Spiral staircases are beautiful as well as practical, but they’re also very complex structures. Are you researching how to draw a SketchUp spiral staircase? Here’s everything you need to create a beautiful spiral staircase in SketchUp in a number of ways, made simple to inspire you. Read on to become fluent in the creation of spiral staircase drawings.
Creating a Spiral Staircase in SketchUp
There are several ways of drawing a spiral staircase in SketchUp. The simplest of all is to head over to the brilliant SketchUp 3D Warehouse and pick out a ready-made design. There are a number of spiral staircase choices for you, including one with a full transparent handrail, one with no handrail at all, and one with a full opaque handrail. But what if you want to get creative and draw something unique? Next, we’ll look at the other spiral staircase techniques you might like to get under your belt.
Drawing a Spiral Staircase in SketchUp Step by Step
Here’s a step-by-step guide to the basic process of drawing a spiral staircase in SketchUp:
Create a circle.
Choose the number of sides your circle should have, which simply defines the number of steps you need.
Bear in mind that in this case, the radius is the width of the stairs.
Create a segment with lines leading to two points on the radius.
Delete all of the circle except this segment you’ve made, which represents one step on your staircase.
Give this wedge shape depth to represent the thickness of the steps.
Make this into a SketchUp Component.
For a 12 step spiral, create a series of 11 copies of your wedge. For staircases with different numbers of steps, adjust the number of copy wedges you make.
Now, move and copy the wedge to recreate the layer 11 times.
Shift-click to select each steps in the spiral staircase.
Hold ‘Shift’ and drag a box around the whole stack of wedges to deselect your previously selected wedges and select the remainder, the unwanted ones.
Hit delete and all but the steps you want disappear, leaving you with a set of basic spiral steps.
You can go back through the process to retrace your actions, adjusting things like the spacing between each step, the number of steps, their dimensions and so on.
Because you created a defined component early on, it’s a simple matter to add a handrail.
Spiral Staircase with a Central Void
It’s just as easy to adapt these basic steps and create spiral stairs around a circular central void, and the process you go through is much the same:
Start by creating two nested circles around the same centre.
The outer circle represents the full diameter of your spiral and the inner circle is the diameter of the central void.
As before, make wedge shapes and delete all of them except the shape you want to keep.
Turn your finished wedge into a SketchUp component and copy it until you’ve got the number of steps you want.
Copy and stack the layers to make the steps then select the actual steps in the stack.
Select the whole design, which deselects the required steps.
Press delete to remove all the steps except the ones you want
Spiral Staircase Using ‘Memory Copy’ Extension
How about using the Memory Copy extension to make a spiral staircase in SketchUp? Bear in mind the memory copy extension is simply used to repeat copy operations. The process is much the same as the step by step method we’ve showed you:
Create your SketchUp component for one step.
Carry out one copy operation.
Click ‘play it again’ to repeat the copy operation for each step.
All you’re doing is repeating the operation performed on this step component. And as before, since your steps are components, it’s really easy to add handrails.
Spiral Staircase Using ‘1001Bit Tools’ Extension
If you want to draw spiral stairs super-simply, you’ll enjoy the 1001Bit Tools extension. It’s basically a SketchUp spiral staircase plugin that includes a built-in spiral staircase option. All you do is Select ‘Create Spiral Staircase’, then enter the details and it does all the work for you. That’s it! The spiral staircase plugin extension supports a variety of common spiral staircase designs, so it’s extremely flexible as well as fast.
Today we at SketchUp and Elmtec (SketchUp’s UK + IE Distribution partner) would like to wish the inspiring legend himself Jean-Louis Deniot a very happy birthday, and celebrate what an incredible designer he is…
*Brings out a 57 Story Building 3D rendered cake with 46 candles to blow out*
While celebrating Jean-Louis’ birthday and wonderful creations, we have also been following his secrets and have pulled together some legendary advice he’s given…
So, in the birthday spirit, it’s time to share those with you…
In this 8-minute digital read, we are going to show you how Jean-Louis has remained so incredibly successful, and how to future-proof your design business as the world begins to change…
The world is changing; people are moving 3x more in their lifetime compared to 20 years ago, so the need for designers to adapt their designs and ideas to this ideology has never been more important.
As the birthday boy says:
“Populations are going to move and live in the future in many different locations, many different countries, moving systematically in smaller spaces to benefit from spending money mostly on restaurants, trips, fashion, and fewer collector home goods.
So interior design needs to adapt and ease this transition: the practicality of moving fast without dragging tons of personal things… The Future is in the editing!
Fewer pieces, with a personalised design to make it your own, and easy to pack, so that the move does not become an obstacle because of all the pieces one has”.
With that interpretation, it is apparent every designer, artist and architect must adapt their awareness in order to preserve the industry and make it grow!
So, in order to not be left behind like a lost sheep, and follow the trends set by a multi-award-winning designer…
You’ll need to consider and gather information on these 3 elements of your client’s vision…
Location:
Every place in the world is unique, and therefore, needs its own style and design, Jean-Louis has projects all over the world, creating an individual masterpiece, perfectly fitted for every location.
Person:
Jean-Louis is not a minimalist, neither does he go overboard, but with a finely developed balance of osmosis between refinement, comfort and openness, he is able to complete a design based on the person he is designing for, a spirit design of the client. Reflecting their vision, personality and needs, all wrapped into one.
Purpose/Time:
The objective of the design must meet the end product, Why do they want to do it? What will it be used for?
By encompassing these elements, a designer can be well on their way to achieving greatness like Jean-Louis, designing private homes in Beverly Hills, country homes in Moscow or 57 story residential towers in Miami…
Giving people the blow away design they wanted, exceeding expectations, going above and beyond.
So, if we could potentially support you in bringing these designs to life in a flexible and user-friendly setting, would it be unreasonable to give you some more information on it?
