Charlotte Lee, Author at Elmtec Sketchup

Tools for Easier Designer Collaboration

Posted on March 25, 2022December 12, 2023 by Charlotte Lee

Are you searching for insight into the best online design collaboration tools? It matters when working closely with your fellow designers is what’s needed to get a project off the ground. There can easily be several of you involved, perhaps one of you designing the ductwork for a building project, someone else handling the interior design, and another person who’s an expert in the roofing side of things. You might be an architect who needs to closely collaborate with a construction client. Whatever the situation, the best design collaboration tools let you achieve a smoother workflow and communicate effectively at every stage. What is collaborative design? Read on to find out, discovering the best collaborative tool for designers and how it works to improve your remote work collaboration life.

Best Collaboration Tools for Designers

First, let’s take a look at what online design collaboration tools mean in a design context. What is collaborative design, exactly? It’s an intelligent way to pin down the best way forward for a design project, and it involves many aspects of a project. It includes brainstorming and ideation in the early stages, bringing the best brains into play to figure out the best way to fulfil the client’s needs within the budget. Task allocation is also collaborative, handing tasks to the people who have the most experience and expertise.

Planning is another angle where design collaboration tools help enormously to get a project on its feet. The review process benefits from several sets of eyes too. In fact collaboration at every stage isn’t just a nice thing to have. In many situations it’s essential. And how does the magic happen? You need to be able to communicate everything between the team members fluidly and effectively, so nothing falls through the cracks.

Remote work collaboration in the design sector has plenty of advantages. One of the benefits is the way the team unifies around one core, clearly-defined goal. When everyone bends their energies towards the same aim things get done faster and more efficiently. When every team member buys into the design project there’s a feeling of positivity and cohesion that goes a long way towards superb teamwork. Sharing encourages creativity and innovation, and because it involves every stakeholder everyone gets behind the project to push it forwards, all pushing in the same positive direction. More people ‘in the know’ means fewer mistakes and a bigger, better critical base to test assumptions.

So what are the features and capabilities of the best design collaboration tools? For start it gives the team real time brainstorming and ideation support even when working remotely across two or several sites. The easy communications it provides means sharing between team members is simple, fast and reliable. The system makes giving reviews and critiques easy and a centralised, shared area where design briefs and design documents live helps everyone stay organised as well as up to date.

Real time design collaboration, where drawings are accessible and editable by multiple people at the same time, is one of the most exciting ways to work. When you can easily mark up design documents with comments and feedback, in a way everyone understands, the entire team knows exactly what’s what. And side by side design version comparison is, as you can imagine, a brilliant collaborative tool. It saves time, money and hassle, and minimises mistakes from start to finish.

Online Design Collaboration with Sketchup

Sketchup provides a suite of excellent online design collaboration facilities. It’s one of the best design collaboration tools out there. Here’s why.

Take the Trimble Connect facility. Trimble Connect for Business is included when you buy a SketchUp subscription. The tools that sync SketchUp files with Trimble Connect unlock a host of great collaboration tools including unlimited online file storage, automated file syncing between computers (with Trimble Sync), Version History for recovery purposes, amazing remote modeling collaboration abilities, and of course some fabulous

project management tools.

Then there’s the Sketchup collaboration manager, the place where tasks and more are allocated. Trimble Connect provides designers with unlimited online cloud file storage plus automatic file syncing, handy version control, plus excellent remote modeling collaboration capabilities and a load of cool project management tools. It’s good to know that the Trimble Connect 2.0 extension is part of Sketchup Pro.

The Sketchup Viewer collaboration facility provides collaboration features to let teams and groups of users to enjoy SketchUp projects via immersive virtual and augmented reality. You can join sessions via a local Wi-Fi network or remotely via the internet. The room’s owner is the presenter, the rest are attendees. You have your own avatar representing your role in the virtual project model, and it cleverly places team members relative to each other.

Design Collaboration Best Practices in Sketchup

There are a few reliable ways to harness remote collaboration best practice. You can save design elements as components that are external to the project as SKP files, then share them with your fellow designers so they can work on isolated elements of the design. If one of you makes changes to the design you simply save it as another SKP file and share it. You can easily evaluate and discuss the changes and improvements you’ve each made, and tweak them with ease. And good, solid, practical communications come first from beginning to end, throughout the entire design process.

Did you know poor comms leads to 56% of failed design projects? It’s a shocker. Luckily design collaboration within Sketchup is easy and powerful thanks to:

An ideation process that lets you split teams into smaller groups, giving everyone the chance to contribute
An ideas communication process that reduces the risk of poor communication with stakeholders who haven’t contributed to the ideation process
A design viewing process that involves remarkably realistic imagery in 2d and 3d, making it easy to see how items work within a space, and how a space works
A sharing process that allows sharing at every stage without confusing your design versions
A system that makes sign-off simple
A tool that lets you export 3d designs to almost any file format
A system where you can stay in Sketchup but use Layout to create detailed dimensions in 2d.

Design Collaboration with SketchUp

Now you understand the unique power of collaboration within Sketchup, it’s time to give it a go for yourself and experience the benefits. You can do that free with a generous 7 day trial of Sketchup Pro. If you want to experience the wonders of hyper-real 3d rendering so good it blows your mind, take a free trial of v-ray for Sketchup. It’s quite something. Add a wealth of top class learning resources and tutorials and it’s very hard to beat. Some say it’s unbeatable.

