Any application proposed in the Mac App Store must be "sandboxed" as required by Apple. This implies that such an application is able to read only the content of files that the user explicitly selected with a file dialog box, and can't read other files.
In the case of Sweet Home 3D, this implies that if a DAE file references texture images, the import furniture wizard will be able to read the DAE file selected by the user, but not its image files. To avoid a complicated solution where the user would have to select each referenced image with a file dialog (including managing the case where these images are actually missing), I decided to support only ZIP and KMZ files import, in the Mac App Store version.
I understand that if you use often Sketchup or an other modeler to generate DAE file, it will burden your export / import workflow, but as suggested in the FAQ How can I import 3D models at OBJ, DAE or 3DS format with the Mac App Store version of Sweet Home 3D?, keep in mind that the Finder proposes the File > Compress menu item and even a Compress contextual menu, that should speed up the zip generation process.
Unfortunately, this issue is the same for OBJ and 3DS files, with the MTL file and texture images they might reference.
If you have some ideas to improve this behavior with a way of using it clear for everyone, don't hesitate to make suggestions here.
Thanks for you support. It's greatly appreciated
----------------------------------------
Emmanuel Puybaret, Sweet Home 3D creator