V-ray – a fantastic rendering extension, is a simple to use, flexible plugin for SketchUp Pro, which will transform materials and hard to explain surfaces into photorealistic renders…
Enabling every designer to communicate their out of this world designs and create their very own labour of love masterpieces to blow every client away with…
If Jean-Louis’ legacy has resonated with you today, you can book a free V-Ray Design Start Up Session with one of our team to see if the future fit design software can support you in achieving your goals like Jean-Louis is doing, making thousands of people’s dreams come to life.
You want to enrich your models with extra detail and realism, to help your clients understand and get inspired by your work. SketchUp lets you easily paint a huge variety of different materials on the faces of objects. These materials behave a lot like paints, with a colour and optional texture all defined in a simple image file. You might want to choose red roof tiles or a metallic roof, an oatmeal coloured carpet or slate tiles. This guide reveals everything you need to know about adding materials in SketchUp.
What are SketchUp Materials?
How to use materials in SketchUp? It’s genuinely exciting, adding so much extra interest to a design and making it unique. After you’ve applied various materials to your model, there’s so much more you can do.
You can easily replace one material with another, for example replacing grass with pebbles in no time, in just a few clicks. You can edit the materials if you like, creating something nobody else uses. The colour and texture code is separate, which means you can change the colour and leave the texture as it is, change the texture but leave the colour alone, or change them both. The resulting materials can be more or less infinite in variety.
It’s also easy to play with the opacity of the material, from completely see-through to totally opaque. SketchUp even calculates exactly how much of a chosen material you’d need in real life to actually build the model. It reveals the area of the roof or siding to match your precise model perfectly. You’ll find an enormous SketchUp materials collection waiting for you in the SketchUp materials warehouse. All you do is add imagination and stir in some creativity.
Where to Find SketchUp Materials.
Where are SketchUp textures stored? You’ll find them in the SketchUp 3D Warehouse, an inspirational resource that adds so much extra potential to your modeling. Instead of having to download an entire bulky component,all you do is download the material itself. Here’s how:
Open the model material’s Details page
Find the Stats panel
Click the Materials link for a list of materials, each with a short description
Click the Download link
If you arrived in the 3D Warehouse from SketchUp 2017 itself, the system will automatically retrieve your Material and activate the paint bucket tool ready for you to use
If you arrived at the 3D Warehouse via a browser, an .SKM file downloads automatically, which you simply add to the relevant local content folder
So how are materials used in SketchUp? You can achieve the exact same amazing effects in Windows and in MacOS. The SketchUp interface lets you model materials using the Paint Bucket tool and Materials panel if you’re using Windows. On a Mac it’s the Colors panel. The Materials or Colors panel also lets you view, manage, and organize your materials as you wish, and it even lets you keep track of the materials in your model. This is the place where you make your own custom materials.
Some people like to switch between Windows and Mac machines. If that’s you, bear in mind the Materials and Colors panel interfaces are different on each operating system.
So how do you download more materials for SketchUp? Again, it’s a simple process. Open the details page of the model where you want to download material from. Click ‘Materials’ in the Stats panel. Find the material you want then click ‘download.
Once you’ve done that it’s incredibly easy to apply materials to your model using the paint bucket tool.
On a Windows PC: Find the paint bucket tool either in the Getting Started, Large Tool Set, or Principal toolbar, or in the menu bar under tools-paint bucket. Select the tool. Open the materials panel, then choose a collection of materials and click on the material you want to use
On a Mac: Find the paint bucket tool in the Large Tool Set toolbar, the tool palette, or in tools-paint bucket. Select the paint bucket and a colors panel appears. Choose a colour using one of four colour picker tabs or use the materials collections. Choose the materials collection you want to use, then click the particular material you want to apply to your model
You can click and drag material swatches around your design, applying it to faces, and it’s also really easy to swap one material for another.
SketchUp Architectural Materials
SketchUp materials have a huge positive impact in the context of architectural design. There’s a vast choice of building materials available including handrails and wooden doors, lighting, elevators and staircases, furniture for every imaginable room, roofing and flooring materials, grasses and plants, flowers and trees. All of these make it so much easier for your clients to visualise your models clearly in a way that’s as inspiring as it is accurate and realistic.
Material textures really bring architectural designs to life, too. Choose from a vast range of brick textures, stone, concrete, glass and more, all high resolution and superb quality. You can even add fine detailing like peeling paint, moss and ivy, adding atmosphere and personality as well as making your models look like they’re worn by time and weather.
It’s super-easy to create lush colours as well, easily changing the colour of a material. Click the Paint Bucket tool, choose the colour, then click to paint the face. You can double click on the colour and change it in an external editor if you like, saving the new image before importing it. To change all instances of a colour, double click on the colour to bring it up in a colour window. From here you can use a slider, a colour wheel and various other tools to change the darkness without restoring to the paint bucket.
All this and more is easily available for you to manipulate, change, and play with to create your own unique look. The SketchUp materials list includes wood, glass, tiles, stone and many others, all designed to make the architectural design process easier, faster, and a whole lot more creative.
SketchUp determines how much of a specific material you need to build the design in real life accurately, but obviously, you need to make sure your model is 100% accurate in the first place, created to the correct scale. This is another big benefit for the architectural design process. One of the simplest ways is to right click on a material in the model browser then pick ‘area’ to get the total area of a specific material in the model.You can also use an extension like CutList to make a report including both the quantities and the total length of any components, or select a component, use Entity Info to provide the total number of instances of the material, and manually multiply that by the component length.
Do you use a certain SketchUp tool or set of tools regularly? Whether you use thefree or pro version, you can look up the relevant SketchUp shortcut keys andget where you want to be much faster. You can even add and edit keyboard shortcuts of your own. This guide reveals everything about shortcuts in SketchUp, from why they’re a good idea to how to create and edit them. We’ve even included a SketchUp shortcut list for Mac and the same for a PC, with specific SketchUp shortcuts for Windows. By the end of this guide you’ll be comfortable using SketchUp keyboard shortcuts fluently. Read on for essential insight.
What are SketchUp shortcut keys?