Planning a Woodworking Project Using Sketchup Pro

Posted on March 16, 2022June 13, 2024 by Charlotte Lee

You work with wood. You want to plan your next woodworking project using Sketchup. What an excellent idea! Woodworking plans in Sketchup come with a huge repository of Sketchup woodworking extensions. With many of its Sketchup woodworking plans free, it’s easy to create stunning, accurate Sketchup woodworking models that are accurate, easy to understand, and reveal the exact amount of materials you need to complete the job in the real world. Read on to find out about why you’d be crazy not to test-drive woodworking with Sketchup, how to draw woodworking plans, where to find woodworking plans and more. Read on to make your woodworking life easier than ever before. It’s fun, too!

How to Use Sketchup for Woodworking

SketchUp is a popular 3D modelling computer program. It’s used for a very wide range of drawing and design applications including architecture, interior design, industrial and product design, landscape architecture, civil engineering, mechanical engineering, film and theatre, and video gaming. Woodworking plans in Sketchup is a popular use for the tool.

It makes it easy and fun to create every kind of 2d and 3d object and layout.

There’s an enormous Warehouse full of ready-made 3d objects to download for free and play with. Many are actually available to buy in real-world shops. Plus lots of woodworking plans for Sketchup, all freely available. A simple French workbench, a saw vise, a boarded chest and more.

How about Sketchup woodworking models? A particularly effective 3d modelling software for woodworking, it is widely recognised by many as the best cad software for woodworking projects. Along with the 3D Warehouse there’s a multitude of excellent learning resources and tutorials to tap into as well as a variety of licences to suit every circumstance.

Designing woodworking with Sketchup helps you visualise a project accurately, thinking through and pre-building before tackling them in real life. It costs a lot less than experimenting using real materials in the shop, with no waste wood and the ability to design infinite alternatives. It’s designed to make you more productive in no time. And once you know the basics it leaves you to get on with things, a lovely clear way to work. When you want to measure twice, cut once, it’s perfect. It delivers the ultimate form of measurement, rich in detail and always precise.

There’s even a load of very cool Sketchup woodworking extensions, Sketchup’s word for ‘plugins’, basically little bits of software that enhance the basic functions of Sketchup and let you do more in all sorts of inspiring ways. Added together they make a woodworker’s life a whole lot easier.

There’s no need to build mockups – 3d modelling takes care of that
Sketchup is great for both Sketching and evaluating ideas digitally
Digital pictures can be imported and used as the basis for 3D reproduction plans
You can view and assess your designs from any angle and modify designs without wasting wood
High accuracy drawings, plans, and cut lists
You can easily experiment with changing materials, for example wood grains, to see what different finishes look like
Perfect for both woodworking professionals and hobbyists.

If you’d like to get cracking, download the free version of Sketchup and install it. There’s a link at the bottom of this article.

How to Make Woodworking Plans in Sketchup

What are woodworking plans? A woodworking plan is a pre-drafted set of instructions to make a 3d object in wood. It contains all the insight, facts and actions needed to complete the project, along with the exact amount of materials you’ll need. Where to find woodworking plans? There are some great pre-drafted Sketchup woodworking plans free from the 3D warehouse.. How to draw woodworking plans? Here’s how to create woodworking plans in Sketchup step-by-step. It’s easy to get familiar with Sketchup fast, and you should find it a pleasure to learn.

If you haven’t done it already, download and install Sketchup
Define the project’s dimensions using the ‘woodworking inches’ template
Go to the drawing area in Sketchup
Sketch the furniture design in Sketchup
Add textures
Check your dimensions are accurate
Once it’s complete, simply convert your 3D model design into a 2d drawing using the Layout tool, which lets you create 2D woodworking plans

Layout lets you add notes to a design for partners, clients and other stakeholders to explore, which means your project moves ahead faster. The materials, lengths and details are clearly communicated to reveal your intentions accurately and support the work of builders and interior designers. And it’s super-easy to explain even the most complex and intricate details on just one page, in the right real-world scale.

Woodworking Plans with Sketchup

Making woodworking designs and plans in Sketchup saves woodworkers time and money, taking the hassle out of the process and minimising the risk of any mistakes sneaking past the design stage into real life. If you’d like to test-drive it for yourself there’s a free 7 day download of the Pro version to play with. You can also test v-ray for Sketchup at no cost, creating stunning 3d renderings of your designs to make friends and influence people. You can even go explore our large collection of learning resources, including tutorials.

How to Make a Roof in SketchUp

Posted on March 15, 2022July 14, 2023 by Charlotte Lee

How to make a sloping roof in Sketchup? It’s easy. Maybe you want to know how to make a pitched roof in Sketchup, or find out how to make a hip roof in Sketchup? Perhaps you’re trying to pin down how to make a slanted roof in Sketchup. When you want to draw a realistic, accurate roof in Sketchup, it’s good to know that all you need is a great little roof Sketchup plugin and you’re well on the way to success.

If you want to know how to draw a roof in Sketchup without a plugin or extension you need an easy to understand, clear explanation in plain language. This article reveals exactly how to make a roof in Sketchup, and you’ll find it surprisingly simple. We also take a good look at roofing materials and types. Read on to become a top class Sketchup roof pro!

Different Roof Types in Sketchup

How to do a roof in Sketchup? It’s really easy. Did you know Sketchup can be used to model an exciting variety of roof types and designs? Better still, did you realise you can create accurate, attractive roofs in Sketchup without any support from plugins?

The list of potential roof styles is extensive. It’s also possible to create even more variety, making roof designs that are completely unique to you. When there’s such a huge choice of useful and unusual textures and materials available, including masses of different roof tiles, Sketchup means there’s no limit to your creativity.

