SketchUp Plugins: Greeble2

Creating a Slum from scratch in 5 minutes thanks to this plugin and a bit of smart thinking
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My friend Aarti just shared this with me about using the Greeble2 Plugin to create a randomly looking slum for a project she is working on.

"I desperately needed to show slums in my project and i have been struggling for way to show it in my sketchup model...
image mapping looked shit... and i dont have the time to DRAW a darn slum...

SO i just made a grid in cad, trimmed it to the slum boundaries and imported to sketchup, did intersect, then used the make faces tool, and THEN used GREEBLE (plugin) and VOILA - a randomized height grid shows a beautiful slum made in 5 minutes..."

She even shared an image of the "quick slum" she created.


I of course felt like trying the plugin to see for myself how it works and produced also a 5 minute slum quite easily thanks to this plugin.



You can download the Plugin here.

Remember to check the List of SketchUp Plugins, you might find something useful.

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SketchUp Plugins: Extrude Lines

Did you ever wanted to extrude just a line in sketchUp? There is a Plugin for it
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Update: This is an old Plugin, there is a newer set of tools by TIG and a Plugin in it called ExtrudeEdgesByVector.rb that does this process much easier.

SketchUp has the Push / Pull tool that basically extrudes surfaces into volumetric objects. This, in a way, can work to extrude lines by extruding the surface and erasing the parts we didn't want to be extruded.
But there is a better way to do that in some cases, and this is to use the Extrude Lines Plugin. This Plugin simply extrudes a line or a set of lines into a surface.
See the next two images to see how from a line we got a surface by using this plugin.

The flaw of this plugin is that when trying to extrude arcs, it will consider the arch as a set of lines, producing an extruded surface like the one in the image below, with a lot of edges shown.
Personally, if I have to extrude arcs I use the Weld Plugin and the standard Push Pull operation.

You can download the Plugin here. To use it save it into the Plugins folder, select a line or set of lines and go to Plugins --> "Extrude Lines, vector by 2 points".

Note: The Plugin shows @Last as Author of the Plugin, if anyone knows the original download page let me know.

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Sketchup plugins: Boolean Tools for Free SU Versions

A Plugin to get the Boolean Tools of the Sketchup 8 Pro version on SketchUp Free Version
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Oscarlok has been working on a great plugin that mimics the capabilities of the Boolean Tools recently introduced on SketchUp 8 Pro version. These tools are not available in the Free versions of SketchUp.

OSCoolean.rbs is a Plugin for SketchUp 8 Free that allows you to use Boolean Tools in the free version. Below there is a sample video of it.


For easier use it includes a Toolbar for the five operations availabel. Union, Substract, Intersect, Split and Cut.

You can download the Plugin at Sketchucation.

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SketchUp 7: New Features and Download Link

See the new features of the latest SketchUp version.
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Thanks to Jim and his SketchUp Plugins blog I got the link to the video below that explains the new and very cool features added to the new SketchUp 7.

I have to confess that I didn't even know that version 7 was already out (I only know that I know nothing). So if you feel like trying all these new features (and dynamic components look like the most awesome addition so far) here is the link to the download page.
Update: today mornig (Nov 17th) google has oficially released SketchUp 7 on the official sketchup blog.

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SketchUp Plugins: Extrude Edges using Edges

A Plugin to extrude a curved edge along a curved path.
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Ruby programmer TIG has recently released a new awesome Plugin for Sketchup called extrudeEdgesByEdges.rb. With this Plugin you can extrude an edge along another one.
You can go to the original post at sketchucation.com to Download the plugin (you need to be registered). Before you do, see a quick snapshot of what this Ruby code does.


Chek here how to Install SketchUp Plugins.


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SketcHup Plugins: Component Stringer

Place components along a path with this awesome plugin from Chris Fullmer.
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Placing components along a path is now a piece of cake with this Plugin from Chris Fullmer. The components allows several options like rotating the components as they are placed, scaling them etc. It is a very useful tool. I usually had to do this sort of task in AutoCAD using the MEASURE and DIVIDE commands. Now this can be done direclty and very easily in SketchUp. See Chris's video to get a better idea of what this does.



