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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Licensing in SketchUp Pro 2015

We’re very proud of the things we’ve added and changed in SketchUp 2015. One of the changes that I’m particularly happy about is a completely revised licensing system. Since when did licensing become exciting? Well, it isn’t. But the licensing system used for SketchUp Pro 2014 and older was very dusty, to say the least. It needed a facelift so that we could take advantage of modern technology and solve a number of long-standing issues. Now, let’s take a peek at what the new licensing can do...

• Cross-platform support. Microsoft Windows? Mac OS X? It doesn’t matter! Use the same license information on both platforms.

• 30-day Trial. The 8-hour trial that SketchUp used in the past was quite sophisticated but not very clear. We applied SketchUp-simplicity to this one: 30 days. Simple.

• Centralized Network License manager. For those of you who happen to manage a network license, the SketchUp Pro licensing server is hosted in the cloud. No more creating a shared folder on a server, setting specific permissions, generating a network license, and so on. We’ve taken care of that for you.

• “Checkout” support (network licenses). Need to work on a plane or show a model to client in a remote location? Now you can check out a network license seat for offline use. Just be sure to do it before you go offline, though. 

• WAN support (network licenses). Network licenses of old were more like LAN Licenses, because they only worked across a LAN. Now, with the network license manager in the cloud, your users only need access to the Internet.

• Changing seat count without generating a new license (network licenses). So you found out that a 20-seat network license isn’t enough and you need to add another five seats. Before, we would generate a new serial number and you would have to go out and update the license within SketchUp Pro. Now, we make the change for you on the server and you don’t have to change a thing!

There’s one very important difference to note with regard to this new licensing technology: you’ll need to have an active Internet connection to add a license and remove a license from your computer. Drop a line to your IT folks that SketchUp needs access to the Internet via ports 5053 and 50530 just in case your network whitelists those kinds of things.

You can add your single-user SketchUp Pro license to any two computers that you use. But you need to be the one using SketchUp Pro -- hence, single-user license. And only one computer can run SketchUp Pro at a time. If you need to install SketchUp on your third computer, you’ll need to remove a license on one of the other computers first. To remove a license, open SketchUp then select Help > Welcome to SketchUp... > License > Remove License...

Lastly, if you see an error message while using the new license, check out this Knowledge Center article for some help resolving the problem. Or get in touch with us.

That’s it! The goal of licensing is to give you access to your favorite SketchUp Pro features then get the heck out of the way. If that’s your experience, then we’ve done our job and earned a slice of Trimble SketchUp cake:

Posted by Tommy Acierno, on behalf of the SketchUp team

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PER/FORM: a live performance-based design competition with SketchUp and Sefaira

A few weeks ago, we blogged about how information modeling works in SketchUp. A data-rich .skp can pull off some complex feats, but we prefer to think about an information model as a simple relationship: graphical geometry with any kind of data associated.

With no data, the model is only a design (and maybe a very good one). Without the model, the data is, perhaps, only a math problem (and maybe a pretty smart one). Put them together, and you have the basis for one incredibly powerful output of information modeling: performance-based design.

Architects who practice performance-based design are often trying to measure, adhere to, or optimize building performance: the measurable index of a building’s energy efficiency or operational cost.

The folks at Sefaira are pretty keen on this idea. Their plugin -- Sefaira for SketchUp -- helps architects make decisions that optimize building performance while designing in SketchUp. So now imagine understanding how early-stage conceptual (or practical) choices might affect a building’s ability to retain or dissipate heat throughout the day. We think this is a powerful way to think about design, so together with Sefaira (and some other friends), we’re hosting a competition focused on performance-based design. We call it PER/FORM.

PER/FORM: a live performance-based design competition

You can learn all about the PER/FORM competition on this site, but here are the basics: After an April 2nd registration deadline*, the competition starts with a design brief and three weeks of access to Sefaira for SketchUp. You’ll also have support from the Sefaira team so that you can learn the ins and outs of performance-based building design.

We’ll select 30 winners from the online round, and -- here’s the kicker -- those finalists will have the opportunity to compete live in the final round at the Pratt Institute's Manhattan campus on May 17th. That’s right: this is going to be a real-deal, big city SketchUp shootout.

The top three designers will take home cash prizes, and the winner will see his or her design featured in Metropolis Magazine. What’s that? You don’t have much experience with energy or information modeling? Well, three weeks of free access to a SketchUp energy modeling plugin sounds like a good place to start, right?

Posted by Mark Harrison, SketchUp Team

*We’re sorry to say that this competition is only open to U.S. and Canada participants. Stay tuned for future contests that don’t have this restriction.

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Information Modeling in SketchUp

When SketchUp was invented more than a dozen years ago, our team envisioned a tool which was simple to learn and simple to use, but powerful and capable of building complex models of all kinds of real world things. SketchUp, we dreamed, would be a tool which made designing, building and operating things easier, faster and more efficient. Maybe, even, more fun.

Make simple shapes, turn simple shapes into complex shapes. Make groups and components to organize the geometry and information in your model. It's the SketchUp Way.

The key to that dream was an arsenal of simple and direct modeling tools coupled with a plastically flexible and ‘sticky’ geometry model. Editing a model should be as simple as touching a face and pushing and pulling it into shape. The SketchUp Way was born.

Almost. The wonderfully creative pure plasticity of SketchUp modeling could really become a problem when models progressed beyond a basic level of detail. SketchUp also needed a way to build complexity up from the bottom, a way to make assemblies of component objects. Enter “Components.”

Components have become the best-used and most essential model organizing principle in every expert SketchUp users’ toolkit. Not only do components isolate geometry to keep it all from sticking together, but they give a simple way to think of a model as being composed of individual objects. Objects which represent something real.

Over the years, we’ve extended Components more than any other single feature in SketchUp. We’ve added tools to slice them, dice them, add parameters and configure them. We’ve built a huge 3D Warehouse full of them, free for you to use as you see fit. We’ve added features to help you count them, analyze them and add any kind of data you can imagine to them. And our developer partners have extended them even more- there are more than 80 extensions in the Extension Warehouse that depend on some aspect of components to do the magic that they do.

One thing we’ve noticed, though, is that all this great information and advanced capability that folks are adding to their models with components remains largely isolated inside their SketchUp models. What was missing (until now) was a way to add additional information to the model in some standardized way that would make it possible to share, analyze and extend it outside of SketchUp.

And so in SketchUp 2014 we’re introducing an open system of “Classification” that lets you build models made of components (make ‘em yourself or add them from 3D Warehouse) that contain information in a structured way. Actually, in any structured way that you want. Want to adopt an open standard? We’ve got you covered. Or maybe you’d rather go your own way? Works for us, too. We’re calling this simple combination of components and structured data “information modeling” and we think you’re going to use it a lot.

Classify groups and components and you'll find that their types auto-populate into labels and LayOut callouts (just like group and component names. Export an .skp (or an .ifc) and send your classifications along with the rest of your model.

The most important thing about SketchUp’s information modeling is that it offers you an unrestricted way to represent not just what a design looks like but also more of what it actually is. And you can do it without giving up the fast, fluid and ‘free’ modeling behavior that you fell in love with about SketchUp in the first place.

To prove that this system works, we’ve built a special workflow around IFC— an open classification system for folks who are doing BIM in the construction industry. You can classify components in your models with IFC types, assign and edit relevant attributes to those components and then export the resulting models into the IFC format for use in other BIM tools.

But don’t stop at IFC. In SketchUp 2014, you’re free to use any published schema to classify components in your models. Interested in COBie? Import the official COBie schema from BuildingSmart. Or maybe you’re more interested in something like gbxml for green building, or CityGML for urban simulation. Or, you might just want to make your own classification system. We’ve got you covered however you want to work.

Simple, open, easy… but powerful. Now that’s the SketchUp Way.

Posted by John Bacus, SketchUp Product Management Director

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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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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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Making custom patterns for LayOut

The major new feature in the newest version of LayOut in SketchUp Pro 2013 is Pattern Fill. It lets you fill any shape in your document with a pattern. LayOut ships with a library of patterns to get you started, but creating and adding your own is possible, too. This post is a tutorial on how to do just that.

The Basics

Patterns are made up of image tiles. When you assign a pattern to a shape, LayOut fills that shape with image tiles to create the pattern you want to see. The following picture shows this concept in action:

A sampling of patterns that ship with LayOut. Each is made up of image tiles which repeat to form the pattern.

There’s nothing magical about image tiles in LayOut; they’re just JPG, TIF, GIF or PNG images. All of the pattern tiles we’ve included with LayOut happen to be PNGs because that format supports non-lossy compression (which makes them look good) and alpha transparency (which makes parts of them see-through). If you can, you should make your pattern tiles PNGs, too.

To add a pattern to LayOut, all you have to do is choose Import Custom Pattern... from the drop-down menu in the Pattern Fill panel. You can choose any image you like; LayOut will automatically turn it into a pattern by tiling it (copying it in a grid).

How does LayOut decide how big to draw each individual tile in the pattern? It looks at the source image’s resolution (pixel density) and uses that. Every PNG, JPG, TIF, and other raster image is saved with a resolution when it’s created. This is expressed in pixels per inch, or ppi.

Consider an image which is 1200 pixels wide by 600 pixels high. If this image is saved at 300 ppi, its physical size would be 4 inches (1200 pixels ÷ 300 pixels per inch = 4 inches) by 2 inches . If it were saved at only 100 ppi, its physical size would be 12 inches (1200 px ÷ 100 ppi = 12 in) by 6 inches. The higher the resolution, the smaller the physical size.

Example: A simple geometric pattern

A pattern composed of parallelograms, or hexagons, or cubes, depending on how you look at it.

Let's make a pattern that looks like the one in the image above. This pattern is relatively simple to create for three reasons:

1) It has only one basic unit.
The “cube” is repeated over and over; there is no other shape.

2) It isn’t trying to look “random”.
Patterns that are supposed to look like a random distribution of elements are much trickier to create. I’ll cover them in a separate article.

3) It has no horizontal or vertical lines at its edges.
The following procedure isn't ideal for making pattern tiles that are made up of horizontal and vertical lines (like bricks and other rectilinear units). Those patterns, while common, are actually special cases that require a completely different technique to make sure they look right when they're tiled together. You can see three examples of these in this article’s first image, above. I'll outline that different technique in a separate article.

The technique that follows uses LayOut and Photoshop. While it’s possible to create pattern tiles using only LayOut (or even SketchUp, for that matter), Photoshop (or another image editor like GIMP) makes it much easier by providing pixel-level editing and tools for resizing raster images precisely.

Step 1: Use LayOut to manually draw a sample of the pattern.

LayOut is an obvious way to create simple pattern tiles like this one. The addition of SketchUp's Copy Array feature to LayOut in SketchUp Pro 2013 makes tasks like this one a lot easier.

Step 1: Start by manually creating an area of pattern. For something this simple, LayOut works well.

Step 2: Outline a single tile with a rectangle.

Drawing this rectangle on a new layer makes it easier to turn on and off later on. Giving it a thick and brightly colored outline makes it easier to see what you're doing.

Step 2: Use the Rectangle tool to outline a single tile.

Step 3: Fill the "tile outline" rectangle with a bright color and turn off its stroke.

This step makes it easy to crop away everything you don't need once you're in Photoshop. Choose a fill color that doesn't appear anywhere in your pattern tile.

Step 3: Convert the outlined rectangle into a filled shape with no stroke.

Step 4: Duplicate the page and delete only the rectangle.

Step 4: Duplicate the page and remove the rectangle on the copy.

Step 5: Export a PDF.

In your exported PDF, include both the page with the rectangle and the one without.

Step 5: Export both pages as a PDF file.

Step 6: Open the PDF in Photoshop.

In Photoshop, choose to open both pages of the PDF as separate image files. Set the image size to something quite large, like 5000 pixels wide. You'll downsample (make them smaller) later on.

Step 6: Open the pages of the PDF as separate Photoshop files

Step 7: Copy / Paste one file into the other.

In the open file with the colored rectangle, choose Select > All from the menu bar, then choose Edit > Copy. Move to the other open file, then choose Edit > Paste Special > Paste in Place to create a new layer.

Step 7: Copy/Paste in Place the contents of one file into the other, creating a new layer in the second file.

Step 8: Select the colored rectangle.

Choose the layer containing the colored rectangle, then activate the Magic Wand tool and click once on the rectangle to create a selection from it.

Step 8: Use the Magic Wand tool to select only the colored rectangle

Step 9: Crop the image based on the rectangular selection.

Choose Image > Crop from the menu bar to crop the file based on the selection rectangle. Choose Select > Deselect when you're done.

Step 9: Crop the image, leaving only a single pattern tile

Step 10: Hide the layer containing the colored rectangle.

When you hide the layer with the colored rectangle on it, you should be left with only a single pattern tile in your Photoshop file. Save the layered image as a PSD file.

Step 10: Hide the layer containing the colored rectangle.

Step 11: Resize the file.

Choose Image > Image Size... to open the Image Size dialog box. Make sure the Resample Image checkbox is checked, and the drop-down menu below it is set to Bilinear. Type in a new width, in pixels, for your pattern tile, then click OK.

Note 1: If you create a very large pattern tile, you won't ever have to worry about blurriness or visible pixels when your pattern appears in LayOut—it'll be sharp as a tack. On the other hand, making your tile too large could bog down your computer; it all depends on how large each tile will appear, how many tiles LayOut will end up drawing, and how zippy your computer is.

Note 2: When it comes to digital images, there are some "magic" numbers to be aware of. They're the powers of two (2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, etc), and using them makes it easier for your computer to resample an image when it needs to be displayed bigger or smaller than its native size. Making your pattern tile image width one of these numbers says to the world, "I know what I'm doing."

Step 11: Resize the image using the Image Size dialog box.

Step 12: Change the image resolution.

Choose Image > Image Size... to open the Image Size dialog box again. This time, make sure the Resample Image checkbox is unchecked. The fields in the Pixel Dimensions area of the window should be uneditable.

Here, you're setting the physical size of the pattern tile on your page in LayOut. The value you type into the Width field is the physical width your tile will appear in LayOut when the pattern is set to 1x scale in the Pattern Fill panel. If you want an individual tile to be 0.5 inches wide in LayOut, enter that measurement into the Width field, and click OK.

Step 12: Change the image resolution (the pixel density) so that the pattern appears the correct size on your page in LayOut.

Step 13: Save your image as a PNG file.

As I explained at the top of this article, PNG is the image file format that offers both lossless file compression and support for areas of transparency. Both are desirable qualities in a pattern tile, so PNG's almost always the way to go.

Step 13: Save the image tile as a PNG file. Giving it a meaningful name will save time in the long run.

Step 14: Import your custom pattern into LayOut.

Back in LayOut, open the Pattern Fill panel (Window > Pattern Fill) and choose Import Custom Pattern... from the drop-down menu at the top. Find the PNG file you created in Step 13 and open it.

To make your custom patterns available in every new LayOut document you create, put them in folders on your system and use the Add Custom Collection... option from the drop-down menu in the Pattern FIll panel.

Step 14: Use the Pattern Fill panel to import your custom pattern into LayOut.

In my next couple posts, I’ll outline techniques for creating pattern tiles that are rectilinear, ones that incorporate transparency, and ones that are supposed to look like a random distribution of elements. Stay tuned, and good luck.

Posted by Aidan Chopra, SketchUp Evangelist

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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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SketchUp Pro Case Study: Environmental Air Systems

Environmental Air Systems (EAS) is a full service mechanical contractor based in North Carolina specializing in mechanical systems for health care, pharmaceutical, and data centers. EAS also has unique capabilities for Off-Site Construction (OSC), which allows for the manufacture of a wide range of products from mechanical skids and air handling units, to full central utility plants and large scale modular data centers.

With SketchUp Pro, Environmental Air Systems has been able to improve communication with their clients as well as increase their Off-Site Construction productivity. Carroll Shephard is the Production Design Coordinator for EAS, and also one of their SketchUp champions. He spoke with us about how EAS uses SketchUp.

SketchUp at EAS
Back in 2007, EAS was working on two data center projects. In an effort to create a more accurate and visual as-built of the product, we switched to SketchUp. We provided our client with an AutoCAD version along with the SketchUp as-built model. The client really liked that we gave them something more visually rich through SketchUp. Since then, we have transitioned all of our production drawings to SketchUp. Now, we are adding SketchUp to more processes than ever.

With SketchUp, we don’t spend a lot of time learning the software, and because it’s so intuitive, we’ve reached a point where we can rapidly turn detailed models into coordinated production drawings for our manufacturing facilities. Then, we generate material lists with an extension plugin.

The use of 3rd party plugins, like Space Design by RenderPlus, allows  for custom report generation directly out of SketchUp

SketchUp has changed the way we design as it enables us to transition from 2D to 3D. The advantage of working in 3D is that our product is “virtually built” before materials are ever ordered. Previously, we coordinated parts by calculating the clearances needed using a calculator or spreadsheet. Now, all the drawings (previously made using AutoCAD) are produced in SketchUp. From there, we have been able to coordinate our products using Navisworks (and we’re now experimenting with Tekla BIMSight).

SketchUp Pro & Client Communication
While communicating with clients, SketchUp most often plays the role of a visual aid. For example, we recently worked on the preliminary design of a pipe rack system to be installed in a pharmaceutical facility. With SketchUp, we were able to model the pipe rack exactly as it would be installed (a retrofit situation). The SketchUp model helped the marketing group clearly communicate the scope of work and make sure that our design was meeting or exceeding client expectations.

Rendered models help clients visualize how projects will look after completion

We also generate concept renderings for potential clients. These allow our clients to see what their project will look like once completed. So to a real extent, we also use SketchUp as both a sales and design-build tool: it enables us to show potential clients our solution for their specific application and then it helps us produce accurate, detailed drawings quickly. Both of these advantages enable us to be more successful and it has been a driving force on many projects.

Guest authored by Carroll Shephard, Environmental Air Systems, LLC

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New Book: Architectural Design with SketchUp

Back in March of 2011, when Wiley (a publisher of many books about SketchUp, including my own) asked me to review Alex Schreyer's proposal for a new title, I jumped at the chance. Alex's outline was mouth-wateringly full of promise; aimed squarely at architects and other designers, he promised not to spend hundreds of pages teaching the basics. Instead, he focused on aspects of SketchUp that were a) not well covered by existing books and b) very, very interesting to millions of experienced SketchUp modelers everywhere.

The completed volume does a beautiful job of presenting material that devoted SketchUppers badly want to learn, but which isn't very easy to explain. Put it this way: I'm pretty good at SketchUp, and in the hour or so I've been thumbing through Alex's book, I've learned about 50 things. I can't wait to read the thing from cover to cover.

Architectural Design with Sketchup is organized into four main sections—these are actually listed in the book's subtitle: component-based modeling, plugins, rendering and Ruby scripting. I'll talk about each in turn.

Component-based modeling

This section of Alex's book is a great primer for using groups and components to build assemblies of objects. The thinking here is that by modeling every element of a complex construction—the example he uses is a foundation/floor detail—you're effectively "building" your design before you actually build it. You save time and money and therapy sessions by making your mistakes digitally, and you end up with a better design. This isn't exactly a new concept, but Alex does a terrific job of providing concrete guidance for how to do this kind of modeling; it's the detailed how that's missing from most other resources. Other aspects of component-based modeling that Alex fails to shy away from: building dynamic components, applying materials and generating reports that list every part in your design with SketchUp Pro.

Using plugins effectively

One place where even accomplished SketchUp modelers stumble is in identifying the plugins that might help them do their work. There are zillions of plugins out there, but before this book, no one had assembled a comprehensive, alphabetical listing of dozens of the most popular, most useful extensions. Not only does Alex list them; he also provides a good, brief description of what each is for. This is the section of Alex's book that I'll study most carefully—it might even be the source of inspiration for a few posts on this blog.

Photo-realistic rendering

Admit it: If you're not already an avid renderer, you've at least thought about how nice it would be to master that particular skill. But where to start? There's never been more choice in renderers, and everyone knows that rendering is a lot more complicated than just clicking a button and waiting a few hours. The settings, presets, lighting environments and other widgets that go along with making a halfway decent rendering require an indecent amount of background knowledge. It's half science and half craft. With Alex's book in hand, I think we all might finally have a shot at learning this stuff.

Another thing I should mention: This book is 100% in color. If you think that makes a big difference when you're trying to learn about rendering, you'd be 100% correct. I wish my book was in color...

Scripting

Here's where things get a little wacky. When I saw in Alex's proposal that he intended to include an entire section on scripting, I thought, "Ruby for designers? Did Alex mix up his medications?" I was pretty dismissive about the whole idea in my feedback to Wiley.

Well, it's a good thing I was wrong. Twenty months later, it's a different world, and being able to read and write simple code has never been more important. In teaching the fundamentals of Ruby scripting, Alex intelligently focuses on using scripts to generate forms that are otherwise arduous or impossible to model in SketchUp. He doesn't assume you want to create entire standalone plugins; this is really just about using the power of algorithms to make stuff when you can't think of any other way to do it. The material is by no means easy, but Alex deserves a world of credit for making it as easy as possible.

I recommend this book without hesitation to anyone who really wants to be able to make SketchUp do everything it's capable of doing. It's clearly written, well-illustrated and comprehensive. And the icing on the cake: There's a companion website where you'll find sample files and a direct line of communication with the author. Buy this book and take the first step toward becoming a more useful person.

Posted by Aidan Chopra, SketchUp Evangelist

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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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