Draw the perfect open gable roof with ease
Create beautiful box gables in no time
Hip gables are no problem at all
Hip and valley roofs are as easy as pie
Gambrel roofs and mansard roofs are at your fingertips, hassle-free
Dutch gables are problem-free to achieve
Hexagonal gazebos might be complex, but Sketchup makes them simple
Sloping and slanted roofs are never an issue

It’s easy to create roofs in Sketchup without a plugin. But you also have the opportunity to pick and choose from a vast number of very cool plugins to use for roof design and modeling. They’re a great way to speed up the process, allowing you to deliver roof brilliance time after time, in no time at all. This is particularly handy when you’re considering complex designs. You might choose a Sketchup roof tiles plugin to create unique tiles to thrill your clients – the world is your oyster with Sketchup.

How to Create a Basic Roof in Sketchup

Here’s how you create the basics of a Sketchup curved roof, a sloping roof in Sketchup, or any other kind of roof. Your starting point is always the same. It’s good to know that creating a basic roof in Sketchup is actually very simple. It’s a great idea to have a go yourself to discover how easy it is. Here are some basic steps, which reveal its simplicity:

Start off with a basic box drawing of the building
At one end of the building, draw lines outward to represent the roof’s eaves. This dictates how far the roof extends out from the edge of the building to keep the rain and weather out
Define the vertical that’ll create the roof slope you want to make. Slopes are defined horizontally via the x axis and vertically via the y axis. A 4/12 pitched roof, for example, rises 4 inches on the y axis for every 12 inches along the x axis
Now you’ve drawn lines to represent the eaves, draw more lines to define the roof slope to make your first gable end
Draw central lines across the building’s box top to show where the roof will be, creating a path
Select the central line or lines and pick the ‘follow me’ tool
Click on the gable end and you’ll see it follows the path of your chosen central line to create the roof
Select ‘reverse faces’ to produce the slope of the roof, and adjust it if necessary

See – isn’t it a fantastic way to create complexity with just a few clicks? Now you can really start to get creative, adding textures and materials and changing the roof tiles until you’re happy with the finished effect, look and style.

How to Use a Plugin to Create a Roof in Sketchup

There’s a great choice of excellent extensions and plugins for Sketchup that can be used to create roofs.

One that’s widely acknowledged as excellent is called ‘Roof’, created by TIG. You’ll find it in the Sketchucation plugin store, and it’s free. Developer donations are encouraged, though, and it’s always nice to contribute what you can to its ongoing success.

This particular plugin contains a bunch of seriously handy roof creation tools. To create roofs all you do is create your building as a block, then choose a face of the building – which has a flat roof for now. Choose ‘roof’ from the extensions menu, then select the type of roof you want to draw. From there you simply add in the parameters you need, including the slope of the roof, the materials it’s made from, the eaves, the size of the fascia, the soffit size and more.

As you’ll see when you experiment with it – which is something we strongly recommend – this amazing roof extension creates all sorts of magic including hipped, mansard or sprocket, gable ended and pyramid roofs. There’s a really good ‘help’ file to accompany your voyage of discovery too, which you’ll need to download separately. It’s full of useful hints and tips.

How to Add Realism to a Rooftop with Materials

Realism matters in roof design, particularly when you’re designing with innovative, new or unusual materials. You want your clients to ‘get’ what you’re saying in your design instantly, understand where you’re coming from, and enjoy an accurate representation of what the final roof will look like. This is where Sketchup materials come in, and they’re amazing.

Materials are used to add realism to roof models in Sketchup. You actually paint different materials on faces, materials being painted with a colour plus an optional texture, both defined in an image file. You can instantly replace one roofing material with another, perhaps changing your original shingles to a metal roof or even a thatched roof. Because the colour and texture are separate, you can change one or both.

It’s just as easy to play with the opacity of a material, making it opaque, transparent, or anything in between. As long as you’ve built an accurate model in the first place, the software can even figure out exactly how much of a given material you need to build the roof in real life. Here’s how to apply materials to your roof model:

Select the face or faces where you want to apply a material
Pick the paint bucket tool
Click ‘select’ in the materials panel
Choose a materials collection from the drop down list and pick the one you want to use – remember you can edit 3D materials really easily, which gives you a more or less infinite variety of choices

The Sketchup 3D warehouse is stacked high with exciting extra roofing materials as well as a wide variety of roof components like roof vents and roofing corners, roof panels and roof-mounted AC units, ridge cap cleats, roof insulation, rafters, ceiling waves, roof sheeting and so much more.

Get Started with SketchUp

Now you know all about digital roof material, Sketchup is your first stop for roof drawing excellence. You know exactly how to build a roof in Sketchup, choose unusual and revolutionary roof materials, and manipulate them to create something unique. And you understand how the possibilities for different roof tile Sketchup texture is infinite.

Would you like to try it for yourself? Visit this link to download the free 30 day trial version of Sketchup Pro, and check out a wealth of top class tutorials and resources to help you become a roof design whizz in no time at all.

Tips for 3D Modelling in Furniture Design

Posted on March 09, 2022December 12, 2023 by Charlotte Lee

You design furniture? What an interesting job! Have you heard about Sketchup furniture? It’s wonderfully easy, fast and fun to create furniture in Sketchup, one of the world’s best-respected 2d and 3d design software tools. Sketchup for furniture design makes your life simpler, reducing the risk of mistakes finding their way into the real world and letting you test a variety of ideas without wasting any materials. The best-in-breed 3d furniture modelling software is waiting for you to test-drive for free, so enjoy the ride! Read on to find out all about Sketchup furniture design, including ready-to-use Sketchup furniture models and how to model furniture in Sketchup.

