SketchUp Extension Review: Eneroth Upright Extruder

Among the most used extensions for Trimble SketchUp, the Eneroth Upright Extruder stands out for its unique features and usability. Today we will talk about how we can use this powerful extension to easily modify and design complex models.

Designed by Eneroth3, the Eneroth Upright Extruder (EUE) is available for SketchUp 2013 and above. Of course, it requires the Pro version of SketchUp to install plugins into this awesome 3D modeling interface.

What is Eneroth Upright Extruder

The EUE is an extension for the SketchUp software which is used for 3D modeling and rendering. With this extension, you can project profiles while maintaining it upright.

In the default SketchUp tools pools, there is a similar tool available called "Follow Me". However, the Follow Me tool keeps the sides of the extrusion straight. This leads to not keeping the extrusion upright. The EUE extension remedies this issue by twisting the sides to make the project the extrusion upwards.

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Published By
Rajib Dey
www.sketchup4architect.com
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SketchUp Extension Review : Solid Inspector 2

One of the best things about Trimble SketchUp is that it can extend its abilities by adding plugins or extensions to it. Today, we will talk about Solid Inspector 2, one such extension that helps in preparing your 3D model for 3D printing and other volumetric operations.

What is Solid Inspector 2

Solid Inspector 2 for SketchUp 2014 or later is a plugin or extension that you can use with a registered SketchUp Pro software. It finds and highlights the issues that are preventing your model from being a complete solid.

There are three main kinds of discrepancies that Solid Inspector 2 can detect in a given object: Model not solid, Useless face in model, Inverted face, Hidden lines.

The SI2 will highlight errors in a model and jump from one error to the next, repairing as you go. This gives the extension tremendous usability in confirming and repairing a model's solid shell. For anyone making solid models or 3D printing, this is an indispensable plugin.

Technical Details

The Solid Inspector 2 (SI2) extension can be found in the Extension Warehouse. The plugin is so popular, that chances are you will see it in the very first screen in the featured or most popular sections; if not, here is the link for the plugin page. The extension is also available in the GitHub repository, you can find it here.

Being an open-source development, you can download and use it for free. The RBZ is fairly small and installs fast. You would have to have Trimble SketchUp 2014 or newer in order to use the plugin. If you are using an older version of SketchUp, you can consider downloading the first version of the tool instead.

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Published By
Rajib Dey
www.sketchup4architect.com
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SketchUp Extension Review: Artisan

Ease of use, simple interface, and flexibility are the main reasons behind the enormous popularity of Trimble SketchUp. The said flexibility of SketchUp comes from the ability to upgrade, enhance, and change the way its default tools behave by the addition of a myriad of extensions from outside. SketchUp Pro and above enable this feature for the users, who can find these extensions in the SketchUp Extension Warehouse 2.0 or some third-party web sites.

Artisan is one such extension or plugin. This powerful plugin can turn SketchUp from a 3D geometric designer to a 3D organic modeler. In other words, Artisan lets you design your model with such complex geometry that the result looks and feels like a natural object. For example, you can literally draw a lifelike flower using the Artisan extension.

Previously, Artisan was released with the name "Subdivide and Smooth" and it was a hit then already. Developer Del has worked hard for two years over it and the child of this labour is what we see as Artisan - a complex remake and upgrade with a plethora of added features.

The extension exposes itself in the form of a toolbar with large, friendly-looking buttons. Each button represents an important function, and they are arrayed in four basic functional groups. These are Surface Subdivision, Sculpting Tools, Vertex Transformation, Mesh Optimization. Let us delve further into each group below.

1. Subdivision Surfaces

These functions are used for smoothing a given hard geometry by introducing more subdivisions in the object to make it appear more organic and softer. The robust subdivision algorithm works blisteringly fast on any number of selected faces, groups or components. You can also use the Crease tool to create hard edges from edges or vertices. The Knife tool will let you create loops and the Extrude tool will further help you in this by making loops without interior faces. With the latest version of Artisan, you can preview the subdivision content change before committing. The Proxy button presents you with a low-poly mode that updates subsurface geometry in real-time parallel to your editing.

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Published By
Rajib Dey
www.sketchup4architect.com
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SketchUp Extension Review: TrueBend

Arguably the most popular 3D modeling and design software on earth, Trimble SketchUp gathers its immense following and customer base due to the user-friendliness and flexibility of the application. The flexibility comes from the enabling of adding external code, called “extensions” or “plugins”, into SketchUp. These extensions enhance the way SketchUp tools behave, add new tools or new content to enrich and ease your usage of the software.

One of the points to remember while intending to use SketchUp extensions is that only the SketchUp Pro version or above allows the users to import extensions within it. The Free, Make or Shop versions do not have this ability.

Most extensions for SketchUp are found in the Extension Warehouse from Trimble, which has released the 2.0 version of it recently with new and improved features. Other third-party web sites also host SketchUp extensions. One of these Extensions is called TrueBend, and it is that of which we will talk about today.

What is TrueBend

TrueBend from Thom Thom is a quite popular Trimble SketchUp extension found in the Extension Warehouse. When integrated with SketchUp, it enables the user to bend a given object for a certain degree. It will retain the original length of the object instance. The plugin uses the bottom front of the bounding box edge, therefore the user needs to line up the instant axis line up with the bend.

How TrueBend Works

The TrueBend plugin helps the user in bending an object within SketchUp for a given radius. It will also help you to bend the instance while maintaining the length of the object. Let us take an example to understand this better. Consider that the user wishes to bow a shape 60 inches long and the curvature of the bend is 180 degrees. To do this, the user needs to select ‘TrueBend’ in the menus or toolbar, and then click and drag the red bar on the SketchUp design screen to bend the object. Alternatively, you can click the red bar and enter the curvature value in degrees in the VCB for a precise manual curving. After finishing the dragging, or hitting enter after giving the value, you will see that the object instance has bowed to form the expected shape yet it still retains the original length.
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Published By
Rajib Dey
www.sketchup4architect.com
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What’s New in Extension Warehouse 2.0

One of the most beloved and favored 3D modeling and designing software is Trimble SketchUp. It is immensely popular not only among professionals but also with amateurs as well, thanks to its simple interface, easy-to-learn tools, comparatively cheap pricing, and great performance. However, arguably the most effective reason for SketchUp’s popularity would be its awesome flexibility and adaptiveness.

Trimble SketchUp achieves this by enabling users to attach “extensions” or “plug-ins” with the mother software, which augment its functionality to no end. These extensions can be developed by professionals as well as amateurs and change or upgrade the way you can draw in SketchUp, or improve its performance, or provide new resources to play with, or even connect to external software for additional support.

Many developers choose to host these extensions on their own site. However, the most common location to find the best SketchUp extensions is at the Extension Warehouse. The Extension Warehouse is an online resource full of plug-ins developed especially for SketchUp. The extensions are neatly categorized and presented here. When you wish to install a given plugin, just download the corresponding RBZ file and use your SketchUp’s Extension Manager tool to assimilate it.

One word of note here that support for plugins is not enabled in the Free or Shop versions of SketchUp. Only SketchUp Pro and above supports plugins, opening up a whole new world of customization for you. Whether you are an artist or an architect, the Extension Warehouse will have the right plugins, often a whole bunch of them, to set up your SketchUp in the way that best fits you, offering you the tools that you really need above and beyond SketchUp’s default toolset.

In their neverending quest to bring you the features that you need most and tools that make your designing and rendering efforts much easier, the Trimble team has just launched a few awesome improvements and enhancements that are sure to bring you a bundle of joy into your workflow. Let us see what are the new stuff in the Extension Warehouse 2.0.

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Published By

Rajib Dey

www.sketchup4architect.com

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How to use CAD files in SketchUp

Trimble SketchUp is probably the most popular 3D modeling software among people who aren’t hardcore professionals. Its ease of use, easy-to-understand toolset and flexibility have fanned the fumes of popularity for SketchUp. Most of the time, we are happy to be working with the default SketchUp files (.skp). But sometimes we may need to use files from other applications into SketchUp.

For example, quite often architects, construction professionals or engineers need to use their professional CAD software flies inside Trimble SketchUp. Most commonly, we see the need for importing AutoCAD files, like DWG or DXF, for this purpose. Today we will see how to properly import and use CAD files into SketchUp.

Compatibility

Before you whisk your DWG into SketchUp, you will need to know if they are compatible or not. Only the SketchUp Pro version supports importing CAD files into it; any lesser versions like SketchUp Web/Free, Make or Shop will not let you do this. Since the Pro Bundle and Unity come with SketchUp Pro, they support importing as well. Files spawned by most versions of AutoCAD are supported by the latest version of SketchUp Pro. However, AutoCAD 2013-14 version files work best in SketchUp, so you might probably want to save your drawing to that version format if you were using a higher version of AutoCAD.

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Published By
Rajib Dey
www.sketchup4architect.com
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