Welcome aboard, Ireland! (and 14 more)

Primary and secondary schools all over the world are using Google SketchUp, an amazing 3D modeling application. Shining examples of student work abound; take a look at Eric Yam’s space colony, Michael Hathorn’s history class project, or Andrew Nathanson’s model of his hometown’s business district if you’re looking for inspiration.

As part of our commitment to providing low to no cost software to schools, the Google SketchUp Pro K-12 Statewide License Grant has been issued to 50 recipients worldwide. These include 39 U.S. states, 6 Canadian provinces, 2 Australian states, and all of New Zealand.

Fifty countries, states, provinces and counties around the world have been granted no-cost licenses of SketchUp Pro for their primary and secondary schools.

We’re proud to announce the most recent recipient: Ireland. All Irish primary and secondary schools will now have access to SketchUp Pro at no charge. Joining Ireland in this latest batch of new Pro recipients are:

• Nevada
• Montana
• Florida,
• Wyoming
• Hawaii
• Arizona
• Alaska
• North Dakota
• Tennesee
• British Columbia
• Nova Scotia
• Alberta
• Saskatchewan
• New South Wales
• Tasmania

If you're a primary or secondary educator, you can check out details on our Google SketchUp Pro K-12 License Grant program site. It includes links to valuable training resources, technical support information, a group forum, case studies, and a map of states, provinces and counties which have already enrolled. If your locality isn't one of them, ask your state technology director (or international equivalent) to apply. License grant recipients don't pay a cent for SketchUp Pro.

Posted by Allyson McDuffie, Google SketchUp for Education Program Manager

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Pro Case Study: Turner Construction and the WTC, Part 2

In the second installment of our three-part series profiling Turner Construction Company, we turn our attention to the plugins Turner is developing to increase efficiencies across the global organization. Jim Barrett, Director of Integrated Building Solutions, explains:

The National Turner Virtual Design and Construction (VDC) team has developed several SketchUp plugins in Ruby to bring existing and evolving VDC processes into the simple, efficient and visual environment of SketchUp Pro.

A proprietary plugin for steel modeling and tracking was created to accelerate the use of Building Information Modeling (BIM) at the World Trade Center Transportation Hub. The tool was written to batch convert single line framing plans into 3D steel sizes, using a standard library of parts. This tool was expanded to report steel takeoffs and is now used throughout Turner to support estimating and pre-construction services.

The Place Steel for Modeling module in Turner's proprietary SketchUp plugin

By developing our own tools on top of the intuitive interface of SketchUp Pro, we continue to increase operational efficiencies. The place steel plugin is a great example of how streamlining the modeling process by reviewing the process of modeling steel, standardizing the modeling of stock pieces, and integrating that database information into SketchUp Pro reduces redundancy as well as dimensional errors in steel sizing.

Working with several Turner offices including, New York City and Seattle, a takeoff plugin was developed to support Turner’s current approach to “Control Quantity Models” and “Gross Square Foot” takeoffs. This tool allows SketchUp models to be built for different purposes. For example, using client or business unit standards, we still achieve consistent and accurate takeoffs of square footage, count, length and volumes (using SketchUp Pro’s Solid Tools).

The Count Steel for Estimating module of the Turner plugin

Design information is still in its infancy and rapidly changing. Supporting Turner’s evolving estimating expertise, a plugin was developed to accelerate the takeoff process for conceptual estimates. This plugin allows for rapid creation of space and room plans, as well as the detailed takeoff information that is required for estimates.

The Mass Generator for Estimating module

These two takeoff plugins work together to seamlessly streamline the quantity takeoff process developed by estimators in SketchUp Pro. At Turner, we look at opportunities to develop existing processes & workflows using new tools.

A detail view of the Mass Generator for Estimating module

In this way, we aren’t teaching new workflows based on new tools as they come along (a very disruptive process for any business). Rather, we’re able to leverage the skill sets and broad knowledge bases of our VDC team to build streamlined versions of existing workflows into new tools.