How to Model Furniture in Sketchup

Ask many furniture designers and they’ll recommend you give Sketchup a try. It is, after all, amongst the best cad software for furniture design, coming with all the many benefits of 3d modelling for furniture design. Sketchup furniture is revolutionary.

3D modelling systems like Sketchup let you design furniture in Sketchup fast and simply. You develop designs faster and more accurately than pen and paper. The results are more versatile and can be used to generate blueprints and plans as well as making designs easy to share. You can even output designs for CNC programming from Sketchup for furniture design. It makes prototyping easier, faster and less costly, and lets designers iron out any design issues way before they become real-life problems.

Features, dimensions, spatial relationships and more are easier to understand in 3d with Sketchup furniture design. And digital 3d models in Sketchup can be edited very easily as well as quickly. In a world where few designs are without flaws from the start, it’s so much faster to make changes on 3d models, taking hours rather than weeks to amend a design and all its interdependencies.

So, in short, modelling furniture in Sketchup enables fast design, high accuracy, excellent prototype visualisation and a reliable way to reduce or eliminate wasted time and materials. Thanks to Sketchup furniture models the client finds it easy to examine, understand and sign off the design, and the people who make it have perfect plans to work on.

The Sketchup 3D warehouse adds even more bells and whistles, packed with beautiful ready-made 3d furniture for you to download, use as they are or make them uniquely your own. These alone clearly demonstrate how Sketchup is excellent for 3D furniture modelling and design.

How to model furniture in Sketchup? It’s simple to make accurate furniture plans in Sketchup. How to use furniture plans in Sketchup? Download the plan you want, open it up, and there’s everything you need to build the item, giving you accurate and comprehensive information. Basically, it’s a plan you follow to make the desired object.

The best way to get started? Download the free version of Sketchup and experiment to your heart’s content for a full 7 days.

Furniture Design in Sketchup - 3D Modeling Tips

Now for some essential 3d furniture modelling tips for furniture designers.

You’re worth it. Furniture designers should equip themselves with the best cad software for furniture design, giving you the best chance to do a fabulous job in good time, to budget, 100% accurately
Make sure it’s CAD software that’s easy to use and fun to learn. It’s so much easier to learn a new skill when it’s enjoyable
Don’t forget Sketchup is available in a Free version, a great way to get started with CAD for furniture
Use existing 3d furniture models for reference and save even more time on your next project as well as getting perfect results
Don’t forget to explore the Sketchup 3d warehouse furniture model resources. They will blow your mind
Choose CAD software that provides all of the required 3D modelling capabilities – including stunning photorealistic rendering
Use the abundance of excellent Sketchup Extensions for 3D rendering and lighting – they provide everything you need to extend the functionality of the software in thrilling directions
Keep it simple. Programs like Sketchup are designed to keep things as simple as possible, with no need to struggle – make your furniture models super-simple to start with, then get more complex as you learn more about the way Sketchup works
Bear in mind how Sketchup supports everything from super simple 3d furniture designs to high accuracy, professional production-level designs for mass-manufacture and exclusive one-off designer objects
Always add colour and texture with ‘materials’. They help boost the realism of your designs to an impressive and inspiring degree. Colours, textures and materials are readily available in Sketchup, and they’re awesome. You can replace one material with another, edit the material, and even calculate exactly how much of it you need, all inside Sketchup
Take advantage of internet resources. There’s endless inspiration online, from existing designs going back centuries to brand new innovations about furniture design in Sketchup to inform your work
Sketchup offers a multitude of top class learning resources to help newbies and experienced users get the most out of the tool – check them out and learn all sorts of amazing things to support even better productivity and creativity
YouTube is a superb resource for those of you who like to learn via video

3D Furniture Modeling with Sketchup

Are you ready to give it a go? This is where your furniture design life changes. Now you know all the advantages of Sketchup 3d furniture modelling software it’s very hard to resist. Faster, more accurate work. Infinite creativity supported by loads of added extras. Every learning resource you could possibly need. A 3D Warehouse of 3d designs to delve deep into, saving more time and money. And lots more. Download the free version of Sketchup Pro and experiment for 7 days. Take the brilliant v-ray for Sketchup free trial to discover legendary 3d rendering. And check out a huge choice of tutorials, here and here.

Celebrating International Women’s Day With Our Top 5 Most Refined Female Interior Designers

Posted on March 08, 2022December 16, 2022 by Charlotte Lee

Are you looking for some interiors inspiration this international women’s day?

We’ve put together a list of our favorite female interior designers. The ones who never fail to get our interior creative juices flowing. And here are the names you need to know. Check them out!

Kelly Hoppen is one of greatest interior design inspirations of all times. Her home projects are an unbelievable source of luxury interior design ideas that can motivate you to get great home interiors. Hoppen‘s idea is to give the most personalized and proper interior for the client’s lifestyle. She assures that each interior is tailor-made to their requirement and delivers the best on every aspect. The best thing about Kelly Hoppen’s interiors is the blend of practicality and luxury, resulting in a bespoke design that accentuates the environment.

Liza Rachevskaya Interiors is a design studio focusing on exclusive residential and commercial interior design projects in Moscow and St. Petersburg. They’re a team of successful professionals in the field of architecture, decoration, lighting and textile design. Liza Rachevskaya Interiors offers high-end, timeless projects with signature bold and an elegant classic contemporary style.

