if you wish) for
exactly this issue.

Gaieus
(mistakenly displayed as Scc here)

[SketchUp Guide Allison]

Hi Gaieus,

The restriction is to prevent the file from being a security risk;
i.e., linking to destructive code. Actually, in a couple of places if
there's an external link we won't fail the file, we'll strip the link
out instead. It's just the model, not the description, but it applies
both to the .kml and the .dae.

Send me the feature request link, if you would; there's possibly
another solution to what you're trying to do.

-- Allison

[Scc]

Well, Allison, if you look at "normal" GE content (not 3D but other
things), they all work the same way. I just cannot understand why 3D
kmz's cannot bear richer, additional content. If I put anything in the
Warehouse description, it doesn't even allow me to make a line break.

I've been making these feature requests since last Fall and according
to Peter (Saal - now already left Google) you also have this as a
potential, future feature.

I've emailed the link to you as I cannot really post the link to the
Feature Request here...

Anyway, this already exists and if the American Institute of
Architects can do such things, we can also do so we should also be
"allowed" to do... Here is a screenshot of the Library of Congress in
Washington DC:
http://sketchup.googlegroups.com/web/Library%20of%20Congress.jpg?hl=en&gsc=Oyy71hYAAACrnmiKcGzqAi9xB9VM82SXT1U8Yo131cEIjEsVOL6QuQ

Gaieus (still)

On Aug 18, 1:30 am, SketchUp Guide Allison <allisonfloyd

[SketchUp Guide Allison]

Hi Gaieus,

Yep, we've still got that feature request in the queue. I think
everybody wants richer content in the KML bubbles, we just need to
figure out a way to do it that scales. (All of the custom bubbles
currently in the 3DWH had an engineer assigned to them to make it
work. Makes for sad engineers, when there's lots of custom
requests...) That's orthogonal to the security issue in uploaded KMZ
files, though; as you're undoubtedly already aware, the KML
description in an uploaded KMZ gets ignored in favor of the metadata
on the model details page. That's not the security problem; somebody
could still cram a malicious website link into the model details page,
if they were so inclined (we'd rather they didn't, and once we
discovered it they'd likely get kicked out of the 3DWH), but it'd take
a user actually clicking on the link for something bad to happen.
Embedding links in the actual model (via COLLADA cross-reference, for
example) could result in content that, when launched in Google Earth,
did bad things ranging from the model not loading correctly to the
user's machine crashing, or worse -- without the user having to do
anything except view the model. That's the kind of link that we're
prohibiting with the "no links" rule. There can be links to websites
in the bubble, of course, and we've added links to everything from
custom images to flash content to the bubble, but all the custom
content is served from Google machines and has been vetted.

Hopefully that makes the issue somewhat more clear,

-- Allison

On Aug 19, 2:19 am, Scc <gai...@gaieus.hu> wrote:
> Well, Allison, if you look at "normal" GE content (not 3D but other
> things), they all work the same way. I just cannot understand why 3D
> kmz's cannot bear richer, additional content. If I put anything in the
> Warehouse description, it doesn't even allow me to make a line break.
>
> I've been making these feature requests since last Fall and according
> to Peter (Saal - now already left Google) you also have this as a
> potential, future feature.
>
> I've emailed the link to you as I cannot really post the link to the
> Feature Request here...
>
> Anyway, this already exists and if the American Institute of
> Architects can do such things, we can also do so we should also be
> "allowed" to do... Here is a screenshot of the Library of Congress in

> Washington DC:http://sketchup.googlegroups.com/web/Library%20of%20Congress.jpg?hl=e...

[Alejandro S. F.]

Hello,
Like i said before, 3DWH is working better than never, and i can
ensure that the validation process has been improved in an amazing
way.
We need just a little more of you.. in GE, when i click some of the
new models i still do not see the bubble with the image and the model
description.
I know you are aware of the problem, just do not forgett that for some
of us, that is our only credit. :)

Thanks and regards,
Alejandro S.
http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/cldetails?mid=d419ada58320dbb1136600e95587124e

[Scc]

Hi Allison,

Yes, I do see your point but then practically the whole GE community
(ex. "Keyhole") could shut down and degrade to plain text while there
are even network links and instantly updating content (like webcams).

Anyway, I know that my wishes has just suddenly been pushed back a
little bit as currently there are other things to concentrate but I'll
definitely come back to this and keep buging you all later!
:-)))

Best;
Gai...

On Aug 19, 6:14 pm, SketchUp Guide Allison <allisonfloyd

[pmolsen]

See http://groups.google.com/group/3dwh/browse_thread/thread/d31fa63323ce8d66
re a question about why models that were in the 3D Warehouse suddenly
come up with the Processing Failed message after a minor update that
does not change the complexity. This looks like where I should have
posted the question.

[pmolsen]

I am no longer game to update any of my models that have been accepted
to the 3D layer because every time I do they seem to get rejected on
resubmission. These are not the first ones. I had the same problems
with my Norfolk Towers model some time ago and had to end up breaking
it up into 2 models to get it to re-accept.