SketchUp does a lot of the work for you, thanks to its predefined list of default keyboard shortcuts. Shift-Z, for example, takes you directly to Zoom Extends, S is Scale, and E is the Eraser. SketchUp also lets you create custom shortcuts as well as edit the existing ones. This means you can easily configure the software in exactly the way you want it. The magic happens inside the LayOut Preferences dialogue box, it takesjust a few simple steps to set a new one up, and they’re equally easy to edit.
Why use SketchUp shortcuts?
It is so much faster to work in SketchUp using SketchUp tool shortcuts, which are also called hotkeys, quick keys or commands. Shortcuts in SketchUp make your user interface cleaner, giving you a lot more screen space to work in. Use your SketchUp shortcut keys as they were intended, achieving full efficiency, and you can do cool time-saving things like avoiding toolbars and menus altogether, diving directly to the place you need to be.
The more fluent in SketchUp tool shortcuts you become, the less you’ll need to rely on the standard menu, only using it to drive any plugins that can’t easily be allied to a shortcut. When you make your own custom shortcuts you can shave even more time off modeling projects, bringing your bright ideas to reality faster and more efficiently than ever. If you’d like to double your speed, this is exactly how to do it.
How to Create and Edit SketchUp Keyboard Shortcut Keys
So we know SketchUp enables hotkeys to be edited as well as created from scratch. How does it work? To create your own SketchUp shortcuts list takes just a few simple steps:
Choose Edit > Preferences in Windows or LayOut > Preferences on a Mac to surface the LayOut Preferences dialog box.
Click ‘Shortcuts’ in the sidebar to your left.
Type the command you want into the Filter box at the top of the dialog box. You can also explore the whole list via the main list box.
Use the list box to choose the command you want to assign a shortcut to.
Find the text box below the list of commands and click the shortcut you want to assign to it. On a Mac you’ll see your new shortcut in the Key column of the list box. Now you can move on to step 7. For Microsoft Windows, go to Step 6. Don’t click on ‘enter’ or you’ll lose the value you specified.
Click the + button to create your new keyboard shortcut, which appears in your Shortcuts column in the list box. Click ‘close’ when you’ve finished assigning new shortcuts. To remove one, select it and hit the – key in Windows, or delete it from the text box if you’re using a Mac .
Defining your own custom shortcut keys puts you in total control of the unique way you work, giving you a super-fast way to carry out the actions you make frequently. They’re easy to remember. You won’t have to keep moving your cursor away from the thing you’re drawing all the time, and you don’t have to stop work to remember where your most popular tools are.
MacOS SketchUp Shortcut Keys
It’s great to know that SketchUp comes with a bunch of brilliant predefined, built in, default shortcuts designed specifically for a Mac. This is a list of the most frequently-used SketchUp shortcuts for Mac:
2 point arc tool
Circle tool
Circle tool – lock current inferences
Eraser tool
Eraser tool – soften or smooth (use on edges to make adjacent faces appear curved)
Eraser tool – hide
Eraser tool – unsoften or unsmooth
Line tool
Line tool – lock in current inference direction
Line tool – lock direction
Move tool
Move tool – move a copy
Move tool – hold down to lock in current inference direction
Move tool – auto-fold (allow move even if it means adding extra edges and faces)
Move tool – lock direction
Offset tool
Orbit tool
Orbit tool – disable ‘gravity-weighted’ orbiting
Orbit tool – activate pan tool
Paint bucket tool
Paint bucket tool – fill material, paint all matching adjacent faces
Paint bucket tool – replace material, paint all matching faces in the model
Paint bucket tool – replace material on object, paint all matching faces on same object
Paint bucket tool – sample material
Push and pull tool
Push and pull tool – push or pull a copy of the face, leaving original in place
Rectangle tool
Rectangle tool – start drawing from center
Rotate tool
Rotate tool – rotate a copy
Scale tool
Scale tool – scale about center
Scale tool – scale uniformly, don’t distort
Select tool
Select tool – add to selection
Select tool – add or subtract from selection
Select tool – subtract from selection
Tape measure tool
Tape measure tool – toggle create guide or measure only
Tape measure tool – lock direction
Zoom tool
Zoom tool – combine with click-drag mouse to change field of view
A
C
Shift + C
E
Alt+E
Shift+E
Alt+Shift+E
L
Shift+L
(Arrows)+L
M
Alt+M
Shift+M
Cmd+M
(arrows)+M
F
O
Alt+O
Shift+O
B
Alt+B
Shift+B
Alt+Shift+B
Cmd+B
P
Alt+P
R
Alt+R
Q
Alt+Q
S
Alt+S
Shift+S
Space
Alt +Space
Shift
Alt+Shift+Space
T
Alt+T
(Arrows)+T
Z
Shift+Z
These are the most-used SketchUp keyboard shortcuts for a Mac, but when you create and assign your own, you really take things to the next level.
Windows SketchUp Shortcut Keys
SketchUp also comes with a long and exciting default list of Windows shortcuts. Here are the most commonly used SketchUp shortcuts for Windows:
2 point arc tool
Circle tool
Circle tool – lock current inferences
Eraser tool
Eraser tool – soften or smooth (use on edges to make adjacent faces appear curved)
Eraser tool – hide
Eraser tool – unsoften or unsmooth
Line tool
Line tool – lock in current inference direction
Line tool – lock direction
Move tool
Move tool – move a copy
Move tool – hold down to lock in current inference direction
Move tool – auto-fold (allow move even if it means adding extra edges and faces)
Move tool – lock direction
Offset tool
Orbit tool
Orbit tool – disable ‘gravity-weighted’ orbiting
Orbit tool – activate pan tool
Paint bucket tool
Paint bucket tool – fill material, paint all matching adjacent faces
Paint bucket tool – replace material, paint all matching faces in the model
Paint bucket tool – replace material on object, paint all matching faces on same object
Paint bucket tool – sample material
Push and pull tool
Push and pull tool – push or pull a copy of the face, leaving original in place
Rectangle tool
Rectangle tool – start drawing from center
Rotate tool
Rotate tool – rotate a copy
Scale tool
Scale tool – scale about center
Scale tool – scale uniformly, don’t distort
Select tool
Select tool – add to selection
Select tool – add or subtract from selection
Select tool – subtract from selection
Tape measure tool
Tape measure tool – toggle create guide or measure only
Tape measure tool – lock direction
Zoom tool
Zoom tool – combine with click-drag mouse to change field of view
A
C
Shift+C
E
Alt+E
Shift+E
Alt+Shift+E
L
Shift+L
(arrows)+L
M
Alt+M
Shift+M
Ctrl+M
(arrows)+M
F
O
Alt+O
Shift+O
B
Alt+B
Shift+B
Alt+Shift+B
Ctrl+B
P
Alt+P
R
Alt+R
Q
Alt+Q
S
Alt+S
Shift+S
Space
Alt+Space
Shift
Alt+Shift+Space
T
Alt+T
(Arrows)+T
Z
Shift+Z
Get started with SketchUp
SketchUp shortcut keys make it so much easier and faster to create sheer brilliance!Click here to download a free trial version of SketchUp and give it a go for yourself and enjoy a full 7 days using the world’s best visualisation and modelling tool. There are also masses of top class learning resources available, including tutorials to help you get familiar with the software in record time,here.