Teresa Sapey Studio is a multidisciplinary architectural and design team based in Madrid since 1990. The curiosity to design energic spaces for different sectors is the main motivation for the studio, who is also involved in ephemeral installations, graphic and product design. The intention of projects that are born from a bunch of emotions and feelings is to provoke a reaction/sensation on the users.

Patricia Urquiola was mentored by some of the giants of Italian industrial design such as Achille Castiglioni and Vico Magistretti. She learned her craft in Italy and opened a studio in Milan in 2001. Her designs are unconventional, flexible, and experimental, blending humanist sensibilities and technical expertise—qualities that also inform her work as an architect.

Kelly Wearstler Studio has grown from boutique interior design firm to global lifestyle brand. Driven by the signature aesthetic and idiosyncratic spirit of its creator and namesake, the Los Angeles-based company boasts a diverse range of modalities, taking an all-encompassing approach to design that includes everything from residential and commercial.

Robin Clegg featuring his trusty sidekick in architectural design and render

Posted on March 04, 2022June 13, 2024 by Charlotte Lee

A model for my own living room renovation – I used SketchUp to design and build a frame for a false chimney breast, and communicate my ideas for alcove cabinets to a carpenter to build. This was then brought into SketchUp VR so my partner could view the space in situ. Key to her being able to fully understand the build sequence.

Robin, an Associate at Saunders Architects LLP, a UK Architectural practice with offices in Coventry and Southampton (www.saundersarchitects.co.uk) graduating from Coventry University in 2009, stayed in the city to work at Saunders full time from 2011.

Also juggling fatherhood and personal digital and film photography projects in my spare time, His 5 y.o daughter is becoming more interested in what he does, having been working from home since the start of the Covid pandemic.

Her take on it is that Robin, “builds worlds on the computer.” So much so, that she’s begun modelling simple shapes in SketchUp herself, and making her own designs in Twinmotion. Her discerning eye was integral to our successful competition entry at the end of last year.

A high-rise residential block in London – This was a study in components, repeating and unique, how to create and vary certain components as the floor plate changed with the building height. This was then rendered in Twinmotion.

Competition time

In December last year, SketchUp UK ran a competition for all SketchUp and 3D modelling lovers to create a Santa’s grotto in their very own winder wonderland.

Now we are going to dive in and find out more about Robin’s entry and how it went from Design to Winner.

The cabin was modelled from scratch with windows and chimney borrowed from a 3D Warehouse model. I couldn’t find the right Christmas tree, so this was bespoke modelled.

My daughter had final sign-off on much of this!

For realistic snow drifts and footprints to the cabin door, I started with height maps in Photoshop. Then used Thom Thom’s Bitmap to Mesh plug-in, plus the terrain tools.

As I wanted the finished images to be as photo-real as possible, I had to make the materials work hard. The competition rules didn’t allow for images finished in an external renderer.

The greatest challenge was creating a visual style which best set the mood for the subject matter.

This was a new challenge for me as I normally incorporate some method of external render program into my workflow. So, this is the first time I truly grasped working with backgrounds and watermarks in Styles to create my own custom look.

I did a project in university, which was the first time a lot of the SketchUp tools and workflow clicked and I understood what it could be capable of. I wouldn’t say the finished building looks very good, but the process was much more valuable.

Professionally, the model I’m currently most happy with is currently under construction in Somerset. The model brings together information from the various Sub-contractors, such as steelwork and cladding. This is co-ordinated a central file from which we can assess details in 3D in-situ, and navigate and visualise in VR with the use of SketchUp Viewer for Mobile. We use either Viewer on an iPhone placed in a headset or in AR on a tablet running Android.

My usual workflow begins with 2D linework developed in AutoCAD, depending upon the project and complexity of what is being modelled.

It’s the CAD software I have the most day-to-day experience in and able to draw in most quickly. These layouts are imported into SketchUp for modelling. Groups, components, and layers are used extensively and on every project. Once modelling is largely complete, this is where the workflow will diverge depending upon what type of presentation is needed.

For a photoreal render, basic materials are assigned to the model before importing into an external renderer. We often choose the rendering tool which best serves the desired outcome – Twinmotion for full scenes and Twilight Render for construction details. Rendered outputs are brought into Photoshop for finishing.

If a rough or sketchy presentation is required then most of the finishing is completed within SketchUp using my own style templates, including hand drawn lines created in Style Builder. I’ll combine and overlay exported scenes in post if I can’t get to where I want with styles alone.

My go-to for excellent textures are textures.com, cgbookcase.com, polyhaven.com, and Quixel Megascans.

A competition entry for a café in Cumbria – This required a great deal of fine detail in some places, together with control of UVs for materials. This was then rendered in Twinmotion.

Plug-ins and extensions are so important to my modelling workflow. The more I use them, the more I realise how much quicker I could have modelled something before I knew a certain plug-in was available. I’m so very grateful to all the dedicated members of the SketchUp community who develop and write plug-ins. The ones I can’t live without are: Eneroth’s Face Creator, and Fractal Terrain Eroder; Chris Fullmer’s Simple Loft, Shape Bender, and Scale and Rotate Multiple; Thom Thom’s Bitmap to Mesh; Fredo6’s Round Corner, and Joint Push/Pull; and Dale Martens’ SketchUV.

I’ve only occasionally used LayOut for final presentation of designs. My workflow tends to use SketchUp as the primary modelling platform. From this I move to other software to complete the presentation, be it line drawings, or renders. This works best for me, and I know of others who use LayOut as the primary output for their designs.

A recreation of David Hockney’s A Bigger Splash – Match photo, and fine tuning of furnishings/assets to make the scene believable. This was then rendered in Twinmotion.

