SketchUp [Plugins] Blog

Video: SketchUp for Illustration

2009-11-06T12:38:00.005-05:00

Here is a great time-lapse video showing how a SketchUp user called elfpainter from Korea uses SketchUp and Paint.net to create comic illustrations.

Plugin: Smart PushPull

2009-11-06T08:29:00.006-05:00

sketchucation forum member a4chitect has released a new plugin called SmartPushPull.

It is still in rapid development, so all the planned features are not implemented yet; but it's already a great addition to your modeling toolset.

[ SmartPushPull is available on Sketchucation Forums ]

Plugins Support via Google Wave

2009-11-05T13:16:00.002-05:00

I will be experimenting with using Google Wave to provide support for my plugins, or any related issue for that matter. Just add username plugins.blog to your Wave contacts. Of course, you can also use the Contacts from or email shown under the titlebar of this blog.

Make Ortho Views Plugin

2009-11-04T17:50:00.000-05:00

A recent plugin of mine, Make Ortho Views, was mentioned on Fine Woodworking's Design. Click. Build. blog. Author and SketchUp Woodworking expert Dave Richards did a nice write-up on how the plugin can be used. Thank you Dave!

In addition to the Design. Click. Build blog, you can see more of Dave's SketchUp work in Fine Woodworking's Tools and Shops 2010. Dave produced the fantastic illustrations and accompanying plans in SketchUp for the article "A Workbench 30 years in the Making" (also available through fww.) Dave Richards can be reached at Design. Click. Build.

Also, I would like to thank this person for purchasing my make ortho views plugin:

I am running Sketchup Pro 7 on a Mac and recently (today) downloaded the make ortho views ruby. Put it/them in the appropriate folder and on run receive the following error message...Error Loading File MakeOrthoViews.rb undefined method `find_image' for JF:Module.

Can you help?

I want to help, but... how do I contact you?

Finally, I added a "Your Contact Information" field to my contact form. ;)

Plugin: Align Camera Light

2009-11-03T12:24:00.000-05:00

Al Hart (renderplus.com) posted a nifty render-helper called Align Camera Light. This plugin aligns a lighting component to the current SketchUp camera. Move the camera, and re-run the plugin to update the lighting component position as needed.

To us, create a lighting component for your renderer of choice.Here I have added 2 point lights, and made a Component of them.

Rename the Component to "camera_light".

Then simply select the Align Camera Light item from the Plugins menu, and the lighting component will be positioned and aligned to the current camera position.

That's it. An quick and easy way to set up lighting for a render.

Download PDF Manuals and Reference Cards for Google SketchUp

2009-11-02T14:00:00.000-05:00

Just a couple of quick links to download the PDF version of the Google SketchUp manual and Quick Reference Card.

Light-Up 1.7 Released

2009-10-30T08:24:00.000-04:00

Really focussed on handling of large models for v1.7 - we're seeing huge performance increases on large models.

- Significantly better at handling large models. Both in terms of lighting times which is improved but also Tourtool which is 5x faster.
- 1-click light source placement (Alt/Apple + Left mouse click with Query Tool)
- Interactive aiming of multiple light sources (Ctrl/Alt + Left mouse button with Query Tool)
- Canceling in progress lighting
- Stability improvements and bug fixes
- IES lights look in a "Lights" folder relative to your .skp file making moving files to other computers easier.
- Honoring "Hide" for individual faces
- Stop/start animation controls
- Option to use or ignore current Selection in lighting
- Fix for FBX exporter not handling some hierarchies correctly
- Fix for weird magnifying reflections
- Many fixes to IBL calculations
- Light bleeding problems fixed in many cases.
- IES Type B light support (stadium/sports lighting)
- Saves last Capture dialog state so as to not keeping popping it up each time Tourtool is used
- Compressed texture support on graphics cards that support it

Light-Up: 30 day free trial - $149 to buy

SketchUp Models Feed

2009-10-29T09:11:00.001-04:00

Just a note that I provide a shared page/RSS feed for the latest SketchUp models from FormFonts and Cadyou.com - it's a great way to keep updated when new models are posted.

Plugin :Cleanup - Select & Erase Co-planar edges

2009-10-22T08:24:00.005-04:00

Cleanup is a sketchup plugin to select and erase co-polanar and lonely edges.

It is written to take advantage of features in the latest SketchUp 7.1, and does a superb job of cleaning up uneeded edges. It will work with previous versions of Sketchup, but the results may not be as good.

Cleanup is written by Thomas Thomassen - a freelance modelmaker, designer, and webdesigner/programmer located in Trondheim, Norway .

[ Cleanup is hosted at SCF | See more TT's plugins | Thomas Thomassen ]

Question of the Day

2009-10-20T20:30:00.003-04:00

I got this request in my contacts form - I don't have an answer, so hopefully one of our fine audience members knows the answer:

Hello: I'm trying to import 3D drawings developed in Solidworks. I have the drawing in(*.eprt) format. Can you help me?

3 days left to tell Google your ideas for SketchUp.

2009-10-19T18:47:00.002-04:00

Tell Google what you would like to see for SketchUp, and vote for the best ideas.

Product Ideas for SketchUp

Plugin Updates

2009-10-19T09:52:00.003-04:00

TIG's TruTangents v1.6 - now supports tangential arcs (see left image.)

SCF Hosted Plugin

TIG's (also) 2D Tools reaches version 3.6 - finally tracking down and fixing a bug when opening a dialog on some Windows machines. If you were having trouble using 2D Tools Hatching, this should fix it.

Plugin: Curve Control Points

2009-10-14T13:38:00.002-04:00

Here's a new free-form modeling plugin by kirill called Curve Control Points.

this script adds control construction points to curves, then it is possible to affect curve shape by moving, rotating, scaling of control points

Visit kirills web site, and watch more videos.

Where is my SketchUp Plugins Folder?

2009-10-09T10:46:00.005-04:00

This article was written in response to a question asked on the Google SketchUp Help forum. I've covered this before, but it comes up often enough that it justifies another post.

A highly reliable way to find the Plugins folder is to ask SketchUp where it is located.

Type (or copy and paste) the following line into the lower part of Sketchup's Ruby Console, and press ENTER. (The Ruby Console can be opened from SketchUp's Window menu.)

Sketchup.find_support_file("Plugins")

You will always get the correct location of the Plugins folder for the computer you are using.

Using a Separate Plugins Folder

If you do not have the rights to put files in Sketchup's Plugins folder, you may still be able to use many plugins from your HOME folder, or even from a portable media device.

Using the portable device as an example, create a folder on the device to store the plugin files - "plugins" might be an obvious choice. Then, Install the plugin files to the plugins folder you created. Using the Ruby Console, enter the following text - but use the full path to the plugins folder you created: (In this example, I will use e:/plugins on a Windows operating system, but note that the drive letter will likely vary from one computer to another.)

require_all("e:/plugins")

Not all plugins will work when loaded from a non-standard location, but a good many will. And it may be possible to modify the ones that do not work to allow them to work; but that's a topic for another day.

new template

2009-10-06T11:24:00.007-04:00

I installed a new template that will hopefully fix the comments on this blog. Also installed SyntaxHighlighter:


UI.add_context_menu_handler do |menu|
    sel = Sketchup.active_model.selection
    if sel.nitems == 1
        if sel[0].is_a? Sketchup::Group or sel[0].is_a? Sketchup::ComponentInstance
            menu.add_item("Reset Transformation") { sel[0].transformation = IDENTITY }
            menu.add_item("Move to Origin") {
                tr = sel[0].transformation.to_a
                tr[12] = 0
                tr[13] = 0
                tr[14] = 0
                sel[0].transformation = tr
            }
        end
    end
end

Sketchup 2 Kerkythea SU2KT 3.1

2009-10-05T19:46:00.002-04:00

SketchUp 2 Kerkythea version 3.1 released. Lot's of new features and fixes:

- faster full mesh export of big models (The Church model 2.6M Triangles - previously ca. 45 min, now 9 minutes!) by Stefan Jaensch
- photo-match works now inside groups and components by SJ
- Fix for material export/import: Materials are now coloredSJ

- components exported as instances in Instanced mode (The Church exported in ca. 2 minutes!)
- ability to create a proxy object of a component

- Scenes export by Tim Crandall- it allows to render SU Animate animations
- Animation export with FULL model per frame (supports proper_animation plugin, haven't tested it with Sketchy Physics)

- Fix for wrong EMITTER values
- Support for transparency in PNGs and TIFs (Textures)

- Rendering method selection for Animation & Scenes export (custom methods can be coppied to 'Plugins/su2kt' folder
+ both animation methods export all necessary data and render straight out of SU.

- double quotes, quotes, slashes and etc, fix by Nicetuna

Kerkythea Rendering System :: View topic - [NEW VERSION] SU2KT 3.1

Submit Your Ideas for SketchUp

2009-10-02T11:54:00.000-04:00

Submit your ideas before the Oct. 22 deadline.

Product Ideas for SketchUp - Google Product Ideas: "You have ideas on how to make SketchUp better, and we're listening."

Google Earth: What is it?

2009-09-29T09:34:00.003-04:00

I ran across this operation in Google Earth. I don't suppose anyone might recognize what type of activity is going on here:

A Few Plugin Updates

2009-09-28T11:23:00.003-04:00

But mostly via SCF

2D Tools is at v2.9

Tools on Surface version 1.5c

Vismap development continues [version unknown ]

Help organize and develop a plugins package manager for SketchUp.

French translation for Chris Fullmer's Shape Bender plugin

TIG's lathe plugin is at version 1.6

Mini-plugin to make Face-Me Components from Components on a Layer

Alex Schreyer posted a Ruby Cheat-Sheet

Here's a mirror of the API site for offline use.

Comments Broken

2009-09-28T09:08:00.002-04:00

I've had a couple reports that the comments form is broken. I didn't change anything, so I'll need to dig into the template and report back.

Plugin: Lay Off

2009-09-25T20:33:00.004-04:00

Lay Off is a new SketchUp plugin that changes the visibility behavior of new Layers.

When enabled, added Layers are visible only in the current Scene only, and hidden in all other Scenes (current and future.) When disabled, you get the "normal" SketchUp behavior you are used to.

Lay Off appears in the Plugins menu, and also has a toolbar button. Toggle the button on/off anytime while modeling. Models that are saved with Lay Off enabled, will re-open with it enabled; however, Lay Off is always OFF when starting a new model.

Adding Layers when there are no Scenes in the model will result in none of the added Layers visible in any Scene added afterwards.

Download here

NOTE: If you tried the early version, you can delete the jf_hidden_layer.rb and the jf_tools* files and folders.

SketchUp 7.1 Released

2009-09-22T13:22:00.001-04:00

Just announced.

SketchUp 7.1

ObserverTests

2009-09-19T00:49:00.001-04:00

This is an update to a set of SketchUp “Do-Nothing” Observer classes I made up some time ago.

The WebDialog replace a menu system and makes it much easier to attach and remove the Observers. Look in the Tools menu to open the dialog.

The download contains a single observers/ folder meant to be placed in Plugins.

observers/ contains the menu loader menus.rb file which can be manually loaded or moved into Plugins.

Output is printed to the Ruby Console, which is opened.

The namespace has been changed to ObserverTests.

Event methods are explicitly listed instead of relying on Ruby’s reflection to get their names – this was the cause of several problems in previous versions.

Download

Plugin: Create edges from points data file

2009-09-18T15:02:00.003-04:00

I wrote a quick plugin to read an ascii data file of points, and create edges between consecutive points.

The data files needs to be ascii and consists 2 or 3 delimited numbers per line. The numbers represent the x, y (and optionally) z positions of the points.

The delimiters can be any of: comma, semi-colon, space, or tab.

It may be downloaded here: plot_data_file.rb

[Plugin] Tools On Surface - v1.5b (Refresh - 17 Sep 09)

2009-09-17T19:58:00.002-04:00

[Plugin] Tools On Surface - v1.5b (Refresh - 17 Sep 09)

[New Version - 17 Sep 08 - 23:30 CET] Version 1.5b
This version is a complete refresh, focusing on the User Interface and Usability.
You need to install LibFredo6 3.4 or higher. See file and details at http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=180&t=17947#p144178.
Note: those who downloaded v1.5a before 17 Sep 09 23:35 CET had a missing file. Please reinstall version 1.5b. Thanks to Daniel S. for signaling the problem.

Here are the main evolutions:

Button palette to view and access all options (also available from contextual menu and Short cuts)
You can Switch to Any tool from within Any tool, with the side palette
There is a generic icon button, keeping in memory the latest selected tool when used. Actually you can keep only this button in the toolbar if you have real estate problems.
All parameters are preserved across Sketchup sessions (by default)
The VCB accept formulas and unit specification for Length (for instance 3.2mm+0.4cm will mean 0.72cm). Angles can be specifed in degrees, radians, grades or % for slope.
Rings for Shapes can be visualized in a special palette (but can still be entered in the VCB with offset folowed by 'x')
Freehand On Surface now includes a Point & Click mode, in addition to the existing drag-over mode. You can mix up drawing with and without inferences (see video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdqsYAbUfTE)
Line On Surface now generate faces
Angular Shapes like Rectangle, Parallelogram and Sector are generated as discrete curves so that you keep the sharp angles as plain lines when doing a Push Pull
The script comes with my ugly icons at installation, but you can switch to CadFather's ones, much nicer, in the Default Parameter dialog box, and also select the one you want to keep and discard.
And it's good to know that ToolsOnSurface also works without a surface. There is a trick explained in the doc to select the plane (mouse over a face and just press SHIFT, without clicking)

I did not change the algorithm for computing contours on surface. So you'll find the same limitations, especially on closed surfaces. I'll do something in a next release.
Documentation -->

Quickcard - ToolsOnSurface - English - v1.5 - 12 Sep 09.pdf
(770.04 KB) Downloaded 18 times

If you do not read it, it's a good idea to check out the tooltips of the button palette and the contextual menu.

ToolsOnSurface v1.5 is a Suite of Tools drawing on curved surfaces, with lines, various shapes, offset and Freehand / Polyline. It provides an inference mechanism, a Contour Editor and a dedicated Eraser.

moreshapes.jpg

Shapes includes:

* Circle and Polygon (already present in v1.2)
* Rectangle, defined by its length and width
* Parallelogram, defined by its length, width and angle
* Ellipses, defined by axes
* Circle defined by 3 points
* Arcs (circular)
* Sectors, defined by origin, direction and angle

All shapes have in addition the option to draw Rings, that is, the same contour offset by a negative or positive distance. And of course, all generated contours can be later edited by the Contour Edition tool.

The inference mechanism tries to simulate some stickiness when lines are drawn along some remarkable directions. There is also a Lock inference mechanism to force drawing in a particular direction. A Protractor can help to pick particular angles.

To install, Unzip the attached file, by doing a Select All, Extract to the Plugins Sketchup folder and Overwriting ALL files. See Documentation for details.