Sharpening SketchUp for 2015

We have some news to share today -- SketchUp 2015 is available for download now -- but first we’d like to share something that’s a few weeks old.

Here at SketchUp HQ in Boulder, we have a team dedicated to answering the phone and email questions that customers send us every day. Recently, we received these two emails on the same day:

Thank you for replying to my mum. I'm Marius and I'm 8 years old. I really like SketchUp and we have it in school. In art school, I made a factory with my best friend. 

-- Love, Marius XXX

And then, just a few hours later:

I'm a detective for the Ottawa Police Service. I specialize in Bloodstain Pattern Analysis and was introduced to your software while collaborating with university students. Using online tutorials I was able to quickly create 3D plan drawings for our crime scenes. The quality of the visual evidence produced was above and beyond what our court system was used to.

-- Det. Ugo Garneau, Ottawa Police Service

We get emails like these all the time, and we always think it’s incredible that so many different kinds of people can learn and be productive with SketchUp almost right away. On the other side of the spectrum, we regularly hear from seasoned modelers who have mastered SketchUp to make building things more efficient.

We’re incredibly proud that SketchUp helps all of these people be successful -- and have some fun while they’re at it. So when we plan updates, our team feels a big responsibility to preserve the reliability and flexibility that makes SketchUp... well, SketchUp.

In this release, we turned our focus to upgrading SketchUp’s performance infrastructure. In particular, we’ve updated SketchUp, LayOut, and our Ruby API to run as 64-bit applications. The least nerdy way to explain this change is that 64-bit architecture allows SketchUp to take advantage of more of your computer’s active memory. We’ve moved to 64-bit both to improve performance, but also to set up SketchUp to work better with the operating systems and extensions that people will be using over the next few years. So while this is a big modification to SketchUp’s technical backbone, we kind of hope you won’t notice it at all.

Similarly, SketchUp 2015 includes new modeling and documentation tools that we designed to feel like you’ve been using them for years. Probably our favorite of these is the Rotated Rectangle tool, a way draw to axis-independent rectangles that’s both incredibly useful and surprisingly intuitive. Give it a try: we think it will remind you of the first time you used SketchUp.

SketchUp 2015's official Rotated Rectangle Tool draws rectangles that don’t have to be perpendicular or parallel to an axes. It’s a simple idea that saves you about a dozen clicks to draw shapes like the cube on the right.

There’s a lot more to explore in SketchUp 2015: fast styles... LayOut smart labels... a 3 Point Arc tool... simpler Pro licensing… full IFC compatibility to get more and more folks participating in information modeling… we’ve even linked SketchUp to Trimble Connect, a new collaboration platform for sharing, reviewing, and commenting on any kind of project file.

You can download our latest version here, and if you have SketchUp Pro License, go ahead and use our license wizard to upgrade. If you work in SketchUp every day, we think you’ll really love this release -- after all, all we’ve done is make SketchUp work more like… well, SketchUp.

Posted by Mark Harrison, on behalf of the SketchUp team

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New Book: SketchUp to LayOut

Take it from me—book writin' ain't easy. Matt Donley has done the SketchUp-using world a huge favor: his SketchUp to LayOut is an easy-to-follow, easy-to-afford e-book that should fit right between the other LayOut tomes on your bookshelf.

My own For Dummies book devotes two chapters to LayOut, which is an acceptable introduction, but which is by no means comprehensive. Michael Brightman's The SketchUp Workflow for Architecture and Paul Lee's Construction Documents using SketchUp Pro and LayOut are both aimed at professionals who want to produce complete construction documents without using other CAD software. Matt's book is the missing link. Whereas other LayOut books have addressed only architects, Matt wisely includes examples for three markets: architects, woodworkers and designers who work on kitchens and bathrooms. Smart.

SketchUp to LayOut starts with a guided tour that does a great job of welcoming folks who have never seen the software before. Very quickly, though, Matt jumps in with both feet, shining a light on the connection between SketchUp and LayOut by focusing on model viewports. As LayOut's raisons d'etre, viewports are all-important, but very few people have mastered them. This book does a great job of rectifying the situation.

Matt Donley is the man behind MasterSketchUp.com. He launched the book last week with a webinar watched by almost 500 people; you can catch the free video recording on the publication’s website. He's selling the e-book itself for $39, but you can buy it with a bundle of useful hatches, textures, styles, templates and other resources for $67. Paying $99 gives you access to a library of video tutorials that Matt is planning to create over the next few months. I can’t wait to watch them.

Congratulations, Matt. See you at 3D Basecamp!

Posted by Aidan Chopra, SketchUp Evangelist

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Modeling a laser-cut Halloween costume for my son

October is the time of year that all of my creative energy is focused into a single, solitary purpose: the design and making of an unreasonably complicated Halloween costume for my son. This year, I was determined to reflect his outsized interest in aviation by building him his very own airplane. Something with an open cockpit. Something with a propeller. Something vintage. I started by touring the 3D Warehouse, collecting models of airplanes that might be good candidates. I settled on a WWII-era F4F-4 U.S. Navy fighter because I liked its shape, and because the model I found (by D.James) was beautifully executed.