I first got going with Google SketchUp 6 in 2007, during the second year of my Architectural Design Technology degree. Talk of a free version of SketchUp went round our course, and I jumped onboard right away.

The tools were simple to use and intuitive and it felt a very natural way to model in 3D. I’d first tried Autodesk Revit version 7 when I did some work experience at an Architect’s practice between college and university, in 2005. That was a slow and steep learning curve; so SketchUp became my go to. I’ve used every version since SketchUp 6.

The unchanged UI simplicity is one of its’ strongest advantages for me. Plug-ins and extensions, the 3D Warehouse, and huge interoperability with other software it makes for a very powerful and underrated tool for architectural design.

SketchUp is much like to how I visualise designs in my head. I tend not to sketch out ideas much; keeping them mostly in my head. I can mentally visualise, construct, deconstruct and move around objects and environments in my mind’s eye, with ease. So, to have a modelling tool with which I can quickly go straight from what’s in my head into a digital space, is great.

To see more of Robin’s work, 3D modelling designs and renders, you can find them on social media here:

So who is Robin?

Our brand new SketchUp top trumps give you a speedy breakdown and the 411 on everything you need to know about Robin…

From where he calls home in the digital design space, to his secret SketchUp power, you’ll find the ins and the outs of his SketchUp Journey here…

If you want to have a personalised SketchUp top trump made for you, email us at marketing@elmtec.co.uk and let’s get the ball rolling!

SketchUp Extensions for Architectural Designers

Posted on March 02, 2022December 12, 2023 by Charlotte Lee

Larch Studio

Architectural design is a complex task, one with countless interdependencies, rules, regulations, health and safety stuff, and a vast choice of building materials and methods to take into account. Imagine doing it all with pen and paper? Nightmare! Thank goodness for CAD software, which takes most of the sting out of the complexity for you, leaving you free to draw, create, present to clients, and output accurate plans with ease. To help you do this there are some great must have Sketchup plugins for architectural designers, created to extend the core tool’s functionality and deliver the potential for infinite creativity.

These Sketchup extensions are your can’t-do-withouts, your key essentials. Read on to discover some of the best Sketchup plugins for architects, available for free through the Sketchup extension Warehouse. Walk this way to find out about the most popular rendering software for Sketchup and lots more. If you’re researching Sketchup for architecture, and how to use extensions in Sketchup, this is for you.

Sketchup Plugins and Extensions

What are Sketchup plugins? Like any other plugins, they’re tools designed to add extra functions and features to your Sketchup life, perhaps making things faster or easier or joining up dots between specific actions. There’s a plugin, for example, that generates and edits secondary support steelwork with all the right fittings, supports, pipes and ducts, and another supporting perfect lofts and skinning, generating surfaces from contours. What are Sketchup extensions? ‘Extension’ is simply Sketchup’s word for Plugins.

They’re the same thing.

Sketchup’s many brilliant plugins are developed by members of the Sketchup community to boost the native Sketchup toolset. While Sketchup Extensions and Plugins mean the same thing to most users there’s a technical difference. An extension includes some extra code that tells Sketchup about the copyright, developer, and description of the extension so that it can be displayed inside the Sketchup Extension Manager. But most people use the terms Plugin and Extension interchangeably when it comes to Sketchup.

What is the Sketchup extension Warehouse? It’s where all the plugins/extensions live, collected together and sensibly organised so you can find what you need easily and fast. Take a look. You’ll see everything from architectural textures to a plugin that renders huge amounts of vegetation in no time, plugins to clean up and optimise your Sketchup models and entire suites of special architect tools. Next, some must have Sketchup plugins.

Sketchup Extensions for Architectural Design

There’s an enormous choice of excellent Sketchup extensions and Sketchup plugins for architects to support various crucial aspects of architectural design. Here are some of the best.

V-Ray for Sketchup – Probably the best Sketchup render plugin, this is known and loved as one of the best 3d rendering tools available. As top class rendering software for Sketchup it delivers fast rendering and includes a set of cool lighting tools for an infinite number of lighting effects, day and night. Visualisation of complex scenes is absolutely fantastic, making it an exceptional way to make successful client presentations.

SketchupBIM – Extends Sketchup capabilities to provide BIM tools in Sketchup, making building information modelling a doddle. You’re effectively using it to turn Sketchup into BIM software and make building models faster.

1001 Bit Tools – A collection of tools designed for creation of several architectural elements, it makes creating roofs, railings, windows, staircases, and overall roof design so much easier.

Instant Roof – is a member of the Vali Plugins collection. They’re all extremely useful for creating a wide variety of architectural elements. This clever plugin focuses on making roofs from selected faces and edges.

Instant Road – Another plugin element from the Vali Plugins collection, this one is designed for creating roads, pathways and waterways on terrains.

PhotoSketch – Lets you build 3D models in existing urban structures using 2D photographs.

Keyframe Animations – Helps you animate Sketchup models.

Affinity –Allows you to make the connection between the model, the spreadsheet and all the underlying data about your building’s requirements.

Timber Frame Rubies – Simplifies the modeling of timber frame designs in 3D.

Joint Push Pull – Performs push pull on multiple faces in one go.

How to Install Sketchup Plugins

How to add extension to Sketchup? It’s good to know installing Sketchup plugins is an easy matter. How to add plugins to Sketchup? They’re much the same as extensions, so the same applies. It’s just as easy as it is to download a file of any other kind. When you access the Extension Warehouse from inside Sketchup you get an install button. If you view it direct from a browser you’ll be offered a download option. As a rule it’s easiest to do from within Sketchup but if you download one manually, all you need to do is follow the usual installation process:

Download the extension you want. It’ll be in a .rbz file format.

In Sketchup, go to Extensions > Extension Manager.

Click the ‘Install Extension’ button.

Navigate to where the .rbz file was downloaded – It’ll be your Download folder, unless you chose a different place.

Install the extension – responding ‘Yes’ to the caution prompt.

Sketchup for Architecture

A core set of functions that achieves absolutely everything you want to do, quickly and efficiently. Masses of extensions for extra functionality. A huge warehouse of free 3d designs to download and use. Endless video tutorials plus non-video learning resources. And there’s a 7 day free Pro trial to enjoy, too. Click here to download it, and here to download the V-ray for Sketchup free rendering trial. There are also masses of tutorials to improve your knowledge and skills even more.

Design an Office Layout in SketchUp

Posted on February 25, 2022June 10, 2024 by Charlotte Lee

This article is for anyone tasked with office layout planning, designing a brand new office or complex of offices. It’s perfect when you want to re-design a dated office layout that doesn’t fit the bill any more. It’s an interior designer’s dream. And it’ll help you re-purpose any shape or size of room into a space that’s a pleasure to work in. It’s also ideal when you’ve been working from home, will be working at home for the foreseeable future, and want to create a better home office layout.

Whatever the reason, If you’ve been researching Sketchup office layout this is your simple guide to how to design an office layout in Sketchup. As you’ll see there are infinite types of office layouts to achieve in Sketchup, and it’s a totally inspiring task.

Using Sketchup for Office Layout Design

Anyone who has worked in an office appreciates why office layout is important. Comfort and efficiency are key to productivity and great corporate communication, which in turn contribute to an enjoyable working day. Sketchup is an unusually powerful, popular and highly intuitive 3d cad interior design software for home and office use. It makes it unusually easy for users to quickly get to grips with creating custom 3D office layouts. The results speak for themselves: beautiful, practical, workable, and super-easy for your stakeholders and end-customer to visualise.

The ever expanding Sketchup 3D warehouse is a fantastic resource for office layout design, free to use and jammed with an abundance of pre-drawn and pre-designed 3D models and collections. Many are perfect for office layout design, ready to use. Plenty of the 3d drawings are of real-life products that you can buy in the shops and online, which gives your designs an even more realistic flavour. You can use a generic office chair design or find one your client loves that they can actually go and order.

Office chairs and ergonomic desks, all sorts of textures, paint finishes and floor coverings. Computers, plants, carpets, waste bins, light fixtures, storage space, shelving, filing cabinets and soft furnishings. You can design every single element of your office in fine detail or pick it from the 3D warehouse ready-made. Then you can use one of Elmtec’s splendid plugins to render your design in a hyper-realistic 3d way that’ll knock the socks off everyone who sees it.

How to Design an Office Layout in Sketchup

Now you know Sketchup is the ideal 3d cad interior design software to draft your office layout ideas and bring professional-quality office design inspiration to life. Next, let’s look at how it’s done. Here’s how you get started with an office layout design in Sketchup.

Draw out your floor plan using the rectangle tool
Adjust the measurements and dimensions to accurately match the office space you’re creating. It’s very easy

Use the offset tool to create the right wall thickness. You can set it to any thickness you like
Use the perspective tool to see the floor layout in 3D, a reliable way to tell if something has gone wrong because you can visualise yourself in the space really easily
Use the push-pull tool to raise your walls to the correct height, and set the height
Use guides to mark where you want the windows to go (you can see why Sketchup is also a cracking tool for architects)
Use the push-pull tool to create the windows to any style you like, creating a more real looking interior
Add doors in the same way
Now for some office furniture. Go to the 3D warehouse and find a suitable 3d model of whatever you need. A desk, a chair, a potted plant, a light…
Download the selected model and find it in your downloads folder – it’ll be a .skp file
In Sketchup go to File>Import
Change the file type to – skp file to see the model you downloaded
Go to your downloads folder (where the model file was downloaded) and select the file
If you need to, scale the 3D furniture model to the required size. Again, it’s an
easy task
Position and articulate your 3D furniture model to create your layout
Repeat this process to add all your office elements including water coolers, standard
lamps, and desk dividers
Once you’ve added all the elements in the office space you can experiment with them, moving them around to create the desired office layout
Bear in mind any rules or regulations around things like the distance between desks or covid social distancing
Depending on the extent of your design role, you can also play around with things like the configuration of the electrical outlets, plumbing for water coolers and coffee machines, and even include computer cabling connectors

Once you’ve done all this and decided on a finished design – or a suite of designs to choose from – the real magic happens. Render your work in 3d and it springs to sparkling life. Add a VR headset and it’s even more hyper-real, an experience that makes good design decisions easier than they’ve ever been in the history of design. You’ve created a realistic 3D rendering of an office interior, and it’s brilliant.

SketchUp Guide for Office Layout Design

Using Sketchup for office design is a joy, a pleasure, a creative journey of discovery. It’s also a reliable, flexible and practical way to make designs that work perfectly in the real world. Would you like to give our free 7 day Sketchup trial download a go? You can also try the v-ray plugin for hyper-real 3d rendering on a trial basis for free, here. And Sketchup comes with a multitude of learning resources and tutorials to help you get where you want to be even faster. You’re on route to office layout planning success.

Top Sketchup Projects for Students

Posted on February 23, 2022June 13, 2024 by Charlotte Lee

As a student, you’re keen to learn all about the magic CAD, Computer Aided Design. You’re going to leap straight into Elmtec Sketchup Student, one of the planet’s best-loved software packages for designing almost everything with stunning realism. You need some exciting free student Sketchup projects to play with! This handy article reveals how to download Sketchup for students, revealing some Sketchup projects for students that’ll get you going and inspire you to do greater things. Read on for Sketchup projects for students, Sketchup projects for junior school, and Sketchup student projects for high school. This is your Sketchup free for schools guide.

How to Download Sketchup for Students

Your first task is to download Sketchup Pro Free for students. You’ll need a Sketchup for schools licence and subscription, and there are several Sketchup licensing options for educational use.

Student subscription
Educator subscription
Educational networked lab licence.
Educational private server lab licence
Sketchup Studio for Universities

The Sketchup free download for students is designed especially for students. It lets students bring their ideas to life, taking designs from the classroom into the real world. To qualify you must be a current student at an accredited educational institution, like a college or university. You’ll need to provide proof that you’re a student, for example a letter of enrolment or a copy of your student ID.

The subscription for SketchUp Studio for Students expires a year from the date you started it, and you are allowed to install it on both your desktop and laptop. The only thing is, you can’t use the free student Sketchup licence for work you get paid for.

If that sounds good, you can download your free 7 day trial here.

Sketchup Projects for Students

Sketchup for Schools is a browser-based SketchUp version for Primary and Secondary schools. You’ll need to be signed up with G Suite for Education or Microsoft Education to use it for easy Sketchup projects. It’s actually the core SketchUp modeller, fully integrated with Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive. It works on Chromebooks as well as any other type of internet-connected machine. And you’ll love the cool Sketchup projects for students, a large collection of inspiring resources, many of which are free to use.

There are resources and Sketchup activities for students at all levels, from primary school and secondary school to further and higher education. The projects are classified into levels of difficulty, from beginner to intermediate and advanced. The modelling classes cover everything from 3D modelling for maths class to 3d maps in geography class, building a birdhouse to set designs for theatre classes, logos and name tags. There’s something for everyone and the tutorials are super-easy to follow, making the whole experience satisfying and exciting for young people.

Sketchup Projects for Junior School

How about beginner Sketchup for junior school classes? Younger kids love to learn to model fun things like a cell for their science class or a playground design. The software is wonderfully easy to learn, enabling children to achieve thrilling results quickly and enjoyably. There’s brilliant 3D Modelling for Geometry, a custom castle to build, and Introductory tutorials into things like 3d printing.

Using free Sketchup projects makes it simple to create a box with round edges representing a box of breakfast cereal. You can go design your own gingerbread house in Sketchup or design your own tortoise sandbox. Kids can even get to grips with designing an awesome pirate ship playhouse.

Sketchup Projects for High School

Turn up the age dial and there’s more for older children to discover. Sketchup free for schools supports every educational level with appropriate learning resources, offering many excellent projects for secondary school and high school students. Intermediate and advanced projects from the Sketchup for Schools curriculum include modelling a classroom, 3D Maps in Sketchup, a playground design project, and a retail outlet in the form of Mike’s Malt Shop.

Each project delivers everything the student needs to complete the project, expressed in a practical, imaginative way that makes the end result easy to understand and achieve. Because of this students get confident in Sketchup fast, quickly able to try other projects and eventually make their own way around the software, creating unique designs by themselves.

Sketchup Projects for Students

Every child can enjoy Sketchup – and they do, having been brought up in a digital world from birth. Starting with a beginner’s project is a great way to steadily build confidence. Taking Sketchup skills with them from junior school through senior school to further or higher education puts young people in an excellent position, possessing a skill that comes into play in a multitude of different career paths and hobbies.

To download a free copy of Sketchup Pro to play with, click here. To test drive the brilliant v-ray for Sketchup free trial, which renders designs in remarkably hyper-real detail, click here. We also have a wealth of learning resources and tutorials for advanced young users to extend their skills even further.

3D Modelling Bespoke Furniture Creation With Derek Barrett

Posted on February 18, 2022December 16, 2022 by Charlotte Lee

Hey, I’m Derek, back in 2007 I was shown SketchUp by a friend. I was taught the basics and still keep it that way for my clients. I mainly draw in 2d and pull to life. All to scale so I can pull my measurements off drawing.

I find this way super easy and isn’t as technical as Grouping, Components etc. I find People can pick this way up fast and make it pay the bills.

My favourite feature is the Video/scene function. Clients are usually blown away when I send them an MP4.

Having graduated from University with a BA Hons in Furniture Design and Craftsmanship in High Wycombe back in 2006, I went on to gain many years of experience in the cabinet making industry both in Ireland and the UK.

I have been passionately providing individually designed and hand-crafted furniture of the highest quality for my customers homes, offices and commercial interiors.

From my beginning my goal has been to deliver excellent design, quality craftsmanship and outstanding value.

How important is this feature for your work?

Very Important for what I do and I can’t imagine doing it any other way as it’s so simple to use and gives my clients a great visual of what they are getting.

I mainly draw the design discussed with my customers and add measurements to scale the initial model with SketchUp or by hand. Once the customer is happy with the 3D model on SketchUp, I then send out to my team to do all the cutlisitsm, in otfer to do this my team only need basic measurements.

All the projects we create are so different. I have so many I am proud of but I did a massive walk in wardrobe last year that had a nice bit of detail, showing my customer this model on SketchUp was great as I was able to give a real representation of the end product in 3D.

To see more of Derek’s work, 3D modelling designs and renders, you can find them on social media here: