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Introducing the SketchUp Showcase

It’s our sincere pleasure to unveil The SketchUp Showcase, a home for the most impressive, interesting, and inspiring project stories that have been shared with us.

Why a new showcase? Often, when you find an amazing model in the 3D Warehouse, it doesn’t tell the full story behind a project. You can download it and see how it was built. But you probably wouldn’t get a sense of why it was built. Where did the inspiration come from? What were the design challenges the modeler faced? What happened after the model was finished? The story just isn’t complete.

The Showcase is a space where the stories, images, renders, animations, and 3D models of passionate SketchUppers can shine a bit brighter.

What was the inspiration behind this 3D model? | Image courtesy of Roberto Bergamo

But that’s not all – the Showcase is also a first look at a new element of SketchUp technology: an online 3D model viewer. This 3D viewer lets you orbit, zoom, and pan 3D models right in your browser! To see it in action, find a project marked with a red flag or simply click here. Please note: you’ll need to use the latest version of Google Chrome to take advantage of the WebGL goodness that makes this viewer possible.

Go ahead and start exploring now; content is organized by category filters, so you can easily find projects based on your interests.

A project page featuring the new online 3D viewer | The Catalyst Playground in VietnamFinally, our team would like to dedicate the SketchUp Showcase to all the passionate SketchUppers who’ve supported us for over a decade. As we enter a new chapter with Trimble, we hope the Showcase and the online viewer are proof that SketchUp is only getting better. It’s clichéd to say we wouldn’t be much of anywhere without you, but that doesn’t make it any less true. Thank you for all of the love (sometimes tough) you’ve sent our way. Your passion for SketchUp is still what gets us out of bed in the morning.

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Very important update for SketchUp 8

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

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

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

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

Better Ruby Script Installation

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

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

The Extensions panel in SketchUp Preferences has a new button…

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

Better COLLADA

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

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

Advanced Camera Tools included in Pro

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

More Straightforward Pro Trials

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

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

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

Mac OS 10.7 Compatibility

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

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Sketchup Ur Space

One of my new favorite sources of SketchUp inspiration and information (inspormation?) is Sketchup Ur Space. A virtual smorgasbord of articles, tips, forums and imagery, this website is sure to make you smile. There’s a monthly PDF magazine, too. The creator of Sketchup Ur Space is Debarati Nath, an India-based writer who shared some information about herself and the new site:

What am I doing in the arena of 3D?

My name is Debarati Nath and I have done a degree in Mass Communication. Well, I am not a geek, in no terms so, when I started out working with SketchUp I had only one consoling factor. I had read that SketchUp – a 3D designing tool is for every person and not for geeks alone. Indeed after working with SketchUp for some time now I have realized that even a common person can draw anything from a nail to Burj Khalifa using this designing tool. Thus my work soon became my passion and I wanted to promote the thought of SketchUp to the common masses and of course to the 3D designers all around the world.

Sketchup ur Space Magazine Gets Its Own Website

I joined the company SketchUp 4 Architect as a content writer last year. Our company was outsourced SketchUp work and we started out by launching our magazine on www.sketchup4architect.com. This magazine is published in two versions flash and pdf. Soon the magazine became immensely popular and we decided to launch an independent site for the magazine. With this idea the www.sketchup-ur-space.com was launched in March 2011.

Progress of Sketchup ur Space as an Editor

In the earlier days the magazine had to travel through troubled waters. Many hardships had to be borne. But soon the magazine earned me many friends. Our journey was made smooth thanks largely to the help and support from Jim Leggitt, Bonnie Roskes, James Hanningan, Nomer Adona, V-Ray/Chaos Group, AR Media and many other friends.

Goals That Push Us On

Our motto is same as SketchUp. We want ‘everyone to experience the power and fun of building their ideas in 3D’. Sketchup ur Space always wants to lend its helping hand to the budding SketchUp designers by providing various tutorials, tips and tricks. We want to be a piazza for all the SketchUp artists all over the world. We would like to provide them a common platform to share their views and opinion. Newbie as well as renowned SketchUp artists, geo modelers, architects and SketchUp writers are featured in our magazine. Recently Sketchup ur Space had organized a SketchUp Competition to boost the SketchUp spirit of young designers with V-Ray/Chaos Group to mark our first anniversary.

Hope that you can add more power to SketchUp and help to make it best designing tool. Connect to Sketchup ur Space Magazine and be a part of our future vision.

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SketchUp: Models into real buildings

Over the years, we’ve talked quite a lot about SketchUp, Google’s amazing 3D modeling tool. Ultimately, though, many of these models are intended to become real buildings, so how well does the finished product match up to the original model? Google wants you to show them.

As they recently posted, they’re encouraging you to send in your SketchUp stories; a SketchUp model accompanied by a photo of the finished product.

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Conceptual design for land development

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

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

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

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