The plugin can be downloaded here. Big thanks to Chris for another great Plugin!

Chek here how to Install SketchUp Plugins.


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SketchUp Plugins: Extrude Edges by Face

Extrude any face along a path. it sound like Follow Me tool? Well it is much better and faster.
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TIG set of Extrusion Tools is great. Another Tool of this set I wanted to show you here is the ExtrudeEdgesByFace.rb. This one allows you to Extrude a face following a line or set of lines (straight or curved). I know this might sound exactly as the Follow me Tool, but it is not. The advantages compared to the Follow Me Tool is that the Face doesn't need to be properly alligned with the profile to be extruded properly. See these two images.



If you want, you can rotate the face and use the Plugin again and the result would be this one.


Another advantage of this Plugin compared to the Follow me Tool is that it allows you to do multiple Extrude Operations at the same time. Like the one below. I selected the Face and all the paths, and in a single operation i got this result.


The Plugin is part of the Extrusion Tools by TIG. You can download them here.

If you are new to SketchUp chek here to know how to Install SketchUp Plugins.


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SketchUp Plugins: Color Terrain to Show Terrain Slope or Height

Need to see which are the high points of your terrain or which areas are too steep to build on? Use thses next two plugins to quickly see that.
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Chris Fullmer published some time ago a couple of plugins to Color Models according to the Height or the Angle of the faces. This turns to be very useful in many situations. I came across these Plugins because we were planning a new development and needed to easily visualize in plan which where the high points and were we had too steep areas.

COLOR BY Z (clf_color_by_z): Colors faces according to their height (z value). you can pick which color you want to be the one for the highest point, and which one you want for the lowest point. It will create a gradient from one color to the other. See the images below.





COLOR BY SLOPE (clf_color_by_slope): Does the same trick, but coloring the faces according to its angle (slope).



See these next two Plan shots to understand how this could be useful to you to identify potentially bad areas to build or to simply glimpse the height changes of your terrain in plan.




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SketchUp Plugins: Engineering Toolbox

Do you need beams, pipes, HVAC ducts, elbows, etc? The Engineering ToolBox Allows you to insert them to SketchUp with the right dimenisons.
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EngineeringToolBox.rb is a SktchUp Plugin to easily insert standard engineering elements to a SketchUp model. You can find more information on the plugin's website, but basically what you need to know is that this plugin will allow you to insert Pipes, elbows, lumber elements, flanges, metal beams and columns icluding standard IPE (not IPN unfortunately, which would be the most time consuming to model actually), HEB, etc, stairs, channels, hollow sections, and more. To me, specially useful are the standard Beam sections, no more referring to the standard dimensions manual to model these elements.


The Plugin works as a web dialog. Once installed, simply go to Plugins --> Engineering ToolBox. From there a web dialog will open (you need to have an internet connection) and you will access the plugin's website where you will be able to choose the elements you want to add to your model.
Download it here and give it a try, it is a trully time saver.

via SketchUp Ireland

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2008 Posts of the Month

The most visited posts of 2008 by month.
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I am trying to organize my site a little bit and will try to come with some posts that work as a directory of it. To shorten the list of "most visited posts" on the sidebar, here comes the list of the most visited posts of the months between June and December 2008. This is just a way to make old posts accessible to those who joined CAD Addict recently. Hope you find something interesting. This is the list.

• June 2008 - AutoCAD: Flatten and Overkill Commands: Two express tool commands to flatten / cleanup your drawing.
• July 2008 - SketchUp Plugins Joint Push Pull and Offset on Surface: Two plugins to play with curved surfaces as if they were flat, allowing you to offset them and push them.
• August 2008 - AutoCAD List of Express Tools: The complete list of the Express Tools for autoCAD and links to all the ones that have been commented in CAD-Addict.
• September 2008 - SketchUp Plugin Weld: Weld lines to make geometry simpler with this SU Plugin.
• October 2008 - AutoCAD Tutorial to create a Dynamic Block: A detailed tutorial on how to create a dynamic block of an escalator.
• November 2008 - SketchUp Plugin Volume Calculator: Calculate the volume of objects in SketchUp.
• December 2008 - AutoCAD things the shift key can do for you: A detailed list of things that the shift key allows you to do faster.