 I found this Grumman F4F-4 on the 3D Warehouse. It was modeled by D.James.

Opening it in SketchUp, I began the process of simplifying the plane down to its most basic forms by hiding or deleting stuff I didn't need. The landing gear and propeller went. So did the wire-looking thing (I'm not much of an engineering buff) that connected the tail to the cockpit canopy. Eventually, I grouped the remaining bits of airplane together and put them on a single layer that I called "Reference."

The first step was to strip away the details that I didn’t think I’d need.

Next, I set about creating a brand-new model of the fuselage and tail by using the Circle, Push/Pull and Scale tools to create a form that (more or less) matched the existing model. I worked right on top, using the original geometry as a snapping guide for the new. This didn't take as long as you'd think, and it resulted in a simple form that I could easily manipulate later on. For the wings and stabilizers (the smaller wings on either side of the tail) I traced basic, flat shapes; I knew I wouldn't end up making them aerodynamically correct, so I didn't bother giving them a realistic thickness. It is, after all, illegal for a two-year-old to pilot aircraft in the state of Colorado.

D.James’ model is very complex, so I made myself a simpler version (grey) by modeling directly over the original (blue). The wings and the horizontal stabilizers are just flat faces.

Not being able to find a decent model of a small child anywhere online, I used a toddler-sized cylinder as a scale reference as I scaled down the entire vehicle to fit him. "Rough" doesn't begin to describe the level of accuracy I employed at this stage of the engineering process; I basically held a ruler next to his waist and decided that he could squeeze into a ten inch tube. I did NOT at any time actually squeeze him into a ten inch tube. Mostly because I didn't have one handy.

At this point, I set about changing the proportions to increase the airplane's overall level of adorableness. To do this, I grouped together the body, wings and tail bits, made a copy off to the side, and used the Scale tool to stretch and squish the whole thing.

Starting with a squashed cylinder to represent a toddler, I used the Move tool to change the proportions of the airplane until it looked wearable.

At this point, I'd pretty much decided that the airplane would be made out of laser-cut cardboard (more on that later), so I continued modeling with the assumption that the wings and stabilizers would be 2D shapes, and the body would be a more organic, 3D form. This part of the process was the most time-consuming and fiddly—it was just a matter of tweaking the shape of each element until I was happy with the overall proportions of the plane.

The intermediate state of the airplane is actually very basic.

As I settled on a material and construction method, I spent a lot of time on the website of a New Zealand and US-based company called Ponoko. They offer laser-cutting and 3D printing services, and their material selection is terrific. Ponoko has also been a good friend of SketchUp since they launched several years ago. Frankly, I'd been waiting for an excuse to try them out; their offering seemed really slick.

Before I could go any further on the airplane project, I needed to know more about the material I'd be using: its precise thickness, what sheet sizes are available, and its cost. Weight and budget were my major concerns, so I settled on double-layer corrugated cardboard with a thickness of 0.264 inches (6.7mm) and a maximum sheet size of 31.1 x 15.1 inches (790mm x 384mm). Sheets that size cost $3.50 apiece, which is cheap, plus file setup and cutting, which is decidedly less so. When I uploaded a test file to Ponoko to see what this undertaking might cost, the average price per sheet of cut parts was about $25.00. I figured I'd need about ten. This was turning out to be a very expensive cardboard airplane.

The double-layer corrugated cardboard page on Ponoko’s website. Make note of the material thickness for accurate modeling.

Back in SketchUp, I set about figuring out how to build the project out of interconnected, flat pieces. I started with the easy parts: the horizontal section of the body, which included the wings, and the vertical section, which included the tail. These two components were the structural parts of the plane, so I made them out of three layers of cardboard, laminated together for stiffness and durability.

The horizontal fuselage sheets (which include the wings) provide the airplane’s back-to-front structural strength. The vertical pieces are necessary for forming the nose and tail.

To design the rest of the plane's pieces, I copied the 2D profiles that made up the fuselage, made them into faces, and extruded them to the same thickness as the cardboard. Each piece was an individual group at this point; I didn't bother making named components until I was further along.

The ellipsoid “fins” that march down the length of the airplane are the key to defining the fuselage’s sleek, rounded shape.

Next, I used the maximum sheet size for the cardboard to figure out which parts would need to be subdivided and re-assembled after they'd been cut. This task was made a bit simpler by the fact that the biggest pieces of the plane—the horizontal and vertical "slabs" I'd started with—were each made up of three thicknesses of material. I just figured out a design that would hide the seams on the outside, visible layers, while allowing the middle layer pieces to overlap enough to form a strong sandwich when I glued everything together.

Parts which would ideally have been cut from a single sheet of cardboard had to be broken up into smaller pieces due to the small maximum sheet size for that material. These were then sandwiched together with glue. The resulting triple-layer laminates ended up being very stiff.

One of the last steps in the design process was to design the slots that would allow all (or at least most) of the pieces to interlock together. Figuring that the kerf (the width of the cut made by the laser) would be very small in this material, I decided to make the slots exactly as wide as the material thickness. This part was actually kind of fun—it's the closest I've ever come to modeling a 3D puzzle.