In the third (and last) installment of the series, we’ll explore how Turner is using SketchUp Pro in a unique and innovative way: for safety training.

Posted by Gopal Shah, SketchUp Marketing

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SketchUp Pro Case Study: Turner Construction and the WTC, Part 1

Today, we kick off a three-part series profiling Turner Construction Company, one of the largest construction management companies in the world. Turner uses SketchUp Pro at several points in its workflow: planning and coordinating of demolition and construction, creating presentations and providing safety training. They’ve even developed SketchUp plugins to accelerate certain internal processes.

We sat down with Jim Barrett, Director of Integrated Building Solutions, to discuss how Turner is using new technologies and processes to solve everyday problems. In this first installment, Jim tells us about SketchUp Pro’s role in Turner’s World Trade Center Transportation Hub Project.

To meet the accelerated schedule and high number of deliverables for the World Trade Center Transportation Hub Project, Turner turned to SketchUp Pro. This project is not only a complex matrix of building system and structural elements; it also requires detailed phasing of demolition and construction to avoid disturbance to the six major subway lines that run within the project extents. Coordination models are essential for planning phasing and coordinating the location of not only the permanent structures, but also the temporary construction items such as formwork, shoring, and bracing.

Detailed model of East Box Girder steel, precast smoke purge ducts, and temporary shoring.

Weekly work-in-place presentation updates are automated through a custom Turner plugin (which we’ll discuss in Part 2 of this post) for exporting images to slide presentation software. The ability to customize workflows provides Turner with the opportunity to combine constructibility studies with graphic information about the schedule and clearly represent this information to the project team.

Work in place tracking of 1-train subway structure and temporary shoring towers. Both subway and PATH train service are maintained while construction is taking place.

Interoperability is key for Engineers at Turner. SketchUp Pro’s ability to import and save to exchange file formats allows the team to compile models from multiple disciplines, regardless of the model’s software origin. In this way, the team can quickly study complex details and integrate additional information to an existing model.

PATH Hall roof steel ribs, vierendeel truss, and adjacent to Memorial Pavilion structure.

We’d like to thank Jim and Turner Construction for chatting with us. In part 2, we’ll explore a couple of Turner’s custom plugins used to bring existing processes into the simple, efficient and visual environment of SketchUp Pro.

Posted by Gopal Shah, SketchUp Marketing

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Organic modeling made simple with Curviloft

The process of extruding one 2D profile such that it ends in another, different 2D profile is often called lofting. There’s no easy way to do this in plain ol' SketchUp, but there are plenty of plugins that make it possible. The one I’ve been obsessed with lately is called Curviloft; it's by the venerable Fredo6. If you need to learn about plugins in general, including how to install them, visit the plugins page on our website.

Curviloft lets you do three basic operations; which one you use depends on what you’re trying to accomplish. For the sake of brevity (and simplicity), I’m going to focus on only the first operation in this post: Loft By Spline.

The Basics

Let’s say you have two profiles that you want to connect together. The example below is super-simple: It’s a circle directly above a square. Here, I want to connect the two with a shape that goes directly between them. Curviloft’s Loft By Spline tool was made for just this kind of thing.

I start with two flat profiles (shapes) positioned one above the other.

Fredo6's Curviloft plugin includes three handy tools. This post deals with the first one: Loft by Spline. To use it, you need two or more profiles. These can be closed shapes (as above) or simple, unconnected edges (see the end of this post for an example).

With nothing selected, I activate Loft By Spline and click once on each shape. Because there are only two, it doesn’t matter which shape I click first. If there were more than two, I’d click in the order that I want to connect them, starting at either end. When both profiles are numbered, I click the green checkmark in the Curviloft toolbar (see below). This brings me into Preview mode, where I can see what I’m about to end up with.

Activate the tool, then click on the profiles you'd like to use as the endpoints for the shape you're trying to create. When you're done, click the green checkmark to enter Preview mode.

The Curviloft toolbar is complicated; there’s no getting around it. The good news is that you don’t have to understand what all the controls do in order to use the tool. In Preview mode, you can just click things to see what happens. There's no shame in experimentation.