SketchUp is one of the simplest and most effective 3D modeling software tools on the planet, and SketchUp plugins are designed to let you do more exciting things even faster and easier. They’re used for everything from making an instant roof to adding beautiful, realistic trees to your design, and there’s a vast collection to tap into. Here are some of the most popular SketchUp plugins, free download treats, and paid-for tools designed to help you create ‘extraordinary’.
What are Sketchup Plugins?
SketchUp is one of the world’s most popular 3D modeling tools, with its user-friendly interface and intuitive processes, its free and pro versions. Once you’ve mastered the basics, you might want to start exploring ways to boost your SketchUp skills. And that’s where plugins and SketchUp extensions come in, created by users to make life even simpler. They enhance the software’s already excellent default tools to deliver faster, better results and save you plenty of valuable time, especially on those basic repetitive tasks you find yourself doing again and again. All you do is enter the data for a SketchUp plugin to do its magic.
So what is the difference between SketchUp plugins and extensions? Extensions are registered plugins, containing extra code to let you to turn them on and off under ‘Preferences’ inside the Extensions menu. A plugin doesn’t need to be approved to become an extension, it just needs to comply with internal requirements.
You’ll find a treasure trove of brilliant SketchUp plugins at the SketchUp Extension Warehouse. In the meantime, let’s take a look at 15 of the best SketchUp extensions.
How to Use Sketchup Extensions
The Extension Warehouse and SketchUp work together seamlessly. Most of the time, all you do to add an extension to your local version of SketchUp is click the install button on the extension details page. There are a couple of things to remember. One, you need to access the Extension Warehouse from SketchUp rather than via your browser, and two the extension needs to be free. Many extensions in the Warehouse are free but some developers charge for their work. Look out for an ‘Install Trial’ button or a button to press to purchase. Either way it’s as easy as pie. Once you’ve installed your extension or plugin, you can use it directly from SketchUp.
Best SketchUp Plugins for Architects
Here are some of the best SketchUp plugins for architects, just a small selection from a huge collection of exciting, life-changing tools to take your work to the next level.
Curviloft
The Curviloft extension is dedicated to lofts and skinning, quickly generating surfaces from contours. The Loft by Spline element joins separate contours, either open or closed, using smooth splines. The Loft along Path tool joins contours together along a given rail curve. And Skinning creates superb surfaces with boundaries made up of 3 or 4 contours next to each other. Because there are so many complex solutions needed to calculate Loft and Skinning geometries, Curviloft SketchUp gives you the choices you need to adjust the parameters according to the configuration of your contours, generating a total of nine essential modeling options from a basic set of curved lines.
1001Bit Tools
The 1001Bit Tools extension helps you to create amazing 3D staircases, escalators, walls, doors and windows, even self-generated roof rafters. All you do is use a few mouse clicks to deliver them in perfect 3D. This makes analysing the shadows from a building, the exposure to the sky, and how long a point remains in shadow really easy and quick. Each tool simply involves putting your parameters and dimensions into custom designed dialogues for excellent dimensional flexibility, supported by a .txt database for calling up proprietary and standard model profiles and settings.
Artisan
The Artisan extension is packed with powerful architect modeling tools designed to let you create all sorts of accurate images in 3D, including the terrain itself, furniture, people, sculptures, fabric, rocks and plants.
3D Tree Maker
The 3D Tree Maker speaks for itself, allowing you to add extremely convincing greenery to your work. You’ll find it simple to make 3D trees and include them in your model, and there are lots of predefined trees and plants to choose from. You can create grass and flower beds, using fully customisable parameters to make changes via the configuration window. You use skeleton proxies – also called ghosts – to reduce the tree size while you’re working on other aspects of the design, then switch to high poly 3D for your final render. It’s easy to generate random new trees and save your parameters as handy new tree templates.
Instant Roof
Instant Roof does exactly what it says, creating beautiful roofs in an instant. Whatever you want to add, it happens in a few clicks, whether it’s full framing, beam ends, corbels, Greek returns, various rafter styles, all sorts of different shingles, tiles, take-offs and more, potentially saving you a great deal of time. The results are extraordinarily good.
[h2] Sketchup Plugins for Modelling
At its heart Sketchup Pro is all about top class 3D modelling. There are countless really good plugins or extensions that enhance Sketchup 3D’s already remarkable modeling capabilities. Let’s take a look at some of the most popular and widely used 3D modeling plugins.
Joint Push/Pull
The Joint Push/Pull plugin gives you a wealth of exciting options for extruding surfaces, one of the most popular being extruding multiple surfaces in parallel. It’s a simple matter to make complex shapes fast, and the extension also contains push-pull tools like Round Push/Pull, Vector Push/Pull, and more.
Fredoscale
What can be achieved with the Fredoscale extension? FredoScale is actually a set of tools used to deform geometry in a variety of ways. You benefit from better scaling, tapering and stretching. You can also twist and bend like a pro, shear, stretch, and radially bend objects with ease and confidence.
Shape Bender
So much can be achieved with the Shape Bender SketchUp extension. In a nutshell, it takes any 3D object from your model and bends or stretches it along a path you’ve pre-drawn then selected. It’s unbelievably powerful, letting you create and bend linear objects into beautiful, curving shapes in just a few clicks.
Laubwerk
Laubwerk SketchUp offers another wonderfully intuitive method for creating 3D landscapes, gardens and exteriors, a great way to make unusually realistic plants. You can easily adjust the shape, age, season and level of detail of each plant. There’s a choice of kits containing 10 different plants, each with 36 different variations for endless variety. The images are of superb quality thanks to the high-poly leaf photographs used to create the tool.
Clothworks
The Clothworks SketchUp extension does what you’d expect from the name – it lets you make outstanding cloth simulations to drape across objects in your design, including table cloths and curtains, bedding and flags, all uncannily lifelike. The tool realistically simulates the way cloth works and interacts with 3D objects.
Best Free SketchUp Plugins
Many of the plugins available for SketchUp are free or have free versions for you to play with, including Shape Bender. Next, we’re going to highlight a handful of the best free SketchUp plugins.
Round Corner Tool
The Round Corner Tool extension carries out a task that has, in the past, been surprisingly challenging. It performs the rounding of the edges and corners of 3D shapes for you, along a 2D profile, in 3 modes, either round corners, sharp corners or bevelled corners. Your corners can have 3 or more edges. It can also create concave corners, which are always rendered as round.
Front Face Tool
The Front Face Tool extension accurately reverses faces so they’re orientated without affecting your forward facing faces, designed to save you a lot of valuable time. Imagine a face is facing backwards. Usually, you’d need to select it, right click, and pick ‘reverse faces’. This can take ages when your object is complicated, involving multiple polygons, but this tool makes easy work of it.
Solid Inspector
The Solid Inspector extension tool lets you inspect modelled or imported objects for errors, the kind of mistakes that end up lagging, crashing or corrupting your SketchUp file. It cleverly mends what can be mended then tells you what you need to do to fix the rest.
Mirror
The Mirror extension replaces all the copying, rotating, shifting, and flipping you’d otherwise need to do when creating a mirror. Thanks to this tool you can make perfect mirrors in no time, every time.
Keyshot
The exceptional Keyshot rendering extension lets you make photorealistic images of 3D models. All you do is import your data into KeyShot, assign the materials, change the lighting and move the camera to render. This is widely recognised as the world’s best rendering software and comes complete with real-time ray-tracing, drag and drop materials, procedurals, textures, interactive labelling, HDRI lighting and physical lighting, a wealth of colours, part and camera animation, focused caustics, an HDR editor, import 40+ 3D formats and its own 3D modeling plugins.
Best Essential SketchUp Plugins and Extensions
This article has covered just a few of the zillions of fantastic SketchUp plugins and extensions available to users, a bank of remarkable tools to help you create excellence every step of the way. Why not take a look at SketchUp’s wide choice ofresources and tutorials? You can explore the magic of SketchUp Pro here.
In your world, as an architect, 3D architectural visualisation software can make all the difference between a project that’s approved quickly and ticks all the boxes and potentially expensive, time-consuming client rejections. In your context, the SketchUp architectural visualiser delivers all the functionality, tools and extras you could possibly need to create outstanding drawings… and more, thanks to a huge, constantly growing library of wonderful extensions and plugins. Here’s what you need to know about brilliant interior and exterior visualisation the SketchUp way.
What is Architectural Visualisation?
What is 3D architectural visualisation? This style of visualisation is vital for every successful interior designer 3d visualiser and everyone who wants to make a great job of property 3d visualisation. Architectural visualisation software involves the process of creating digital models of structures, buildings, and spaces clearly and accurately, with a creative edge, in a way that lets clients and colleagues instantly understand what’s going on. The resulting 3D renders are used for everything from virtual reality property tours to the extremely accurate verifiable views often used for planning applications. High quality architectural visualisation software tools allow all this to happen smoothly, quickly and simply, making it an essential tool in every architect’s box.
3D Architectural Visualisation
Building visualisation for architects demands top class 3D architectural design and visualisation capabilities, and that’s exactly what SketchUp is all about. It makes visualisation surprisingly easy, for a start, and that means you save time and money. It presents a reliably brilliant way to create engaging animations and beautiful, realistic walk-throughs. Whether it’s schematic design or construction documentation, the results are always inspiring.
This is 3d architectural visualisation software at its finest. You can draw anything you like quickly and efficiently, and the design-build process includes help every step of the way to support problem shooting, getting your project to the construction stage fast without issues. It creates fabulous 2D output as well as 3D output, and the output is always reliably accurate. And it helps you impress clients with AR, VR architectural visualisation, extremely high-quality images, and video content that reveals every single variation, every single fine detail.
Architectural Visualisation Process with SketchUp
You should find the entire architectural visualisation process intuitive, a pleasure to use from end to end and endlessly flexible. SketchUp’s legendary architectural visualisation techniques let you factor in a wealth of detail from the start, including drawings, sketches, 3D models, the number of images needed, the delivery date and more. There are masses of useful plugins and extensions too, designed to make your life even easier and the creative process even more enjoyable.
You can pin down the point of view, fixing viewpoints with the client using a collection of low-resolution images. You can specify and confirm the materials, the lighting and even the atmosphere, using renders to quickly make decisions with previews included in the process. The final rendering, in high resolution, is perfect for clients, seamlessly representing everything they’ve specified and agreed in an easy-to-understand and extremely attractive way.
Building Visualisation with SketchUp
SketchUp’s 3D design and visualisation capabilities are invaluable when used to design buildings, supporting you from the idea stage right through to the build. You visualise quickly and intuitively. You communicate your vision in sophisticated ways that drive faster, better client buy-in, with fewer issues to iron out. The documents created are colourful, accessible, and wonderfully collaborative. No re-drawing of plans, just a beautiful 3D model that you can transform to 2D in seconds thanks to LayOut. Plans and elevations, sections and build details, it’s all there, all clear and easy to understand. And if your model changes, so do the construction documents.