There are lots of ways to cut slots in the pieces; I used the Line and Push/Pull tools in combination with the Copy and Paste in Place commands.

At this point, I began the delicate process of converting my groups into components; piece by piece, I exploded each group and then immediately made it into a component with a meaningful name. Where I had a pair of identical, flipped parts (this was actually the majority of the airplane), I made sure both were instances of the same component. The airplane is made out of 58 individual parts, but only 32 unique components.

Because the airplane is so symmetrical, most of the parts are flipped and duplicated component instances.

Just for fun, and because I knew it would look really cool, I copied the plane onto a duplicate layer, and used the Move tool to arrange the parts as though they'd been exploded out from the object's center.

All of the airplane’s parts, exploded outward for visibility.

To have something laser cut by Ponoko, you give them a vector file (EPS or SVG) with all of the parts laid out flat. They provide Adobe Illustrator templates for all three of their standard sheet sizes, which makes things a bit easier. In order to go from a 3D, assembled object in SketchUp to a series of 2D cutting files in Illustrator, I needed to disassemble the plane piece by piece. Figuring that it would be easiest to have the assembled and flat versions adjacent to each other, I made a copy of the airplane off to the side and proceeded to take the copy apart with the Move tool. I used the Move tool's rotation grips (and occasionally the Rotate tool) to spin pieces around so they lay flat.

I made sure not to forget any pieces by literally taking apart an assembled copy of the airplane, laying the parts flat on the ground as I proceeded.

Almost there. I drew a rectangle that matched the sheet size of the cardboard, turned it into component, and made a dozen copies. Then I went through the laborious process of figuring out how to lay out all of the airplane pieces in an efficient way. Having done some experimentation on Ponoko's website, I'd discovered that it's significantly cheaper to produce two copies of the same cutting file than it is to make two different sheets. Good thing, because it turns out that most of my airplane parts are symmetrical; they're mirrored copies that exist in pairs. To take advantage of this, I arranged all of the symmetrical pieces on five sheets and produced two copies of each; all of the "singles" fit on only two more. In total, I had twelve sheets of parts.

The grey rectangles represent 31” x 15” sheets of cardboard. Notice that there are five pairs of identical parts sheets, plus only two unique sheets (in the upper left corner). This significantly reduced the laser cutting costs.

Digging around on Ponoko's website a little more, I discovered a mention of something called "nodes" which help to keep slot-assembled parts from wobbling and falling apart. Basically, it involves adding rounded bumps to the slots in your pieces. The size, position, and number of nodes depends on your material and its thickness, and the website didn't provide any specific tips for my double-layered corrugated cardboard, so I made an informed guess and crossed my fingers: I settled on a node height of 1/16th of an inch, which, multiplied by two, represented about a quarter of the 0.264" thickness of the sheet. That's a lot, but I figured that cardboard is a pretty compactible material. I was lucky; the nodes ended up working perfectly.

Nodes help to keep the parts snug when the final object is assembled.

One at a time, I copied each sheet to a new SketchUp file, set my camera to a top, parallel projection view, applied a simple, white Style with no profiles edges or other effects, did a Zoom Extents, and exported a PDF at 1:1 scale. Then I opened each PDF in Illustrator, copied just the parts, and pasted them on a new layer in the template provided by Ponoko. I went through this process a total of seven times—once for each unique sheet I'd be sending them.

The sheets are exported out of SketchUp Pro as 1:1 scale PDF files. These are then opened in a vector illustration program like Adobe Illustrator or Inkscape.

In order for Ponoko to convert an Illustrator EPS (their required upload format) into whatever file they send to their laser cutters, you need to make sure all of the edges in your drawings are colored and sized correctly. Blue lines tell the laser to cut, whereas red lines are used for engraving. Just follow the instructions on the template and you'll be okay.

After uploading my files, putting in all my credit card details, finalizing the order, corresponding a few times with the friendly staff at Ponoko, and waiting a couple of weeks, a box arrived at my house. I opened it up and was nearly knocked over by the smell of laser-cut cardboard. It's an odd odor; not terrible, but definitely not pleasant. I quarantined the pieces in the spare bedroom and went to work punching everything out.

The accuracy of the cutting was astounding. I've never laser cut anything; I expected the pieces to look good, but the quality of what I got made me alternate between grinning and literally giggling. For a person who spent hundreds of hours in architecture school hacking away at cardboard, foam core, basswood and plexiglass with an X-Acto knife, the extravagant expense of laser cutting instantly justified itself. I was hooked.

I couldn’t believe the quality of the laser-cut parts that arrived on my doorstep.

It took longer to peel the paper backing off of the individual parts than it did to assemble the actual airplane (not counting the time it took for the glue to dry completely). With only a couple of exceptions, the parts slotted together exactly the way I'd designed them to. It was the most gratifying thing I've made in years.

It took me only a couple of hours to put the airplane together. The next version will have less glue—that was the most time-consuming part of the process.

As a devout follower of the Church of Making Things Overcomplicated, I decided early on that the airplane should have a custom-designed instrument cluster. And a steering wheel. And a working, motorized propeller. This is already a monster blog post, so I'll end the description of my process here. To conclude, a few photos of the end result.