The Curviloft toolbar is a doozy, but you can (and should) click buttons to see what happens. Every case is different, and some settings look better than others.

When you perform a Loft by Spline operation with Curviloft, the tool is generating two different kinds of geometry which it later combines. Intermediate profiles (left) are "in-between" 2D shapes spaced between the profiles you start out with. Splines (right) are lines that connect adjacent profiles together. They can be straight or curvy, depending on the settings you choose.

I like to fiddle with the Spline Method settings first (see below). This is where you control the shape of the vertical lines (splines) that connect the two profiles—in this case, the circle and the square. The three options that I find give the most interesting results are “Junction by connected lines”, “Bezier curves – Respect tangency (Method 2)” and “Junction by Orthogonal Bezier Curves”. By all means, try the other buttons, too; there’s gold in them thar hills.

Different settings usually produce fairly different results. Click around until you like what you see.

Playing with the Vertex Matching controls also yields some useful options (see below). Here, you’re telling Curviloft how to decide which points on the perimeter of each profile should connect to one another. In this case, the circle has 24 endpoints and the circle only has four. The tool does its best to figure out the intermediate geometry, but the Vertex Matching settings let you provide guidance. For me, the most interesting button is the one on the far right; often, deselecting “Orientate contours to their best-fit box” seems to produce better results. Click it a few times to see what happens.

To be honest, I really don't understand what these buttons do. I have eyes, though, and I can tell what looks good and what doesn't. I bet you can, too.

When you’re satisfied, hit Enter on your keyboard (or click the green checkmark on the toolbar) to finish generating the result.

I'm delighted every time I do one of these operations. Modeling this "by hand" would take so long that I doubt I'd even bother attempting it.

Cool variation #1: Twisting

While you’re still in Preview mode, clicking on black part of your preview object opens yet another set of controls. The Properties of the Edited Junction window shows you more information about the connections in the operation you’re doing. My favorite widgets here have to do with twisting; they let you rotate either of your profiles (in this case, the circle and the square) by 15 or 90 degree increments. The result is an insanely cool twisting effect. Click the little right and left arrows and you’ll see what I mean. Addictive, no?

Twisting 3D forms is one of those things that SketchUp modelers have resigned themselves to never being able to do. When I discovered this functionality in Curviloft, I got up and danced around.

Cool variation #2: Offset profiles

Loft by Spline works great on profiles that aren’t lined up perfectly, too. Below, I’ve moved and rotated the circle.

Your profiles don't have to be directly on top of one another to use Loft by Spline.

Again, trying different Spline Method settings produces pretty wildly different results.

Using straight splines connects the profiles in a very direct manner. Choosing a curvy spline method produces a much jauntier shape.

I dare you not to waste an afternoon playing with Curviloft. The other two tools in the set let you loft along a path and "skin" connected profile edges, but Loft by Spline is pretty powerful on its own. Remember that Curviloft is donationware, meaning that if you like it, you can contribute to its author; you'll find an option to do so in the Curviloft menu after you install it.

Here are some quick examples of shapes I whipped up while I was working on this post:

Both profiles are identical, but I used the twist options to spiff things up a little.

Lofting between a complex profile and a simple one can be tricky, but the smooth transition that ensues is always lovely. Rocket? Tree trunk? Bicycle handlebar grip?

Your profiles needn't be fully-enclosed faces. Try lofting between arcs and other edges to produce all kinds of things that would be painful to model without Curviloft.

I used Curviloft to model parts of this queen I'm making. Some of us on the SketchUp team are collaborating on a 3D printed chess set.

I've written about a couple of Fredo6's other terrific plugins in the past. RoundCorner gives you the ability to quickly and easily create rounds and fillets on almost any shape. FredoScale is a toolkit for stretching, bending, twisting and otherwise deforming your models in incredibly useful ways.