SketchUp is a winner where interior design and visualisation is concerned too, an amazing way to bring your ideas to stunning life. There’s no need to model from scratch thanks to hundreds of thousands of 3D models of real products, free from the SketchUp 3D Warehouse, many from household-name manufacturers and brands. The software produces truly beautiful renderings and supports powerful sales and marketing. No wonder it’s used to 3D model absolutely anything that could possibly be needed for a great architectural design, from shapes and objects to building features, bowls, spheres, cones and polyhedrons, the list goes on.
Exterior Visualisation with SketchUp
You can create photorealistic exterior visualisations from SketchUp as well. A model in SketchUp looks like a simple drawing revealing shadow, colour, and the textures of the materials used. But it doesn’t process reflections, lighting or shadows, the things that add true realism to a drawing. When you want your models to look photoreal, you need rendering software to make amazing 3D designs to include realistic lighting, shadows and reflections.
SketchUp, in combination with popular extensions like VRay and Lumion, provides remarkable exterior visualisations that are extremely powerful and attractive. You can create impressively realistic scenes using different lighting, materials and cameras, for example. It’s all about transforming spatial ideas into consumable visual content. Once you’ve learned the basics of rendering a SketchUp architectural model using an extension like V-Ray you’ll understand how to create brilliance by editing V-Ray materials, positioning the camera creatively to make scenes, and using exciting techniques to light your scenes artificially or naturally.
Learn Architectural Visualisation with SketchUp
Do you want to learn architectural visualisation? It’s just as easy to learn SketchUp as it is to make stunningly real-looking models using it, thanks to a wealth of excellent online resources, architectural visualisation tutorials and free learning opportunities for architectural visualisation using Sketchup. They come from SketchUp itself as well as from other people and organisations who rate the software highly. The SketchUcation pages are a great place to start, as is the popular SketchUp tutorials resource. And don’t forget there’s a choice of SketchUp free and SketchUp Pro – you might like to explore the benefits of them both before making your decision.
What is that weird file extension? It’s the SKP file format. If you’re researching SKP files, this article tells you everything you need to know about the SKP file extension used by SketchUp. By the end of it you’ll understand how to access these files and know exactly what you’re accessing. Read on for your next critical dose of SketchUp wisdom!
What is an SKP File?
SketchUp is a popular 3D drawing programme that comes with a free version and the choice to opt for SketchUp Pro. An SKP file is the file extension name for the three-dimensional models created in SketchUp. The skp file of a model contains wireframes, shades, edge effects, and textures plus any of the many components that can be included in SketchUp documents.
An SKP file is also called a SketchUp document. SKP files can contain SketchUp components, for example a door, window, or beam. When these components are kept in an SKP file, you can import them easily then re-use them in future designs.
The Windows version of SketchUp makes automatic backups of SKP files, which are saved as SKB files. If your SKP file is corrupted or accidentally deleted it’s easy enough to restore it using the relevant SKB file. On a Mac, SketchUp automatically saves SKP backups using the filename: filename~.skp.
How to Open SKP Files
Because .skp is a proprietary file name belonging to SketchUp, the best way to open and view an SKP file is via Sketchup itself, using the SKP file viewer. Download the popular SKP file opener to view your SKP files without editing them. Other programmes can also open SKP files and convert them into different formats.
Software to Open SKP Files
SKP file converter
Do you need a good SKP file converter? These SKP file reader tools can open and/or convert SKP files:
SketchUp Viewer lets you open a SketchUp (.skp) file to view a model you’ve saved. Choose the file, open it, then go to the place where the file is kept on your hard drive. Simply select the file and click open to see the model in the viewer
With Glovius you can view SketchUp models on an iPhone, iPad, or Android device, a completely free SKP file converter tool. It gives you a portable SketchUp portfolio to showcase your designs, analyse them, and collaborate while on the move
The XnConvert image file converter is powerful and free, working cross-platform as a batch image converter. It lest you automate editing, rotate, convert and compress images, and carry out more than popular 80 actions including resize, crop, and filter. It supports every common image format including SKP
Online SKP File Viewer
What about an SKO file online viewer? There’s a good choice of free online SKP file converters which you simply add your file to and press ‘convert’ to transform it. It converts an SKP file to pdf, obj, fbx, dxf, stl, 3ds and more. These simple online SKP file viewing facilities include one from Filepro , one from Okino, and another from Xuver.
Learn SketchUp
SketchUp is a brilliant 3D drawing tool. It comes with a wealth of excellent learning resources including plenty of really good tutorials. Now you know how to open a SKP file and understand what SKP file software can do for you, what will you learn next?
You want to view SKP files online? SketchUp desktop viewer is a free download designed for viewing models on tech that either doesn’t have or doesn’t need a full version of SketchUp itself. The SKP file viewer is a brilliant way to bring 3D models to sparkling life on Android devices, iOS devices and more. Read on to find out how this cool little tool supports great client communications, essential flexibility, and highly effective working on the go. Welcome to SketchUp viewer online.
Benefits of SketchUp Viewer
SketchUp itself is an intelligent software tool used for drawing applications in the architectural, interior design, landscape architecture, civil and mechanical engineering sectors as well as in movie and game design. SketchUp viewer is a separate app that makes SketchUp 3D models easily available on a multitude of devices. The web-based application is called the SketchUp free viewer, and there’s also a brilliant paid version that comes with loads of extra functionality, SketchUp pro viewer. No wonder it’s known for being the best way to view SketchUp files online.
Thanks to SketchUp viewer you can easily navigate and present your own SketchUp designs and also explore literally millions of free models in 3D Warehouse, at no charge. You can open or download models directly from 3D Warehouse, Trimble Connect and Dropbox, then open them via Android ‘open with’. Because the viewer supports Android’s Storage Access Framework, opening models from Google Drive and other file storage apps is super-easy.
