Author: Charlotte Lee

Why use Enscape for SketchUp? There are so many reasons why, once you discover it, you’ll want to use it again and again. For a start, Enscape simplifies rendering and the creation of walkthroughs, flythroughs, animations, and virtually experiences. It’s invaluable for that reason alone, since it’s this kind of experience that convinces clients, inspires the right decisions, and pushes approvals through faster. Easy to export models also make it really easy for other people to review your designs, speeding up the workflow dramatically.

A huge asset library of more than 1900 items comes with a cool materials editor and brilliant lighting options. In fact the latest Enscape version, 3.3, has a long list of desirable key features.

Real-time technology means your work is visualised as a fully rendered 3D walkthrough for people to experience from every angle, at any time of day, with any sort of lighting. The live link between the programme and your CAD tool updates things instantly. And the amazing NVIDIA Deep Learning Super Sampling improves walkthrough performance significantly.  

Virtual reality lets you and others explore designs via inspirational realism. All you need to do is hook up to a VR headset like the Oculus Rift S or HTC Vive to walk or fly through your project, enjoying spectacular visuals.

The broad range of export options means you can easily collaborate with other people, whether it’s designers, clients or someone else. It’s easy for them to grasp and there’s no need for special software or tech. And the amazing choice of atmosphere settings makes it a dream to create atmosphere and character using hyper-realistic lighting. The cloud cover, the time of day, it’s endlessly configurable.

Enscape 3.3 even offers a suite of workflow tools for collaborative annotation, where people can make changes, suggest materials, highlight an issue, and do whatever’s needed to get the project completed. When you can share your progress, keep the context clear and communicate perfectly with everyone involved like this, so easily and fluidly, your design life is so much more fulfilling.

Isn’t it good to know there’s even more fabulous Enscape functionality on the way for spring 2023?

SketchUp’s Help Tools are the second of our top SketchUp workflow tips. They give you fast, efficient insight into exactly what to do when you’re baffled.

The instructor panel in SketchUp makes design life so much easier. It provides valuable help with understanding how to use all SketchUp’s tools, and it’s very easy to use. All you do is click on a tool with the instructor panel open to see a clear description of the tool, plus a step-by-step guide about how to use it. It’s a powerful way to get to grips with SketchUp quickly, and because it helps you speed up the learning curve, your creative flow isn’t interrupted.

There’s more. The SketchUp Help Centre is an outstanding community of experts happy to answer your questions, thanks to Get Answers Positioning-centric information. You can also dive into a huge repository of excellent videos and other tutorials revealing how to do a wide range of things quickly, efficiently, and beautifully.

Here’s our simple step by step 2D floor plan creation guide.

First, open a 2D template. You’ll want to use the plan / top down view from the SketchUp dropdown list of predefined 2D templates. Once you’re in the top down plan view, you can draw the floor. Your floor might be based on measurements you’ve made or been given, or taken from an existing drawing.

Next, use SketchUp’s floor plan software basic drawing tools to draw the floor. You’ll want to use the rectangle and line tools, both great for fast, easy floor plans. It’s really easy to define the dimensions, and you can zoom in and out of your floor plan using the mouse wheel.

Now, draw the exterior walls. This is your chance to get familiar with the offset tool, a really easy way to make realistic walls fast.  

Then create the doorway openings. You can either use the tape measure tool to set-up guidelines and dimensions / locations of the doorways, or add doorways to your exterior walls on the top down plan.

TIP: Use grouping to help you with the ongoing design. Groups in LayOut keep related elements of a design organised inside your drawing area. Grouping things together makes it so much easier to choose and copy multiple design elements at the same time. If you know you always want to use a shape and text box together, for example, make them into a group to save time moving them around. For the same reason, it’s also a good idea to give the exterior walls their own layer.

Next, draw the interior walls. Again, use the tape measure tool to create the right guides and dimensions. Use the rectangle tool to draw wall sections, and the erase tool to rub out unnecessary edges, for example interior doorways. Remember to collect all your interior walls into one group once you’ve finished them, and give this group its own layer to help you work even more efficiently.

Here’s when you can make a 3D model based on what you’ve drafted so far. It’s always an exciting moment bringing even the simplest drawing to 3d life.

Next, add the windows and doors. Either make your own custom components or use premade door and window components. Since this is a guide to creating a floor plan, you might want to focus on pre-made components for now.  

Once the room is complete, you can add furniture and fixtures components. The popular SketchUp 3D warehouse is a brilliant source of everything from chairs and tables to lamps and floor coverings, house plants and TVs. It’s also stacked with great 2D components to play with.

Now you’re ready to style your 2D layout before importing it into Layout, where you use it as the basis of an exciting 3D model design.

Can you see how easy it is to finish a simple 2D floor plan within ten minutes with SketchUp floor plan software? Now you’ve got the basics under your belt, you can start to get really creative. For more tutorials, click here. 

You can also see how to turn your 2D floor plans into 3D models here!

Why use the SU Podium SketchUp plugin? You’ll love the SU podium v2.6 plus plug in because it thrills your clients with its realism, adding real-world accents and character to every kind of design. You’ll have a great time learning to use it. All the clever code is under the hood so you don’t have to think – just build. There’s nothing like seeing a design in vivid 3d life, lit from any angle via multiple sources with absolute realism. When you achieve it in a short time, your creativity takes off.    

Give it a bit of experimentation and literally everyone can create beautiful, photo-realistic renders from SketchUp models without the frustrations you sometimes get with a new tool. SU Podium runs completely inside SketchUp, so you use the simple SketchUp features you’re already familiar with.

The whole process supports better creativity, saving time as well as well as giving you impressive results. SU Podium is intuitive to people who already use SketchUp.  As a beginner you’ll be amazed how easy it is. The interface and versatile presets cut your learning curve from months to hours. This is the way 3D design should be.

Doesn’t it sound great? Next we’ll detail the SU podium v2.6 plus rendering plug in features. Prepare to be inspired.

Soap & Skin Bubble is brilliant for modelling curved surfaces in no time, beautifully. It’s free, which makes it even more desirable. Available on the Extension Warehouse, as well as via the SketchUp Extension Manager plugin, it has been developed by Josef L.

The free plugin lets modellers like you make a multi-faceted face inside a closed group of three or more lines easily and fast. All you do is choose the lines, start the plugin, tell it how many faces you want, then watch it happen. You can also inflate and deflate the finished new face. Soap & Skin Bubble is especially good for organic-shaped models.  No wonder it’s one of the best free SketchUp plugins.