Posted by Aidan Chopra, SketchUp Evangelist

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New Book: SketchUp for Game Design

I’ve yet to meet a SketchUp modeler who doesn’t—at least just a little bit—want to work in the video game design industry. I get a stupid grin on my face when I think about how much fun it it would be to make battle tanks and exploding oil drums and secret doors for hidden basements full of zombies. In the gaming world, boring things like gravity and cost take a backseat to novelty and sheer coolness.

But how to turn your SketchUp habit (and job cranking out toilet stall details) into days full of armor design and wandering through bad neighborhoods looking for interesting photo-textures to shoot?

Google SketchUp for Game Design is Robin de Jongh’s newest book; he also wrote SketchUp 7.1 for Architectural Visualization. It presumes that you’re a SketchUp beginner, but then quickly gets on to the good stuff:

• Finding good resources for photo-textures
• Using Meshlab to convert your models in useable 3D game assets
• Working with the Unity 3D game engine (which is widespread, free-or-low-cost middleware for designing game levels)
• Creating high-quality textures for games
• Adapting your models for use in video games
• Authoring custom levels
• Modeling low-poly game assets (including cars) and selling them online

Robin’s writing is accessible and easy to follow. He packs a lot of information into each page, but manages to keep the tone friendly and even funny at times. While the book’s in black and white, color versions of the images are available from the publisher’s website.

Posted by Aidan Chopra, SketchUp Evangelist

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Skelion: A solar energy design plugin for SketchUp

Skelion was designed to make working in SketchUp quite a bit easier for solar professionals. It features the ability to automatically insert solar panels on SketchUp surfaces. Because the developers are solar professionals themselves, I have a feeling others in the industry will find this plugin quite useful. I had a chance to ask one of Skelion’s developers some questions:

Please tell us a little bit about yourself.

Well, I am Sam Jankis, industrial engineer and co-developer of Skelion, although my partner is the real code developer of the plugin: Juan Pons is a Spanish engineer and programmer. Skelion was born in July 2011 after two years of development. It is a plugin for Google SketchUp that allows you to, among other things, insert solar panels on surfaces automatically.

Why did you build Skelion?

Skelion was developed to automate the design of solar systems using Google SketchUp. The goal was to do all the design work we were doing, but automatically. Now we can do with four clicks what we were doing in four hours. Skelion reduced considerably our average time expended on doing layouts and energy production reports of solar systems, and allowed us to multiply by four the preliminary studies we could do.

How does it work?

Basically, you select a surface where you want to insert solar panels and click on the solar cell logo. A menu appears that asks you about tilt and orientation for the panels, the type of panel, and a shading range for a given day. Photovoltaic panels can be selected from our database or you can create your own, and they can be placed in portrait or landscape orientation. After that, the plugin automatically inserts the solar panels on your selected surface. It also works with irregular surfaces. For more information, take a look at our video tutorials.


What are your goals for the plugin?

The goal for Skelion is to become a standard design tool in the solar industry. We believe that as soon as solar designers get familiar with the plugin they are going to love it—as we do.


How can SketchUp modelers try Skelion?

They can download the plugin from our download page. The Free version includes the most powerful feature: the automatic insertion of solar panels. With the Pro version, you get some interesting and useful features such as energy reports.



Posted by Chris Cronin, SketchUp Sales Team

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SketchUp Pro Training Schedule: Jan/Feb 2012

Our January and February 2012 SketchUp Authorized Training Center schedule is now available. The map below contains information on specific locations, dates, and courses provided:


View in a larger map

Posted by Shara Rice, SketchUp Training Team

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Making your models more useful with Trelligence Affinity

Some architects begin new projects by creating a “bubble diagram” that turns the program — the list of space requirements for a building—into a set of shapes. Mostly, these diagrams are useful for figuring out adjacencies and loose spatial relationships. They’re really about translating information in spreadsheets into something that can begin to inform decisions about space, form, structure and all the other good stuff that makes buildings worth building.

Over time, we’ve seen an awful lot of architects use SketchUp Pro as a tool for making more-accurate bubble diagrams. They create “rooms” whose areas match the ones in the program, group each one, and arrange them three-dimensionally. The results aren’t buildings, per se—I prefer to call them shoebox models. They can be very useful, but there’s a catch: once a room changes size, there’s a disconnect between the spreadsheet (which is what the client is asking for) and the nascent design.

That’s where the SketchUp interoperability in Trelligence Affinity comes in. Affinity is Windows software made specifically for the architectural programming and schematic design phases. It includes neat tools for visualizing program information in different ways and using that information to guide your design. The new Affinity plug-in for SketchUp lets you easily connect your shoebox model to Affinity, creating a permanent connection between the model, the spreadsheet and all the underlying data about the building requirements. Forgot to include a conference room? Inadvertently doubled the size of the cafeteria? Affinity will let you know. The workflow is actually bi-directional; you can begin in either SketchUp or Affinity.

You can start with a programmatic massing model in SketchUp. I like to think of these as 'shoebox models'.

Scanning your model with the Affinity plugin assigns it useful metadata.

In Affinity, you can view the scanned SketchUp model in different ways.

The architectural program in Affinity can be linked to your SketchUp model.

This video tells the story quite nicely:

To download the plugin and get more information, check out the plugin page.

Posted by Chris Dizon and Aidan Chopra, SketchUp Team

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Another important update for SketchUp 8

In the world of software, the designation “M2” refers to “Maintenance Release #2”. Maintenance releases are mini-versions that come out between major updates. They aren’t really about flashy new features; they’re more like tune-ups for your car; squeaks and rattles get fixes, tires are rotated, fluids are changed. You get the picture.

It’s been a few months since we released M1; since then, we’ve collected a fresh batch of performance tweaks and bug fixes—over 150 of them, in fact. M2 is a free update for all users of SketchUp 8 and SketchUp Pro 8 in all 12 languages. The best way to get it is to open SketchUp and do this:

Windows: Choose Help > Check for Update
Mac: Choose SketchUp > Check Web for Update

Having stated that maintenance releases aren’t always flashy, we couldn’t resist adding a few shiny, new things that we think you’ll appreciate:

Better Ruby Script Installation

We’ve had a way for other folks to build SketchUp plugins and extensions for years. Anyone with coding skills can use the Ruby API (application programming interface) to whip up new tools that they can distribute any way they like. People have created thousands of great scripts—we consider the API one of the most useful things we’ve done.

The tricky part has always been teaching SketchUp modelers how to install and access the Ruby scripts (Rubies) that they want to use. Adding a sophisticated Ruby used to involve finding a specific folder on your system and putting a bunch of files in all the right places. Try explaining how to do that to your boss.

The Extensions panel in SketchUp Preferences has a new button...

In SketchUp 8 M2, we’ve added two features that should make using Rubies a whole lot easier: The first is a new button on the Extensions panel in SketchUp Preferences. Clicking it lets you install any properly-configured ".RBZ" (ruby zip) file, which puts the needed files into the correct spot, without having to dig around in your computer’s file system. It’s simple, but huge. We’ve also added a lightweight set of “hooks” in the API that should help scripters build their own script-management tools.

Better COLLADA

All versions of SketchUp 8 can read and write COLLADA, a 3D file format that works with lots of other 3D software. It’s managed by the Khronos Group, an industry consortium that decides which features COLLADA should support. As of M2, SketchUp’s import/export support for COLLADA is now compliant with over 90% of the official Khronos compatibility test suite, only leaving out support for animations and shaders—neither of which can be authored in SketchUp anyway.

We think you’ll like SketchUp 8 M2’s ability to seamlessly import and export clean and compliant COLLADA geometry. One particular thing to note: SketchUp now preserves texture names in exported files. This makes it easier to work with COLLADA files in 3rd party rendering tools.

Advanced Camera Tools included in Pro

Back in March, we announced the Advanced Camera Tools for SketchUp Pro 8. The ACTs let set designers, cinematographers, storyboard artists and other people in the entertainment industry work with simulated real-world cameras in their SketchUp models. Until now, the ACTs were a separate plugin that you had to install. In M2, they’re built right into every copy of SketchUp Pro 8.



More Straightforward Pro Trials

After you download and install SketchUp Pro, you can try all of the Pro features for 8 hours (of use) before deciding to buy a license. Up until now, we’ve simply switched off the Pro stuff if you don’t enter a license after the trial period. Effectively, Pro reverted to being just like regular ol’ SketchUp.

The problem was that lots of people didn’t realize that they weren’t actually running Pro anymore. Even worse, folks who had bought Pro licenses and had forgotten (or otherwise been unable) to activate those licenses were missing out on all the great stuff they’d paid for. Our Pro Support team has been fielding dozens of “Why can’t I import a CAD file?” questions per day. It’s been a bit of a mess.

Starting with SketchUp 8 M2, the SketchUp Pro Trial will no longer revert to “free mode” when the trial period expires. A separate version of SketchUp will still be available to download for free, but SketchUp Pro will require a valid license file to run after your trial period has expired.

Mac OS 10.7 Compatibility

Users of Apple’s latest operating system, take note: SketchUp 8 is fully compatible with your hardware. And I ain’t lion. Rawr.

Posted by John Bacus, SketchUp Product Manager

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SITEOPS: Conceptual design for land development

Back in architecture school, I once had to lay out a parking lot for a building I was designing. What a terrible, terrible exercise in nitpicky details and perpetual re-arrangement. The solution I came up with accommodated all of four Smart cars and a unicycle. Awful. If only I’d had access to a tool like SITEOPS from BLUERIDGE Analytics.

SITEOPS is conceptual land development software for folks like architects, civil engineers, landscape architects and land developers. After you’ve brought in a site, you can combine building footprints with critical elements like parking, islands and driveways. These elements are parametric, meaning that they re-draw themselves on the fly as you change aspects of your conceptual design. SITEOPS even provides budget tools for estimating the cost of a project.

Want to see what a parking layout might look like if your building were on the other side of the site? As you slide it over, the parking lot automatically reconfigures to maintain the proper number of spaces. Too cool. This short video shows SITEOPS it in action:

Realizing that lots of their users are also SketchUp devotees, the good people at BLUERIDGE have added an Export to SketchUp button to their product. It lets you figure out the complicated stuff in SITEOPS, then visualize your project in SketchUp. It’s available to SITEOPS customers who have also purchased the Grading and Piping Module. These pictures tell the story better than words can:

This is a view of a 2D site layout in SITEOPS.

A 3D image of the same site in SITEOPS' Grading and Piping Module.

The site after it's been exported to SketchUp. The model includes all of the 3D topographical information from SITEOPS.

Here’s a video that features a couple of SketchUp users talking about their impressions of SITEOPS’ new SketchUp integration:

Update: The folks at BLUERIDGE Analytics are offering a free webinar about using SITEOPS with SketchUp Pro. It's scheduled for 2:00 PM EST on Wednesday, January 11th, 2012. Sign up if you're interested—the webinar also carries 1 PDH or 1 LU.

Posted by Aidan Chopra, SketchUp Evangelist

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Getting a better view of small interior spaces

When you’re modeling a small room, it can be a pain to see what’s inside. The problem is that the walls and ceiling get in the way. One solution is to lop off the ceiling and work in a top view, dollhouse-style. Other folks set up scenes from the interior corners and adjust their Field of View to something super-wide like 90 degrees.

Looking at a small interior space from the outside isn't very rewarding.

Deleting the ceiling and switching to a top view is useful, but fiddly.

Standing in the corner and making your Field of View really wide is just weird. What are you—a housefly?

Both of the above techniques work—to a point. Personally, I think it’s like trying to read a book through a keyhole. By far my favorite method for working on small interiors is to make use of SketchUp’s ability to have faces with different materials on each side:

The face separating Susan and Sang is yellow on one side and green on the other.

Creating a completely transparent material and painting the green side makes it see-through.

The Entity Info dialog box shows that the selected face is yellow on the front and see-through on the back.

By painting the outward-facing surfaces with a see-through material—one whose opacity is set to 0%—I can see in from the outside. Super useful, super simple.

Here, I painted all of the outward-facing surfaces with a transparent material. Notice that the interior surfaces still look opaque?

Orbiting around my model, I can see through all of the walls. I can even see through the floor.

Posted by Aidan Chopra, SketchUp Evangelist

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Introducing Maxwell for Google SketchUp

Among rendering die-hards, the name “Maxwell” has long been synonymous with jaw-dropping realism. Maxwell Render’s makers have offered a SketchUp-to-Maxwell solution for a few years, but it required modelers to have access to Maxwell Render Suite—the full, standalone version. For SketchUppers on a budget (or who only need to make the occasional rendering), this wasn’t an ideal arrangement.

A delicious Maxwell render by Rune Skjøldberg.

To accommodate more people, the folks behind Maxwell have just released something they’re calling Maxwell for Google SketchUp. It’s a dedicated photo-renderer, based on the venerable Maxwell rendering engine, that operates entirely inside of SketchUp. Best of all, it has the Big Three qualities going for it:

• Cross-platform. It works on both Windows and Mac systems.
• For both free and Pro. It works on both SketchUp and SketchUp Pro.
• Two entry points. There are free and licensed versions available.

As you can see in this straightforward feature matrix, the free version allows you to render in Draft mode and limits your resulting image to a resolution of 800 pixels. The Licensed version adds Production mode (faster rendering of complex lighting) and increases your maximum output resolution to 1920 pixels. At only $95/75€, the paid version is a bit of a bargain.

Another render by Rune Skjøldberg showcasing multiple light sources.

If you’re looking for all the bells and whistles and extra pixels that Render Suite offers, the “bridge” plugin for sending your SketchUp model to R.S is still available. So really, SketchUp modelers who want Maxwell’s delicious, unbiased results have three options. And they’re all good ones.

Posted by Aidan Chopra, SketchUp Evangelist

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How do you make ideas real with SketchUp?

Every week, two million people use SketchUp to breathe life into their ideas. The resulting 3D models get made into houses and schools, movie sets and aquariums, bridges, robots, and furniture. The sum total of all this work represents a larger, yet untold story of how the SketchUp community is profoundly shaping the world around us.

Well, it’s time for all you unsung SketchUp heroes to stand up and take a bow, so today, we’re kicking off the Make Ideas Real project. The result of this initiative will be an innovative, online showcase that does justice to the impact SketchUp users are having on the physical world.

But we need your help to pull this off.

Make Ideas Real with SketchUp

Here’s how you can pitch in: Use this form to tell us your SketchUp story. Send us an image of a SketchUp model with an accompanying photograph that shows your completed project. Anything goes for subject matter; architecture, archeology, industrial design, construction, woodworking, personal fabrication, model railroading, mousetrap design — as long as SketchUp helped you make it, we want to see it. Professionals, semi-professionals and proud amateurs are all welcome.

Here are three examples of what we mean:

City Lights Residence, Steve Oles

SKPR Bot, John Bacus

Stand Up Desk, Dave Richards and George LaRue Downing

Over the next few months, we’ll curate the submissions we receive, and in 2012, we’ll launch a special showcase of SketchUp users who are reimagining the spaces we inhabit. Please share your story with us, so we can share it with the world.

Posted by Gopal Shah, SketchUp team

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In the Zome with Rob Bell

Rob Bell first introduced us to the Zome during BaseCamp 2008 at the appropriately named Cool SketchUp Stuff session. Last spring, we ran into Rob again at Maker Faire Bay Area. Being fascinated with the evolution of these geometrically hypnotic structures, we thought it would be worthwhile to share Rob’s story and learn more about his new Zome Builder plugin for SketchUp and SketchUp Pro.

About Rob
Rob has had an impressive professional career working as a Software Engineer on projects such as Living Books and Lego Mindstorms. More recently he has also done commercial design and fabrication work for companies such as Tesla Motors, Google, The LongNow Foundation and the Stanford Design School. As Rob explained to us, “the type of skills and thinking that make someone a good software engineer are the same skills that make a solid craftsman, designer and builder.”

The Zomadic Shop on a typical day

In 2006, Rob used these skills to start Zomadic, a design/fabrication studio in San Francisco’s Mission District. In his studio, Rob uses SketchUp Pro and his Shopbot CNC router for 95% of his projects. “For me, Sketchup and the Shopbot go hand in hand,” says Rob.

What are Zomes
Zomes are polar zonohedral domes. Rob’s Zomes are beautiful, organic spaces designed in SketchUp, fabricated with a CNC router and assembled with just mallets and bare hands.

A Zome at Burning Man [photo credit: Dark Sevier]

Properly, Zomes are composed of rhombic faces rather than triangulated struts and nodes.

Looking up the polar axis of a twelve frequency zome

As Rob tells it, “Zomes are about thinking of space and structure in terms of volumes - not points, nor lines, nor planes - because volumes are real and those other things are only abstractions. As Buckminster Fuller said, ‘All systems are polyhedra.’”

Designing Zomes with SketchUp Pro
For Rob, the first step in creating a Zome is designing the structure in SketchUp Pro.

The Miracula Mirabilis: A twelve frequency helical zome spire designed in Sketchup.

“SketchUp Pro has been the perfect design tool for me.” Rob continues, “I make strong use of components, layers and component instance transformations. The recent addition of the Solid Modeling Tools to SketchUp Pro has cut down my design time tremendously."

To make the design process easier, Rob also wrote a Ruby Script to generate basic polar zonohedral forms, which he subsequently released freely for anyone who’d also like to create these unique shapes.

Creating polar zonohedra and helical shells in Sketchup

And now Rob has released a new plugin for Sketchup and SketchUp Pro called Zome Builder. Zome Builder generates not just the primitive geometry of a Zome, but it also generates the part geometry that one needs in order to be able to actually build one. It’s a neat tool, which Rob continues to develop.

The vertex connectors cut on the Shopbot CNC Router

Fresh panels being test fit at Zomadic

Once Rob lands on a design, he uses Zome Builder to generate the part geometry for the panels and connectors. The parts are then ready for export to CAD for toolpathing and fabrication using a Shopbot.

After the parts are cut there’s still plenty of hand work to be done; subassemblies, edge round over, sanding and painting. Rob’s Zomes are large works of art and the attention to detail is evident to everyone who encounters them. “For this year’s project I had a core team of ten people. Everyone participated in the shop and on the playa to help me make it happen.”

The Zonotopia crew

The final step is assembly. The joinery of Zomes require no glue, nails, or staples. “I wanted to design a system where everyone could participate and have fun during the construction process,” says Rob.

Zomes, Zomes everywhere

Rob’s Zomes have been featured at Maker Faire, Lightning in a Bottle, Day of the Dead Festival, Prepare for the Playa, Decompression and of course, Burning Man where each year, he shares a new version of his ever-evolving art piece, Zonotopia.

In his words, “I think of Zonotopia as an archaeological wonder of ancient origin built by a people whose skill in art, craft and design was more sophisticated than our own. Each year I’m able to unearth a little more of what’s down there a new and amazing property of this Zonotopal architectural space is revealed and manifested. The Miracula Mirabilis is the third Zome of Zonotopia and it is the most sophisticated so far.”

The Miracula Mirabilis

“What I find so compelling is that this Zonotopal Architectural space I’m working in has just barely been explored in the computer much less actually built. There are but a handful of people around the world working in this domain -- and a rich domain it is, and that’s exciting.”

We’d like to the thank Rob for sharing his one-of-a-kind SketchUp Story story with us. We hope this post inspires you to try Rob’s Zome Builder plugin to make your own Zome. To find more pictures, models and information about Zomes, visit Rob’s website www.zomadic.com and Zomad’s 3D Warehouse page.

Posted by Gopal Shah, SketchUp marketing

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