You can tap into SKP viewer Augmented Reality to merge 3D models with the real world to spectacular effect, with AR model viewing for SketchUp Shop, SketchUp Pro and SketchUp Studio subscribers as well as a paid-for option in-app. And the astonishingly good select tool and entity info panels provide insight into lengths, face areas, solids volumes, and the distribution of components and groups.
It’s a dream to navigate with intuitive multi-touch orbiting, panning and zooming. You can look at projects from standard views or scenes created up in SketchUp desktop and web modelers – it supports everything from camera location and properties, hidden geometry, shadow settings, visible layers, active section planes, standard edge styles, face styles and background/sky/ground style settings to watermarks and axis location. And it’s easy to swap between perspective and orthographic cameras when creating drawings for production and architecture.
Taking measurements using the tape measure tool, amending your unit preferences to see measurements, dimension strings and entity information, it’s all simple to achieve. As is turning layers on and off, adjusting edge and face styles including x-ray mode, plus toggling to control hidden geometry, section planes, section cuts, axes, and watermarks.
Work anywhere
Work doesn’t happen exclusively at the office anymore. Sign off on changes, collaborate with remote colleagues, and get work done in today’s world.
Orbit anywhere
Get work done on the go. You can open .SKP files from anywhere — wherever you are. Present conversational details of your models when you show scenes, layers and views — right on your mobile device.
Get to know your projects
You’ve drawn the building. But have you seen it from every angle? Step inside your creation with AR/VR Viewer apps and solve problems before you ever break ground.
Present your projects
Visual projects deserve visual explanations. Show your stakeholders your ideas, and the challenges, and get feedback on desktop, mobile, or in mixed reality.
Getting Started with Sketchup Viewer
SketchUp viewer is available for desktops via the SketchUp desktop viewer and available for mobile devices, with a SketchUp viewer Android version as well as one for iOS. To get started with Sketchup viewer you simply need to download SKP file viewer online. Here’s the official link.
Sketchup Desktop Viewer
Thanks to the SketchUp viewer for Desktop, people who don’t use SketchUp can join in. This makes it an exceptionally powerful collaboration tool for creating feature-rich documents, adding real-life location details, shadows and aerial images to wow stakeholders, colleagues and clients. You can harness the amazing V-Ray rendering tool to visualise everything in photorealistic, real-time detail and accurately model designs by turning your point clouds into 3D models.
The key benefits supported by the free desktop SketchUp viewer app include the ability to review designs in 3D, whether the file comes your way via email or as a download from a shared online location. You can enjoy seeing your designs in beautiful, accurate 3D with orbiting, panning, animations and more, and the viewer is a lot easier to use than SketchUp itself when you’re not experienced in 3D modeling.
Because SketchUp Desktop Viewer doesn’t come with editing capabilities your model can’t be accidentally changed. People will always view the model the way it was supposed to be viewed. It’s really easy to open files, navigate around and print out the content, too.
Sketchup Viewer Mobile Apps
Sketchup viewer is perfect for Android and IOS. The user interface is a pleasure to handle, simple and intuitive. So how is Sketchup viewer used on mobile devices? SketchUp Viewer for Mobile lets you explore and test out demo models as well as models of your own. It provides AR model viewing as long as your device is enabled for ARKit (iOS) or ARCore (Android).
To view your own models in AR, an active SketchUp Shop, SketchUp Pro or SketchUp Studio subscription is essential. Or you can test-drive the AR model viewing features with your own models using a free 7 day trial of SketchUp Studio, which includes trial access to every Mobile, AR and VR Viewer app.
The mobile hardware and software requirements? All the devices involved must be compatible with OpenGL ES 3.0 and have at least 1024MB RAM. For iOS you need the iOS 10 operating system or later, and phones must be iPhone 5 or later. Tablets must be Retina iPads. Android Devices need an operating system that’s Android 6.0.1 (Marshmallow) or later, with phones and tablets requiring at least a 4 inch screen with an MDPI, HDPI, XHDPI or XXHDPI resolution.
SketchUp Viewer Download
How to view 3D models using AR? Your iOS Devices must have an Operating System iOS 11 or later. You’ll need an iPhone 6 or later, an iPad Pro, 2017 iPad or later, and there’s an official list of ARKit devices to check. For Android you’ll need an Operating System Android 7.0 (Nougat) or later and there’s an official list of ARCore devices to check.
If you have already subscribed to a SketchUp Shop, SketchUp Pro or SketchUp Studio bundle, premium AR model viewing is unlocked and ready to go once you launch the app. As a SketchUp Free subscriber, you can buy your way into AR Model viewing features with a simple in-app subscription. Just open any non-sample model then pick the AR icon to get a subscription prompt.
Sketchup Viewer Online
Sketchup for Web free online is a free version that runs in your browser. The simple interface lets you draw 3D models of anything you can imagine. The online SketchUp viewer is accessible from a broad range of devices and hardware isn’t an issue. It’s version-less, your operating system won’t limit you, there are no updates to worry about and you will always run the latest version. The viewer saves models to the web by default, with 10MB free storage included. You can even tap into Trimble Connect to keep things up to date across multiple devices and XR software.
It’s one thing creating a fantastic design. It’s another thing to have the collateral you need to wow your client at a presentation. SketchUp LayOut is a brilliant SketchUp tool designed to create detailed 2D Architectural documents from your 3D SketchUp models. It quickly, accurately makes beautiful layout documentation from your SketchUp models.
This is how it works. You begin your project in SketchUp, drawing it and creating different scenes to reveal alternative views. You send your file to LayOut, adding extras like the dimensions, labels, text and photos. Then LayOut cleverly exports a beautiful PDF file for you to send to a client or use to wow your audience at an on-screen presentation.
LayOut and SketchUp Pro are a match made in heaven, built to collaborate, enhance your SketchUp workflow and boost productivity. And it’s so flexible. When you want to update your original SketchUp model, you can do so in LayOut and it syncs all the details automatically, saving you time and effort.