The final result weighs somewhere between five and six pounds, but that includes the steering wheel, the propeller motor, and four AA batteries. My son (who’s two-and-a-half) had no trouble wearing it.

 I designed the instrument cluster entirely in LayOut, using layers of translucent details to simulate reflections, highlights and shadows.

Posted by Aidan Chopra, SketchUp Evangelist

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Announcing the Visiting Professionals Program for Higher Education

In our line of work, we meet a lot of SketchUp ninjas. These people have gone way beyond memorizing keyboard shortcuts and customizing templates; they bend SketchUp Pro and LayOut to their will to solve complex design and process problems, to collaborate more efficiently with clients and partners, to build successful businesses. Frankly, these are the folks who make SketchUp do things that even we never imagined possible.

We’re inspired by these 3D experts, and we want to help transfer their expertise and knowledge to the next generation of SketchUp professionals. Our new Visiting Professionals Program is an exciting opportunity for U.S.-based university students and faculty to learn how SketchUp Pro and LayOut are used in professional practice across a variety of disciplines.

The SketchUp Pro Visiting Professionals: a veritable roster of 3D ninjas

The SketchUp Pro Visiting Professionals Program provides access to real-world experts in architecture, planning, landscape architecture, interior design, construction, video game design, film and stage design -- just to name a few. Our program participants include professional designers, renowned educators, and published authors. Beyond SketchUp Pro, these are professionals who have a lot to share about managing schedules and expectations, getting client buy-in and selling project ideas, and working across multiple software platforms to develop flexible workflows. After all, for most people, getting work done means choosing the right tools and making them all work together.

Visit our program site to learn more about what a visit to your school might include, and browse our directory of professional specialists. Then, apply to have a SketchUp Visiting Professional come to your institution. We will be facilitating a limited number of no-cost, U.S. visits for the 2013-14 school year.

Posted by Allyson McDuffie, SketchUp Pro for Education, Program Manager

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SketchUp Pro 2013: A closer look at LayOut

LayOut in SketchUp Pro has always existed to help you quickly and easily turn SketchUp models into compelling, communicative drawings. When we first released LayOut several years ago, its features put it firmly in the “presentation drawings” category of tools; it was equal parts layout, illustration, and slide software. Our users liked it, but they wanted it to do more—they wanted it to replace their bloated, complicated CAD systems, too. The live link between SketchUp models and LayOut model viewports has always been perfect for developing construction drawings that can evolve along with your designs.

A couple of versions ago, we decided to fully commit to making LayOut into the application that so many of you have been asking for. We added dimensions, vector rendering, and the ability to snap to points in your model viewports. We added DWG and DXF export, and configurable dashed lines. We made LayOut even faster, made it easier to move elements around precisely, and made lines editable—our Line tool may be the most intuitive vector drawing instrument around. Some of our users began to use LayOut to do complete sets of construction drawings.

For SketchUp Pro 2013, the improvements we made fall into three categories: a big, new feature, annotation refinements, and usability upgrades that make LayOut faster, smoother and even more pleasurable to use. Let’s take a look at these in order:

Pattern Fill: Hatching for materials, poché and other applications

Glance at LayOut’s updated Shape Style panel and you’ll notice a major addition: Pattern Fill. In response to our pro users’ (vehement) requests for the ability to add areas of hatching to their plans, sections and elevations, we built a feature that does that—and more. Simply building a Hatch tool with a limited library of symbols would have satisfied the request, but it would have been a single-purpose answer to the problem.

This drawing is 100% LayOut in SketchUp Pro 2013. Notice the dot screen patterns used to indicate the ground cover and to poché the walls.

Patterns in LayOut are simple raster images—usually PNGs—that can be any color, and can include an alpha channel for incorporating transparency. Most of the patterns we’ve included are single-colored lines with transparent backgrounds. This allows you to use any background color; just pick one from the Fill color well in the Shape Style panel. It’s a pretty flexible system that allows for an infinite number of combinations.

Almost all of the patterns we included in LayOut have transparent backgrounds. To add a solid color behind a patterned area, just click the Fill button in the Shape Style panel.

The new Pattern Fill panel acts as a browser, but it also provides two other important pieces of functionality: Rotate and Scale. These are pretty self-explanatory, but they mean you can orient and size any pattern to whatever is appropriate for your drawing.

LayOut in SketchUp Pro 2013 ships with over a hundred example patterns, but adding your own tileable images (or ones you find online) is dead easy. You can create a pattern tile in any other graphics program. We used a combination of LayOut and Photoshop to create ours. Making patterns that tile seamlessly can be a little tricky, but we’ll be posting a tutorial in the next few weeks.

A sampler of patterns in the new LayOut. You can also add patterns you make yourself or find elsewhere.

Patterns are stored in folders on your system, just like materials, components, styles and plugins are in SketchUp. We organized the ones we made for this release into four main categories:

Material Symbols represent common graphic notations for construction materials; they’re what most people mean when they refer to “hatches”. We built two dozen of the most common ones for this version, including old favorites like Steel, Cast-in-place Concrete, and my personal favorite, Earth Compacted Fill.

Geometric Tiles include rectangles, circles, hexagons and other shapes, arranged in common patterns like running bond, herringbone and checkerboard. We imagine that these can be used to represent anything from brick, to paving, to kitchen and bathroom tile, but of course you can also use them more abstractly if you like.

Site Patterns is a category we created to include the kinds of things you might use in a site drawing: Trees arranged into rows, in plan and in elevation. Parking spaces, both at 90 and 60 degree angles. And, as a bit of a joke, something Aidan calls “Mown Lawn,” in four attractive shades of green.

Tonal Patterns are things like dot screens, parallel lines, and sketchy edges. If you’re old enough to remember the beautiful drawings architects and illustrators were able to make with Zip-A-Tone and other, similar products, you can imagine the potential for these. Tonal patterns work alongside linework in drawings in ways that fields of solid color can’t. Your pochéd sections cuts will never look the same.

Better annotations make better drawings

LayOut’s Label tool lets you quickly and easily create a note with a leader line that automatically sticks to whatever it’s pointing to. It’s a simple concept, but there were a few things we did to make ours work a whole lot better:

Curved Leader Lines: It was recently pointed out to me that the reason architects use curved callouts is so that they can be easily differentiated from the straight linework in the rest of their drawings. That makes a ton of sense, so we set about making it easier to create curved leader lines in LayOut. The old way involved no fewer than five clicks. The new way takes only two. If you want the line to curve, just click-drag when you’re creating it.

Creating a callout with curved leader lines is simple. Just remember to click-drag your mouse button when you’re placing an endpoint. Double-clicking an existing leader line with the Select tool lets you edit it at any time.

Improved Arrowheads: Most of the time, your leader lines terminate in an arrowhead. And most of the time, that arrowhead is a solid, black triangle. And in previous versions of LayOut, the only black arrowhead looked like it had eaten too many pastries. By astoundingly popular demand, we’ve added a slimmer, trimmer option, available in classic black and more discrete white. We also improved the alignment of arrowheads to make them look better when their leader lines are angled or curved.

Dashes in Dimensions: In the new version of LayOut, you have the option to add a dash to your non-metric dimensions. The difference between 8’ 6” and 8’ - 6” on a small printout with tiny type is anything but trivial.

Usability Improvements: Faster, smoother, and more efficient

There’s a lot to be said for making software more usable. This is less about features and more about tweaking, fixing and otherwise improving little things that add up to making LayOut a better application:

Copy Array lets you use keyboard modifiers to easily make multiple copies of entities, all at once, just like you can in SketchUp. Since our developers coded this feature into our test versions a few months ago, I’ve used it almost every day.

Speedier Vector Rendering means significantly less time waiting for LayOut to vector-render the contents of a model viewport. You should consider using vector rendering whenever you’re dealing with crisp linework in a document that will be printed or exported at a large physical size.

Better Zoom is probably the thing you’ll notice first. We increased LayOut’s maximum zoom level by a factor of ten, from 1000% to 10,000%. When you’ve got a lot on your page, and things are small and close together, being able to zoom in farther is a godsend. You’ll see.

We increased LayOut's maximum zoom by a factor of 10. Now you can zoom in far enough to select and edit the smallest entities on your page.

Numbered Pages in the Pages Panel is a handy tweak that makes it easier to print or export specific pages in your LayOut document. No more counting down from the top of your Pages panel to figure out it’s page 43 that you want to export to PDF.

Faster Screen Redraw should make LayOut feel snappier, especially as your document gets more complex. Every time you zoom, pan or move an entity on the page, the tiny elves in your computer have to re-draw the picture on your screen. For 2013, our engineers optimized the code that controls how fast this happens.

Posted by Sandra Winstead, LayOut Product Manager

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A recap of SketchUp 3D Basecamp 2012

Almost two months ago, hundreds of the world's most dedicated SketchUp aficionados descended upon our hometown for 3D Basecamp 2012. On the first day, we packed into the Boulder Theater for presentations from the SketchUp management team, several plugin developers and a keynote by Bre Pettis of MakerBot.

The first day of Basecamp took place at the historic Boulder Theater.

 

Leaders from SketchUp and Trimble talk about what's in store for our product. They address such questions as "What's next for SketchUp?" and "Why did Trimble buy SketchUp?". (46:14)

 

The SketchUp leadership team takes questions from the 3D Basecamp audience. (17:06)

 

Representatives from seven SketchUp photo-realistic rendering plugins outline their product offerings in rapid succession. (17:07)

 

Four very different companies present their SketchUp-related technologies: BuildEdge, Sunglass, Product Connect and 4D Virtual Builder. (56:57)

 

 MakerBot Industries co-founder Bre Pettis delivers a terrific keynote presentation about 3D printing. (31:35)

That night, we gathered at a local spot for a party, where the highlight was undoubtedly the SketchUp ShootOut: two heroes competing to make the audience guess a mystery word by modeling on side-side computers. Bulldozer! Cabin! Bubble tea! Melancholy! The winning guesser and the winning modeler both won free drinks, but everyone seemed to be having a blast. Note: I beat John in a best-of-five match with "glove", "foyer" and "cook". It may be the proudest I've been all year.

Hotshot modelers squared off against each other in the first-ever SketchUp ShootOut.

Tuesday's proceedings moved to yet another venue for a full day of barely-contained mayhem. The morning's three blocks of unconference sessions coincided with three hours of beginner Ruby training. After lunch, we squeezed together to watch scheduled presentations by the likes of Daniel Tal, Nick Sonder, Mark Carvalho, and teams from 3skeng, ARmedia and SightSpace 3D. Three more hours of unconference sessions and a repeat of the morning's Ruby 101 class followed, then everyone went straight to bed. I assume.

 

Landscape architect and author Daniel Tal presents a wide-ranging set of tips, tricks and best practices for modeling everything from terrain to site design. (40:31)

 

Architect and video tutorial star Nick Sonder outlines his process for using SketchUp Pro and LayOut to create complete sets of construction documents for his projects. Note: We subsequently made a set of six videos with Nick that describe his process in detail. They're easier to watch and understand than this recording—just an FYI. (52:06)

We planned a Design Charrette for Day 3; participants split up into teams to tackle a challenge that we created in collaboration with Impact on Education, a local non-profit that acts as a kind of R&D department for the Boulder Valley School District. The design brief involved re-imagining a classroom to take into account the way teaching and learning have evolved with the introduction of mobile technology. At the end of the two-and-a-half hour charrette, a dozen teams presented their designs (in SketchUp and LayOut, of course), after which an illustrious panel of judges from IoE picked their favorite projects. The winning team members then squared off against each other for several rounds of SketchUp trivia. The victorious Michaels (Tadros and Brightman) each won a Replicator 3D printer, generously donated by our friends at MakerBot Industries.

While the designer-types did their thing, about twenty plugin authors spent Day 3 across the street at our first-ever Ruby Developers' Conference. They huddled and schemed and plotted the future of our API (application programming interface). They even held a competition of their own: Dale Martens, a.k.a. "Whaat" and the creator of the Artisan organic modeling tool set, won the hackathon by coding a working first-person shooter game that runs inside SketchUp—in a couple of hours. Needless to say, Dale got a MakerBot, too.

Participants in Wednesday's Ruby Developer Conference posing as if they're a sports team.

All in all, we're pretty proud of how well our first Basecamp at Trimble went, considering how quickly we planned it and that Dusty (our Event Manager extraordinaire) isn't on the SketchUp team anymore. The space was at times tight and A/V and internet access are forever thorns in my side, but the vast majority of attendees we surveyed said they enjoyed themselves, learned some things, met cool people and (most tellingly) would happily join us at another 3D Basecamp.

Which brings me to my last point: When's the next Basecamp? Good question. We don't know right now, but given that our plan is to move to an annual release cycle starting next year, and that conferences are a great way to celebrate product launches, we'll do our best to make sure there's a 3D Basecamp in 2013. If you'd like to be one of the first to know when we announce it, you can add your name to our Next Basecamp Notification List.

Feel like looking at lots of pictures from the event? This album should do the trick.

Posted by Aidan Chopra, SketchUp Evangelist

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Creating complete construction docs in LayOut

When we profiled architect Nick Sonders' amazing use of LayOut to create full sets of construction documents for his houses, we knew we were on to something big. The deluge of "TELL ME IMMEDIATELY HOW HE DID THAT" sentiment that ensued prompted us to follow up in two ways:

We invited Nick to present his workflow at our 3D Basecamp event last month. The house was packed and Nick was great, but the audio in the video recording was a little rough, so...

Our videograhper Tyson traveled to Truckee, California to record an in-depth series of videos that document Nick's process in delectable detail.

Half tutorial, half motivational speech and half religious experience (for SketchUp people, at least), the "Sonder Series" is 150% better than anything else we've created for aspiring LayOut users. If you believe in your heart that your SketchUp models deserve to live on, that CAD drafting separate 2D orthographic views is a terrible way to spend your evenings, and that there has to be a better way, this is your path forward. Pop some corn and kick back for some serious edification.

The first video is below; the other five are on online when you're ready.

Posted by Aidan Chopra, SketchUp Evangelist

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Creating a plan of your SketchUp model in LayOut

Earlier this year, we shared a snapshot of how architect Nick Sonder uses SketchUp Pro and LayOut to work up construction documents. In comments on this blog and our YouTube channel, we noticed that folks wanted to learn more about the ins and outs of this process, so we tapped Paul Lee, author of “Construction Documents using SketchUp Pro & LayOut“ to walk through the basic process for porting SketchUp scenes to plan views in LayOut:

Creating a plan in LayOut is a snap. In this tutorial we will take a pre-formed model, apply a Section Cut and create a Plan Scene for display in LayOut. Below is a view of a house construction model you can download from here. Once you've opened this model (or one of your own), select the Section Plane tool from the Tools menu. Use this tool to align the desired sectioned view of the model. (Remember: Hold down the shift key to maintain alignment while positioning your section cut.)

With your model queued up, you're ready to slice and dice with the Section Plane tool

Sectioning a SketchUp model

Under the Camera Menu, Set the view to Parallel Projection; notice that you've now provided straight-on view for your plan. Next, under Window, select the Scenes console. (Tip: you can hide the Section Plane itself in your LayOut document by opening the Styles window in SketchUp, and editing the default style of your scene to hide the section plane).

Now click on the “+” button and create a scene called “PLAN”. Open LayOut and access your SketchUp model by selecting File > Insert. From here, simply right-click on the SketchUp window and select Scenes: “PLAN”. Then right-click and go to Scale = 1mm:50mm. Your scaled plan is now finished in LayOut, and you're all set to start dimensioning and annotating the important details.

Setting up your plan as a scene in prep for LayOut

Voila: a SketchUp scene imported to LayOut

Posted by Paul Lee, Viewsion Virtual Environments, SketchUp ATC

This tutorial is based on techniques found in Paul's new book “Construction Documents using SketchUp Pro & LayOut” available here from SketchUcation and also on the Viewsion Authorized Training Center website.

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Telling the full story with SketchUp Pro and LayOut

We often describe SketchUp as both design and communication software. Some folks don’t get the communication element, but for anyone who needs to share and collaborate with clients or partners, the fluid nature of SketchUp Pro and LayOut is essential.

Recently Nick Sonder, who runs a one-man shop for architectural design, sat down with us to talk about how he uses SketchUp Pro through the entire design process: using one 3D model as the basis for interior and exterior detailing, as well as for robust, unified, and precise construction documents used by contractors.

Posted by Mark Harrison, SketchUp Marketing

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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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Scaling imported raster images in LayOut

If you’ve ever inserted an aerial photo or an old scanned site plan into LayOut, you might have wanted to give it a specific scale on the page. My favorite technique for doing this uses the Clipping Mask feature.

Step 1
Choose File > Insert... to insert a raster image into your LayOut document. Find a known measurement somewhere on your image. This known measurement can be anything: a scale bar (if you’re lucky); the length of a fence or sidewalk; or even the roofline of a building. It’s important that you find something that’s relatively large and that whose length you already know. You’ll use this portion of the image as a “benchmark” to size the entire image to a specific scale.

In my example, a scale bar was included in my image; this makes it pretty easy to use as a benchmark.

Step 2
Figure out what scale you’d like to give your inserted image. Keep in mind how the scale will impact the size of the image and how that image will fit on your page.

For this image, I’m going to use 1” = 400’ (1:48) scale. This should fit nicely on an 8.5 x 11 sheet of paper.

Step 3
Create a rectangle around the “benchmark” portion of your image. Use the Rectangle tool to do this, and make sure it has no fill (so that you can see through it.)

This scale bar only goes to 300’, so I’m going to use the 0’ - 200’ as my benchmark. 200 is half of 400, which makes the mental math easier to do.

Step 4
Select both your rectangle and your image and choose Edit > Create Clipping Mask. Select the resulting crop and give it a visible stroke so you can see its boundary.

I color the clipping mask to make its border easier to see.

Step 5
Somewhere on your page, use the Line tool to draw a line whose length corresponds to the scale of the image you’re working on.

To draw a line, click to start drawing, move your cursor in the direction you want the line to go, type the length you want and hit Enter.

Since I want a scale of 1” = 400’, and my “benchmark” is 200’ feet long, I draw a horizontal line which is one-half inch long (1 inch divided by 2).

Step 6
Move your benchmark, snapping its lower-left corner to the left endpoint of your line. Be sure that Object Snap (Arrange > Object Snap) is turned on, or snapping won’t work properly.

I snap my benchmark to the left endpoint of my line.

Step 7
Scale your benchmark so that it’s the same length as the line. With your benchmark selected, hold down the Shift key and scale it until it snaps to the right endpoint of your line. As long as you hold down Shift, your selection should scale proportionately.

I scale my benchmark to the right until it aligns and snaps to the end of my line.

Step 8
Select the benchmark and choose Edit > Release Clipping Mask. Delete the rectangle from Step 3, and the line you drew in Step 5, and you’re done. Voilà! You’ve set your image to a specific scale.

Image set at 1” = 400’ (1:48) scale and positioned on a letter-sized landscape sheet.

This may seem like a lot of steps but it’s actually pretty simple. Have a look at the following silent movie to see how it’s done.



Posted by Chris Dizon, SketchUp Sales

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Formatting text in LayOut on a Mac

If you happen to be using LayOut on a Mac, there’s a menu item that you might’ve missed: Choosing Text > Show Rulers displays the Mac operating system’s default ruler at the top of the screen. More interestingly, it adds a few typographic controls that are otherwise hidden.

Selecting a piece of text (when your ruler is visible) reveals drop-down menus for Paragraph Style, Alignment and Spacing, as well as preset settings for bulleted and numbered lists. Windows users can access list formatting controls in the Text Style dialog box.

Compared to the last tip I wrote, this one was quick, eh?

Posted by Aidan Chopra, SketchUp Evangelist

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Making doors look right in different ortho views

While I was putting together this post last month, it dawned on me that doors are represented differently in plan, elevation and sectional orthographic views of a building. By which I mean:

• In plan, doors are generally shown in the open position.
• In elevation, doors appear closed.
• When cut through in section, doors disappear altogether.

In plan, doors appear open to show their swing. In the above image, the swing arcs, section cut graphics and arrows were added in LayOut.

In elevation, doors appear closed. Otherwise, you'd be able to see through them, which would be visually confusing. The scale figure and the dashed lines to indicate the hinge position were added in LayOut.

In sectional views, doors which are cut through don't appear at all. All that is visible of the doorway in the above section is the edges of the wall beyond the cut. Doors which appear in elevation (like the one on the left) are shown closed.

If I’m modeling a building and I leave the doors open, they’ll look correct in plan but not in other views. If I close them, the plans will look wrong. Clearly, I need two sets of doors—one open, one closed—and I need to manage which set is visible in each view. Layers, Scenes and nested components to the rescue!

The idea here is to create a door component that includes two sub-components: one that’s an open door, and one that’s a closed door. Mine looks something like this:

A door component which includes both open and closed door sub-components, each on its own layer. In the image above, "Color By Layer" is turned on to better illustrate the setup. The Outliner dialog box shows the nesting relationship of the three door components.

Creating a combination door component

Start by modeling both doors and turning them into a set of nested components:

Step 1
Create the hole into which you want to insert a door.

Make the hole exactly the same size as the door you're planning to model.

Step 2
Model a door in the closed position. Keep it simple; a rectangle is fine for now.

Fill the doorway opening with a simple face. Make it flush with the side of the wall into which the door will open.

Step 3
Select only the door geometry and turn it into a component. Give it a meaningful name that describes its size, orientation and position like “Door-36-L-Closed”.

Turn your simple door into a component by selecting its geometry and right-clicking to open a context menu.

Give your door component a meaningful name; "36" indicates the width and "L" indicates the left-hand hinge position. Make sure the "Replace selection with component" checkbox is selected before you click Create.

Step 4
If you like, add detail (like a thickness) to the door you just modeled.

Extruding the single face into a 3D object will make it read better in plan. Resist the temptation to add doorknobs, detailed woodwork or anything else that isn't in keeping with your model's current level of detail.

Step 5
Model the same door in the open position. Be sure not to duplicate the component instance you made in the previous step — the whole point of this exercise is to have two, separate components.

Model the same door again, this time in the open position. For accuracy, line up the edges where the hinges would be on a real door.

Step 6
Turn the open door into a new component. Call it something like “Door-36-L-Open”.

Make the open door into another component and name it accordingly.

Step 7
Select the open and closed door components and make a new component that includes both. A good name for this component might be “Door-36-L-Main”.

Select both door components (open and closed) and make them into a new component.

Using Layers to control component visibility

The next step is to put each sub-component on a separate layer:

Step 1
Choose Window>Layers to open the Layers Manager.

Step 2
Create a new layer called “Doors-Open”.

Step 3
Create another layer called “Doors-Closed”.

Use the Layers Manager to create two new layers.

Step 4
Choose Window>Entity Info to open the Entity Info dialog box.

Step 5
Start editing your Main door component (the one that includes both sub-components) by double-clicking it with the Select tool.

Step 6
Select the closed door sub-component and move it to the “Doors-Closed” layer using the Layer drop-down menu in the Entity Info dialog box.

Move the Closed Door sub-component to the "Doors-Closed" layer using the Entity Info dialog box.

Step 7
Select the open door component and move it to the “Doors-Open” layer.

Put the Open Door sub-component on its own layer, too.

Step 8
Click elsewhere on your screen to stop editing the Main door component.

Make sure the Main Door component (which includes both sub-components) is on LayerO. If you're really advanced, I suppose you could even have a layer dedicated to these "combo" door components. Tread lightly, though—layers can be tricky to work with.

Setting up Scenes to control layer visibility

After you’ve placed doors wherever you need them in your model, you can control which set is visible by creating (or updating) scenes that show only one “Doors” layer at a time. It’s pretty straightforward, really:

Step 1
Activate the scene that corresponds to a plan view of your model. If you don’t have one yet, just create a new scene called “Plan” and worry about getting the camera position in order later.

Right now, both the Doors Closed and Doors Open layers are visible. We only want the open doors to appear in the above plan.

Step 2
In the Layers Manager, hide the “Doors Closed” layer.

Uncheck the Doors Closed layer to make its contents invisible.

Step 3
Right-click the “Plan” scene tab and choose Update.

When the doors look the way you want them to, right-click the relevant scene tab and choose Update.

Step 4
Repeat the above three steps for any other planimetric scenes in your model.

Step 5
Go through the above process again for any scenes where doors should appear closed.

In the above elevation view, I want only the Doors Closed layer to be visible.

Dealing with doorways in section

What about doors that are cut through by section cuts? They shouldn’t appear at all. The solution here is simple: Just hide the offending door components and update your scene.

Doors which are cut through in sectional views shouldn't appear at all. Those which appear in elevation (like the one on the left) should appear closed.

Simply hiding door components you don't want to see (then updating the corresponding scene) is the easiest way to deal with this conundrum.

One more thing: I've added the above example model to the 3D Warehouse so you can download it and do some of your own experimenting. You can find it here (click the 3D Warehouse logo to go to the model in the 3DWH):



Posted by Aidan Chopra, SketchUp Evangelist

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