See that the list starts on June 2008 since it is when I started using a visitor tracking service.

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SketchUp: Load new Plugins without Restarting the Program

Do you want to load a new Plugin without restarting SketchUp? Alex Schreyer has a Plugin for that.
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Sometimes we want to try new Plugins we just downloaded without the "hassle" of closing SketchUp and opening it againg. Alex Schreyer, has written a Ruby Script that allows us to do that.
PLUGIN LOADER (as_pluginloader.rb) adds a submenu to the plugin menu that allows us to reload the entire Plugins folder or to pick one by one which Plugins we want to load.



You can download the plugin using the above link or go to Alex Schreyer Website were he keeps updating it with the latest release.

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SketchUp Plugins: Turn Lines into Tubes / Cylinders

Turn lines into cylinders with one of these two Plugins.
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There might be several reasons why you want to turn your lines into cylinders/tubes. You might just want to be able to render a bunch of lines in your model. In that case, you need to turn them into cylinders or else they will not appear on renderings. You have two plugins to do this.

LINES TO TUBES (lines2tubes.rb): by Didier. Formerly known as LINE TO CYLINDERS (lin2cyl.rb)Will turn a bunch of lines, arcs, circles, curves, etc into cylinders of a given diameter. It doesn't matter if they are connected, just select the linework, go to Tools --> "Convert circles, arcs, curves, lines to cylinders". Download it here.The advantage is that you can simply select all the linework and convert it to pipes, the disadvantage is that all the corners between different entities will not have Follow Me connections, just pure Push Pull.



TUBE ALONG PATH (TubeAlongPath.rb): by TIG. Does the same operation but only for connected paths. It has the advantage of automatically creating follow me operations when reaching corners of the path. The disadvantage is that only connected paths can be created at once. To use it select the lines that create the path, go to Plugins --> Tube Along Path. Download it here.




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SketchUp Plugins: Extrude Edges by Loft

A powerful Plugin to create a "Loft Surface" between curves.
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Not so long ago, we saw the Loft Plugin by Chris Fullmer that allowed us to create Lofts between curved edges. Although the Plugin was useful, it had some imprecisions and not so much functionality.

TIG, inspired by this Plugin, has created the extrudeEdgesByLoft.rb Plugin. It is, for its functionality, like a much better version of the previous Plugin by Chris Fullmer. It creates the Loft surface with better precision from given curves, see below.



Besides creating the mesh, it allows you to choose if you want to reverse faces or soften the edges.


And even if you want to eliminate the edges you used to create the loft operation.


Another Great Plugin by TIG. It can be downloaded here (you need to be registered)together with other Extrude Tools that we will soon see here.

Chek here how to Install SketchUp Plugins.


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SketchUp Plugins: New version of the Joint Push Pull Plugin

A new an imporved version of the Joint Push Pull Plugin has been published. Català - Castellano - Deutsch One of the most visited posts in this blog was the one describing the Joint Push Pull Plugin. See it here. A new version (2.0) of the Joint Push Pull plugin was published by Fredo6. The New release, available here (you need to be logged in to be able to download it), has added a visual preview to the Joint Push Pull operations (see below) And the possibility to add the parameters window pop up on will by pressing Tab while running the Plugin. This is one of my favourite Sketch Up Plugins, it is great to see it improved. Remember to check this post if you don't know how to install plugins. This is an old post from 2010. you might want to check other Sketchup related posts.
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SketchUp Plugins: Google's Ruby Scripts

Google has a set of Plugins (ruby Scripts) on the SU website
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Google has a set of Plugins for SketchUp that can be downloaded directly from their website here.
The list includes:

• Bezier: to create Bezier curves
• Rotated Rectangle: for creating rotated rectangles.
• Shapes: to create and editing a number of parametric shapes.
• Window Maker: for creating parametric double-hung and slider windows. (different than the Windowizer Plugin)
• Grids: to create parametric grids.
  Onion Dome: to create onion domes.
• Simplify Contours: it simplifies the geometry, making it easier to work with.

Most of them are for very basic operations, but once you have them you'll miss them if you don't have them anymore, so keep the link for when you transfer to a new workstation.

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SketchUp Plugins: How to Draw a Helix or a Spiral

Easiy draw helixes or spiral curves with this simple plugin.
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DRAW HELIX (drawhelix13.rb) by Peter Brown allows us to draw helix and spiral curves (flat helix). It is very easy to use and quick. It is accessible via Draw --> Helix (I've modified slightly the original code that was pointing to Draw --> DrawHelix13). It shows a dilog box like the following one, where you can set the different options.



Pitch is the Height of one Helix Rotation. That way, if we set the pitch to 1m and number of rotations to 5, the total heght of the helix will be 5m. The number of segments per rotations will define how many lne segments will form each rotation. This is the result obtained with the default values shown on the image above.



By using a plugin like TUBE ALONG PATH, we are able to turn the helix line generated to a rederable helix.



If we want to draw spirals (a flat helix of changing radius) we simply need to set the Pitch to 0. See how I modeled my ugly living room mirror ;).



Chek here how to Install SketchUp Plugins.


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SketchUp Plugin to Import Art Pieces to your Models

Creating a Slum from scratch in 5 minutes thanks to this plugin and a bit of smart thinking
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SketchUp 8 is Out!

A new version of the great SketchUp is out! Version 8 with many new features and tools.
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Google has announced today the release of Sketchup 8 (Pro and Free versions). They have also posted a quick video to showcase the new features. See it below.


There is also a new page listing the new features. For me, the greatest introduction is the "Solid Tools". It is what in other Programs like Rhino or AutoCAD would be called Boolean operations. Unfortunately, it is only for the Pro version. There are also new Geo-modeling tools and context gathering that will help you get better site context and better quality terrain. Also, Layout is updated to version 3 with new features. My favourite though are definetily the new Solid Tools.

This new features will leave a couple of plugins obsolete. One, the comercial one called BoolTools. With the new Solid Tools, Pro users will be able to do this without the need of a plugin. Also, the Volume Calculator Plugin will not be needed anymore, since SketchUp pro will automatically calculate the volume for Solid entities.

Haven't seen so far any mention to Multi-Processor support which is a pity, but well, one step at a time.

via Official Google SketchUp Blog: Announcing Google SketchUp 8


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SketchUp Plugins: Layer Manager

Manage Layers in SketchUp as if you were in AutoCAD. A great Plugin by Didie Bur
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One of the main reasons why using layers in SketchUp was never very comfortable was the layer manager. The way the default layer manager works is not very practical (this is my opinion, but I really tend to forget about sing the different layers I created because of the Layer Browser).
Didier Bur and his LAYER MANAGER plugin have solved this issue. Layer Manager will add two toolbars to SketchUp that will make your life incredibly easier. This are the two toolbars you'll get.


Layer Manager basically works to create and manage layer states. This means for those who are not used to use layers, to save the state of the layers at a certain point (like having layer A and B visible and Layer C and D hidden) and be able to recover it at any point of time.
Layer Tools works to switch between current active layers, to move objects from layer to layer, and much more.
The best way to learn all the great functionaity of this Plugin is to Download it from the original Sketchukation thread (you need to be registered) and read the PDF that comes with the download.

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SketchUp Plugins: Instant Roof

A great plugin for creating pitched roofs extremely quick
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I haven't posted much about SketchUp lately, but I just saw this Plugin and though it was worth posting about it. The video says it all. Easy roof creation. Pretty amazing the level of detailed reached with just a few steps.


You can download the Instant Roof Plugin directly at ValiArchitects website. They have some otehr pretty cool plugins, I'll post about them on the next few days.

Via the official Google Sketchup blog.

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