SketchUp’s new Extension Warehouse

Anticipated by many and announced last year at 3D Basecamp, SketchUp 2013 is now out and available for download. If you are still using SU 8 (or dare I say even 7 or 6), swing over to their website and download the latest version. The free version is still free and there are upgrade options for the Pro version.

So what’s new? Quite a few things. Here’s the run-down:

• Extension Warehouse
  There is finally an official place where you can find the many plugins and extensions that are available for SketchUp (including mine). While all the other sites out there (Ruby Library Depot, SketchUcation, Smustard and even my sketchupplugins.com) did a great job accumulating these, the new warehouse is integrated right into SketchUp (just look for the toolbar button) and it features one-click installation and plugin updating as well as the usual app-store stuff of reviews, popularity stats and hopefully later: ratings.
  This might have turned SketchUp into the first CAD application with an App Store!
• Toolbar problems are now finally fixed!
  SketchUp now uses a better toolbar system that leaves toolbars (even those created by plugins) in their place. You can also create custom toolbars and re-arrange buttons to your liking. Nifty!
• New icons
  Along with the new toolbars come new icons. Many of these make it clearer what the underlying tool does while others unify tool icons across SketchUp and LayOut (take the rectangle tool as an example).
• Free is now SketchUp Make
  The free version of SketchUp has been renamed to SketchUp Make. This just makes sense since so many people use it to “make” things (think of what you can do when you combine it with the MakerBot, for example). Along with this change comes a significant change in licensing, though. While it was possible to use the free version for commercial work before, this is no longer the case. From now on it can only be used for personal or education projects.
• An upgrade and support program for SketchUp Pro
  Along with the license change for the free version, SketchUp announced an upgrade and service/subscription program for the Pro version. Read about the details on the official announcement.
• Additions to LayOut
  LayOut received improvements in the areas of hatch patterns, arrays, curved leader lines, improved arrowheads and updated dimension styles. For more on this, read the official announcement.
• Installation Locations:
  SketchUp now installs in a different location on your hard disk (i.e. the “Google” subdirectory is gone). This means – among other things – that you can keep your SU 8 installation and run SU 2013 in parallel (remember, SU 8 free was OK for commercial projects). Might be good for the transition time.
• A new supported C interface SDK has been released for developers.
• Apparently there have been some behind-the-scenes improvements in SketchUp’s display interface and Ruby API. Also, vector rendering in LayOut has been sped up. While these are not as visible as other changes, they certainly make a difference.
• On the Mac, SketchUp got a new drag installer to be more inline with the Mac OS.
• A new www.sketchup.com website!
  If you haven’t yet, check out the new website. While it certainly looks great, it also has some important URL changes: E.g. the Help center is now located at:
  http://help.sketchup.com

As you can see, this is altogether a solid first major release at SketchUp’s new home at Trimble. While those that may have wanted more new tools in SketchUp might be disappointed, this release “future-proofs” SketchUp. Improving LayOut, clearing up license confusion and providing a subscription option will make professional users (and Trimble) happy. Continuing the free version of SketchUp and the toolbar fix will simply make every user happy. And the Extension Warehouse was a logical addition that will supercharge this great software.

So what’s left to do now? I am hoping for a “renovated” 3D Warehouse and (beefed up by the Extension Warehouse) more improvements in the Ruby API for the next release. But for now I am happy…

What should you do next?

• Learn how to get the most out of SketchUp the only way you can really do that: By getting my book!
  
• Check out the new SketchUp site
• Discuss the new version on SketchUcation

Have you ever wanted to…

• make sure you never miss a blog post by the Trimble SketchUp folks?
• stay up-do-date with your favorite SketchUp blogs?
• follow what’s going on at SketchUcation?
• keep an eye on Twitter and Facebook?
• make sure you never miss any of my blog posts?
• do all of this while you are working with SketchUp?

Then consider yourself lucky! I just posted a SketchUp News plugin that lets you do all of this – right inside SketchUp.

Even if you don’t usually use SketchUp plugins, this is the one to have!

Get your copy at the link below. Oh, and did I mention it is free?

http://www.alexschreyer.net/projects/sketchup-news-plugin/

Enjoy!

SketchUp Ruby Code Editor

I finally got around to updating my Ruby Code Editor to version 3.0. There are quite a few upgrades including: better environment stability (editor, scrolling, results, etc.), code completion for SketchUp classes and methods and a variety of other minor updates (including the fact that it now remembers the last file).

The following video gives a brief overview of the current version:

As always, you can get this editor from my website (and look at the more detailed changelog or leave comments) at:
http://www.alexschreyer.net/projects/sketchup-ruby-code-editor/

For more on what you can do with this tool, check out my book “Architectural Design with SketchUp” (especially chapter 6):

http://sketchupfordesign.com/

As I mentioned before on this site, Sketchfab is a great way to share your 3D models – for example using my SketchUp uploader plugin. One thing that was happening with SketchUp models in particular, however, was that they usually looked very “flat” on the Sketchfab website. Materials typically have a rather dull appearance and transparent materials have no reflections. That prompted me in the past to hack the COLLADA files before upload to change material properties. Well… that is no longer necessary. As of yesterday, the Sketchfab website sports a shiny new material editor. Right after uploading a model, you can get to work adjusting all of its’ material properties. The image above shows the basic interface on a simple cube model.

But that’s not all: While this material editor is great for adjusting material properties in Sketchfab, it also works extremely well for interactively learning and exploring material components such as “diffuse color/texture”, “lightmap”, “specular color/texture” etc. Understanding these parameters is crucial if you want to learn about rendering software (for example if you make your way through the rendering chapter in my book). You will, for example, find many of these terms used in the material editors of rendering packages like Twilight or VRay (and many others).

Let’s see how we can modify this default cube to add some effects:

The image above shows how you can turn the cube’s material into a perfect mirror. This is done by reducing the “diffuse color” to zero and increasing the “reflection” to one.

If you want the material to be a translucent and partially reflective glass, then the settings in the image above might be appropriate. Feel free to play with the sliders a bit to understand how they work and to get things just right.

If you want to have a colored, partially reflective surface, then the settings above might be most appropriate.

A great additional feature is that you can click on any of the image swatches and not only adjust the color but also upload custom textures. This makes it easy to adjust and switch textures. I just wish the Sketchfab folks had added a scaling slider for textures. It is impossible to control texture scaling beyond what was imported in the original file.

To try this out on one of my older SketchUp models (have you seen this house anywhere before?), I opened my “Solar House”:

After I went through all of the materials in the file, added reflections here and there and the occasional normal map, the model looks like this:

Here is the interactive model on Sketchfab:

As you can see, having an environment map brings out reflections quite nicely. All I need now is the ability to turn shadows on and off in the Sketchfab WebGL model. For now, that goes right on my pile of feature requests. But other than that: Well done on the material editor!

I sincerely hope this post finds you all happy and healthy. Enjoy your holidays (whatever you celebrate and wherever you are) and any time off that you can spend with your family. I wish you all a successful new year and all the best for your future endeavors.

It remains to be seen whether politicians in the new year can finally put the goal of peace and public safety before any petty interests – I truly hope this will be the case! My thoughts are with the families in Newtown, Connecticut that lost loved ones. Enough is enough!

Cheers,
Alex

P.S.: “Why the water in the image?” you may ask. Well – it looks great and it renders fast. There are really no religious connotations here whatsoever. If you want to know how the image was made, check out this tutorial on SketchUcation for a how-to article.

I just updated the Sketchfab uploader plugin for SketchUp to v.1.4. You can now set your model on upload as private and assign a password (as long as you at least have a PRO account). It also sports a shiny new image. The full list of changes is:

• Support for updated API (incl. private/password functionailty)
• Included SketchUp source tag in JSON
• Exports edges by default now
• Removed thumbnail upload (not supported anymore by API)
• Better string cleaning on upload

Download it here:

http://www.alexschreyer.net/projects/sketchfab-uploader-plugin-for-sketchup/

This is an exciting week! My book “Architectural Design with SketchUp” is now available from all of the online booksellers and should be in stores soon, too.

After a year of writing and a few months editing and finalizing, it feels really good to see the final product now on store shelves and on Amazon’s website. Wiley did an amazing job putting the book together and I am really happy how it looks.

If you want to find out what this book is all about, check out this page on my companion site or view sample pages on Amazon.com or Google Books. You can buy this book from any of the following locations. Kindle and E-Book versions are also available.

• Amazon.com
• Wiley.com
• Barnes & Noble
• or Google Books

I hope you all enjoy the book and that it helps you create the great designs you are dreaming of!

Please remember that the book companion site is always available for comments, questions, discussions and show-and-tell for your work. You can find out more about what is possible on its About page. Also, I will be posting more videos and other freebies there in the near future, so check back often.

Still need a good present idea and have a MakerBot laying around? Using SketchUp, you can easily turn your or a loved one’s silhouette into a rotational sculpture that can be a pedestal, vase, candle holder or anything else you like. With a 3D printer or a CNC lathe you have everything you need to also make these into physical objects.

Step-by-step instructions are on the companion website for my new book:

http://sketchupfordesign.com/tutorials/turn-yourself-into-a-vase-with-sketchup-making-rotational-portrait-sculptures-from-silhouettes-for-3d-printing/

Enjoy!

I just posted a tutorial on my new SketchUp book’s companion site, http://sketchupfordesign.com, about how you can use SketchUp to create geometry for structural analysis. You can find the article (and the video) here:

http://sketchupfordesign.com/tutorials/analyze-this-creating-geometry-for-structural-analysis-in-sketchup/

Now that the fourth SketchUp 3D Basecamp is over and the participants are heading home, it’s time to look back and recap some of the news and things that happened at the event. But first I have to say that Trimble’s SketchUp gang has yet again put together an amazing event in Boulder, their hometown. I enjoyed every minute of it and unfortunately had to head back home a bit too early (because of other commitments).

So in case you missed it, here’s what happened:

Day 1 – State of the Union, Keynote and Presentations

The first day’s presentations were held at the Boulder Theater, a beautiful, historic place in the center of town.

After some welcoming words by Aidan Chopra, SketchUp’s Product Evangelist (and untiring organizer of the event), John Bacus, Product Manager for SketchUp introduced Trimble Sector VP Bryn Fosburgh. In his short speech, Bryn assured users how much Trimble is invested (and investing!) in SketchUp and how SketchUp fills a void centered on Architecture in Trimble’s portfolio. He also outlined how SketchUp will be used as a “platform” for various endeavors and that there always will be a free version.

How popular is SketchUp

When John returned to the stage afterwards, he had similarly positive, forward-looking words. He also announced some SketchUp-related news that can be summarized as:

• SketchUp will switch to a predictable annual release cycle. Therefore, the next release will be “SketchUp 2013″. (Apparently they won’t be playing Autodesk’s game of naming it 2014 in 2013)
• The SketchUp folks are very much working on the next version of the 3D Warehouse. It will include WebGL technology that has already been included in the SketchUp Showcase.
• 45% of SketchUp users use plugins. Hence, some of the main foci of this event were plugins and Ruby scripting.
• SketchUp is trying out open-source code development for some of its components. You can already see this happen on their GitHub site.
• The first project in this repository, released at Basecamp, is a more powerful Ruby Console, the Developer Console. It allows for multi-line editing and is extensible.
• The second project, also released at Basecamp, is the TestUp software that allows Ruby code developers to use the same unit-testing platform that SketchUp uses internally to test and debug their plugins and other Ruby components.
• What got the biggest cheers (especially from Bre Pettis, founder of MakerBot), was the release of a STL importer/exporter, also open-sourced in the GitHub archive. It is based on work by plugin developers and makes STL export of models (for 3D printing) easier.
• There will always be a free SketchUp version and an affordable Pro version.
• SketchUp is hiring! If you are interested, look here.

After these morning presentations, it was time for a boxed lunch and a roundup of rendering software that included Bloom Unit, iRender nXt, Podium, Render[in], Shaderlight, Thea and VRay.

Rendering software panel

After this visually very exciting set of presentations, it was time for a product showcase for various other tools that extend SketchUp:

• BuildEdge - A BIM-like extension for walls and Roofs (for now) in SketchUp
• sunglass.io - A browser-based (WebGL) 3D-model viewer and collaboration platform
• Product Connect - A plugin that can enrich any object-based SketchUp model with (manufacturer-)data
• 4D Virtual Builder - A way to add construction schedule data to a SketchUp model for construction planning

Eagerly awaited by everyone in the audience was the next program point – a keynote by Bre Pettis, founder of MakerBot (he is currently on the cover of WIRED magazine).

Bre Pettis of MakerBot

Bre delivered an uplifting presentation that showed where he (and the entire maker movement for that matter) came from and how curious experimentation can lead to great things. He also showcased the MakerBot Replicator 2 (their latest model) and advocated “Made in America” (their 3D printers are made right in Brooklyn). Finally, he emphasized how much SketchUp was “close to his heart”.

The evening event at Boulder’s Absinthe House was expectably great with the program highlights having been the pitching of Unconference sessions for the next day and a SketchUp-pified version of Pictionary.

Some other reports on the event(s) of the day: MasterSketchUp

Day 2 – Unconference User Presentations

Day 2 was completely devoted to presentations by users and product manufacturers. It was a chance to learn a lot about what is possible with SketchUp. Here’s a lineup (with my presentation on the right):

Unconference sessions (mine is on the right)

Alternative to these sessions, two “Ruby 101″ half-day courses were offered in nearby Hotel Boulderado. The event space at Rembrandt Yard was also filled with exhibitors showing off many of the wares we saw in the first day’s presentations.

An Unconference session

Below are the slides from my presentation. You can also download them as a PDF here.

As you can see in the last slide, my presentation gave a preview of some of the topics that are included in my forthcoming book “Architectural Design with SketchUp” (release date is November 14th).

Day 3 – Ruby Developer Conference and Design Charrette

Unfortunately I had to leave after Day 2 and therefore could participate neither in the Ruby Developers Conference nor the Design Charrette on this day. You can find summaries of those events here:

• Ruby Developers Conference program and comments
• From what I have heard through Google+: “Day 3 also had the Design Charrette where 15 teams were challenged to design “A wired, wireless classroom for the next 50 years” and “A system for organizing portable devices”. The demonstrations were amazing, and the winning teams battled it out with intense SketchUp trivia to win MarkerBot Replicators.”

Image Gallery

Below is my complete image gallery from the 3D Basecamp: