Don´t be square! Use this tips for working with shapes in Sketchup

You find some of the most interesting stuff when you go back to the basics and learn some cool stuff you can do with some of SketchUp's most basic features. One of those features are the different shapes in the drawing toolbar. But there's way more to this than just squares and circles! Find out how ingenious SketchUp can be by joining lines before you do, and how you can resize shapes to make them completely different.

Brush up on your basics in this quick tutorial and you might just see the simple answer to that very complicated problem you've been having!

Source: SketchupTuts

Get Real Pictures with HyperShot

Have you been hearing a lot about HyperShot for SketchUp but don't really know what it's all about? Well then get ready! Because HyperShot is about to blow all of your SketchUp drawings completely out of the water! So, what is it?

HyperShot for SketchUp takes any drawings that you make within SketchUp and converts them into images that look just like real photographs! What better way to show people what their home, room, or other structure will look like than giving them an actual picture of it? In this post that comes from HyperShotforSketchUp, you can see how a drawing of a drab and boring room comes to life with HyperShot. And more than that, it was done in just over half an hour!

Source: SketchupTuts

Controlling Dimensions in Layout

Anyone who wants to take advantage of everything that Layout has to offer in Google SketchUp should learn a bit about controlling dimensions. Using the different dimensions within your model in Google SketchUp, or even using the paper space surrounding the model, it's amazing to see how much you can do. Plus, being able to change, control, and manipulate these dimensions all with just a few clicks and drags of the mouse is pretty cool!

This tutorial will also take you through some things you need to know such as what happens to your dimensions when you're looking at your model in 3D. Definitely a great introduction to the Layout feature in Google SketchUp!

Source: SketchupTuts

Using Components vrs. Groups

Google SketchUp relies on certain attributes to make it the unique and invaluable piece of software that it is! But sometimes, these attributes are a detriment, especially when you're working with objects that are side by side. By placing two objects exactly beside each other, Google SketchUp will automatically detect them as a group.

This means that whenever you move one of the objects, the other object will move along with it. This can be frustrating when you're only wanting to move one of them and not the entire group! This can be easily remedied by making the distinction of one of the objects as a component rather than a group. This will allow you to move one object on its own, and not all of the objects within that group. This tutorial clearly explains the difference of components and groups. So you can get SketchUp working exactly as you need it to!

Source: SketchupTuts

Inferencing in Sketchup

One of the most wonderful things about SketchUp is that you can become as advanced as you want and SketchUp makes it really easy for you to do so. Inferencing is a tool that Google SketchUp offers to help make your drawing much more accurate. Inferencing also allows you to make lines very quickly and stores information about different points in the image so that they can be quickly referenced later.

Inferencing is something that every SketchUp user should become at least somewhat familiar with. It's one of those features that might be tricky to grab at first but once it becomes habit, it's hard to imagine how you ever faced geometry in SketchUp without it!

Source: SketchupTools

Sketchup Welcomes Woodworkers

Once again SketchUp proves that it's not just for computer geeks or architects. Now you don't even have to be an interior designer to enjoy all that Google SketchUp can do for the inside of a house. And if you've ever dreamed of creating fine pieces of furniture to be displayed in model homes, or just in your own dream home, SketchUp has something new to offer you!

Imagine building a beautiful chair, bench, or stunning bed frame, all before  you actually touch one single piece of wood. Jim explains how you can do it all now in SketchUp and goes into a little further detail about the many ways that woodworkers can now benefit from SketchUp tools. You can even see your own models rotate in 3D!

Source: SketchupTuts

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Fixed the shadow bug!

Earlier today, we announced a maintenance release for Google SketchUp 8 (free and Pro) that is a free upgrade for all SketchUp 8 users. One of the bugs we’ve fixed is the oldest and thorniest in our bug tracker. Most folks call it the “Shadow Bug.”

Let’s roll back the clock a little bit before I explain the fix. In the spring of 2001, we introduced real-time volumetric shadow rendering in SketchUp 1.1. At the time, only video games were really doing this sort of rendering, and it was pretty exciting to see shadows cast from a model that you made yourself. When I got my first demo, I declared them to be the most “Undeniably Sexy” thing that I had seen all week. It was shortly after that that I left my day job to join @Last Software – SketchUp was clearly something that I had to be a part of.

Awesome though shadows were in most cases, there was a fatal flaw. When the camera passed inside a shadow volume, there were places where the rendering algorithm just plain fell flat on its face – leading to flashy, jagged and just plain wrong-looking shadows from some points of view. Unfortunately, there wasn’t any obvious way around that problem.

In the SketchUp 3 and 4 release cycles (launched in July of 2004), we worked on this problem some more and found a new algorithm that looked promising. Unfortunately, we found that this algorithm, while usually better when the camera was inside the shadow volume, failed even more spectacularly than our original algorithm in other common uses. Admitting temporary defeat, we pulled the new algorithm out and went back to the drawing board again.

Hero engineer sporting early @Last Software t-shirt

As I’ve often said when asked about “the shadow bug”, the only way we’d be able to fix it is if we came up with a clever new algorithm. As luck will have it, one of our engineers (the same guy who implemented the original shadow rendering ten years ago) never quite gave up on the problem. And a few weeks ago, he figured out a new solution. Just like that. I’m proud to say we’ve (finally) fixed shadow rendering for all those cases where the camera was inside the shadow volume and included it as a part of today’s maintenance release. Need a visual? Here’s a video that shows the our new and improved shadow rendering at work:

There’s lots of other good bug fixes in M1, and it is both free and recommended for all users. Here's how to make sure you have the latest version of SketchUp 8:

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

Source: Official Google Sketchup Blog

An important update for SketchUp 8

Sometimes a haiku says it best:

new SketchUp version
shadows work much better now
farewell artifacts!

You'll want to download today's free update for SketchUp 8 as soon as possible. It contains (among a great many other things) fixes for for raster image export at high resolutions on Windows, and for the dreaded Shadow Bug. If you listen carefully, you can hear the sound of millions of modelers uncorking Champagne to celebrate. Believe me – we're thrilled, too.

Here's an overly-dramatic video that shows the Shadow Bug fix in living color.

Augmented Reality for SketchUp

The first time I saw Augmented Reality in action, I wondered if I'd accidentally fallen through a wormhole on the way to work; it's the kind of thing you'd expect to see on Boba Fett’s BlackBerry. AR is downright futuristic.

In the 3D modeling sense, AR involves combining a live video stream with a 3D model to create the illusion that the model is a physical object in the real world. All you need is a webcam (the ones that are built in to many laptops work just fine), a 3D model (SketchUp takes care of that), a printed-out paper "target" and a piece of AR software that can put everything together. This video shows AR in action:

DoubleCAD XT and SketchUp

Having been here for almost seven years, I've concluded that there are as many SketchUp workflows as there are SketchUp users. Trying to recommend a single catch-all combination of tools and methods is like stapling Jell-O to a piece of paper — difficult, messy and ill-advised. When tools like DoubleCAD XT (and DoubleCAD XT Pro) from IMSI/Design come along, things get a little easier to explain.

Most SketchUp modelers who design things for a living spend their time somewhere between the second and third dimensions. Models are 3D, but construction (or fabrication) requires 2D documents. Often, those 2D drawings are too complex to use LayOut in SketchUp Pro to make; LayOut isn't a dedicated drafting tool, after all.

A SketchUp model imported into DoubleCAD XT Pro

New SketchUp 8 book in Portuguese

We know from examining our charts and graphs that the good people of Brazil are crazy about SketchUp. We can officially add 3D modeling to the long, long list of things for which that country is famous.

The first book about Google SketchUp 8 is now available, and it’s in Portuguese. Written by architect João Gaspar, Google SketchUp Pro 8 passo a passo was launched in Sao Paolo on December 3rd, 2010. It’s the author’s third book about SketchUp; he also wrote volumes about SketchUp 6 and 7.

Source: Official Google Sketchup Blog

Building Maker: 109 cities and counting

Today’s Google Building Maker imagery update is our last one for 2010 – you can now use our purpose-built geo-modeling tool in any of 109 cities around the world. We’ve just released imagery for:

• Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
• Oslo, Norway
• The Hague, The Netherlands

San Antonio, Texas is one of the newest additions to Building Maker.

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