What’s the Difference Between SketchUp and LayOut
LayOut is a fantastic tool for creating accurate documentation from SketchUp models. It’s only available via the SketchUp Pro package, not as a stand-alone app. While SketchUp itself is a genius at 3D modelling, LayOut is its 2D partner. Can you imagine being able to quickly, easily transform the 3D models you’ve created in SketchUp into professional-looking 2D drawings? It makes such a difference to your client-facing responsibilities.
Can you use LayOut without SketchUp? The answer is no. They’re a team, and like all great teams, they’re only effective when they’re working together. You’ll need Sketchup Pro to access LayOut.
Creating 2D Designs with LayOut
It’s genuinely easy to create 2D drawings using LayOut. Here’s how to section a model, for example, a model of a house, create a ‘plan’, access the ‘plan’ scene in LayOut, and create a floor plan view ready for annotation.
Set your view to ‘parallel Projection’ in the Camera menu to create a straight-on view for the plan
Go to ‘Window’ and pick the Scenes console – you can hide the Section Plane in your LayOut document by opening the window in SketchUp then editing the scene’s default style
Click the ‘+’ button to create a scene called ‘Plan’
Access your SketchUp model in LayOut using File > Insert
Right-click on the SketchUp window and choose ‘Scenes: PLAN’
Right-click and go to Scale = 1mm:50mm
Your LayOut scaled plan is ready for dimensioning and annotating
Creating Floor Plans with LayOut
Sketchup and LayOut create fabulous 2D floor plans, too. Here’s how to create a room layout:
Create a top view of your model
Centre it on your screen
You’ll need to use the parallel projection view to avoid perspective distortions. Adjust the camera settings so you’re in parallel projection and it removes perspective from your drawing
Click ‘add’ to create a scene showing the view you’ve set up
Rename it, for example ‘floor plan’
Take a section cut through the building so you can see the doors and windows – go to the large tool set or the tools section plane then add a section plane
SketchUp LayOut Tutorials
You’re never left to figure things out on your own with SketchUp. There are all sorts of top class SketchUp tutorials and LayOut tutorials available on YouTube, and more to enjoy at SketchUcation as well as in the excellent SketchUp tutorials library.
Are you researching woodworking software? If so, have you come across SketchUp Pro yet? It’s widely used for carpentry design and creating drawings from 3D designs, it comes with a wealth of fantastic features and functionality, and there’s a free version as well as a Pro version. If you want to test-drive woodworking design software, it’s ideal. You’ll love the sheer power of the tool with its complex design capabilities, brilliant exploded dimensional views and more. Here’s what you need to know about SketchUp’s incredibly popular woodwork modelling software.
What is Woodworking Design Software?
So why do you need woodworking design software? Great woodworking begins with exceptional design, and great designs create the blueprint for a woodworker to follow. Whether you’re a wood crafter, carpenter or cabinet maker, woodworking CAD is what you need to transform ideas to 3D models, then to plans, then to real life.
This woodworking modelling software makes life so much easier! You create drawings in no time, intuitively, with ease. Editing your designs is super-simple as well as fast. Amazing visualisation features mean there’s no need for time-consuming, costly prototypes. And you can easily deal with potential issues before they become problems. It can even act as an accurate inventory of exactly what quantities of materials needed to actually bring your design to reality.
Sketchup for Woodworkers and Carpenters
A good woodworking design app lets you think through and pre-build items on your computer before creating them in real life, and that comes with numerous valuable benefits for woodworkers and carpenters.
Woodworking design software comes with great productivity built in. When you want to get things done quickly it’s perfect. Learn the basics of the programme you’ve chosen and you’ll soon become fluid and fast. It costs a lot less to model via CAD than it does to test-drive different designs in the real world. And it makes testing ideas so much easier, which in turn drives better levels of creativity.
Measurement becomes simpler, too. Accurate modelling lets you make 3D cutlists before you go anywhere near a piece of wood, and you can model projects with as much or little precision as you like. It takes no time to create sectional views and it’s an easy task. Complex design capabilities are yours and exploded dimensional views provide every fine detail you could possibly want, from every angle, revealing the individual parts or the assembly order of an object as an easy-to-understand diagram. The simple, effective and accurate dimensioning you get means it’s easy to achieve accurate design modelling.
Fully-dimensioned shop drawings, cut lists and photorealistic renderings are all available at the click of a mouse. It’s easy to switch between parallel projections and perspective views. The X-ray view creates a line drawing that you can attach geometry to inside intersections, making essential connections to parts you can’t easily reach.
SketchUp comes with a friendly, dedicated community whose members happily generate free, downloadable plugins for all sorts of interesting purposes. There’s a huge warehouse full of extensions where you can also access thousands of SketchUp models. You can even contribute your own.
The end result of all this magic is software that lets you work in a way that feels natural. If you’re used to using other CAD tools you’ll find SketchUp faster and easier to use, as well as a dream to learn thanks to its famously intuitive interface.
Access Furniture Designs from 3D Warehouse
SketchUp’s carpentry design software includes access to the popular 3D Warehouse. Some of the woodworking focused resources you can tap into includes a custom bookcase, a child’s Adirondack chair, woodworking benches, a Japanese garden bench and a window seat, all ready for you to use, amend, play with, and create your own unique versions of.
Realistic Materials, Colours and Finishes
One of the most exciting features is the way you can apply materials to your design models in SketchUp, and it’s also a simple matter. Imagine being able to show a client a fully-textured and coloured image of the project, designed to make the decision process so much easier. You can swap the materials, colours and finishes instantly for different effects, create brand new materials of your own, and accurately calculate exactly how much of those materials you’ll need to complete the job.
Materials are defined as paints with a colour and an optional texture. If you want to show your client a roof made of tiles, you can do that. If they want to know how your design looks with a metal roof, you can create an image of it in no time. Because the colour and texture options are kept separate, you can change one while leaving the other as it is. You can even change a material’s opacity.
It’s a simple matter to apply materials to your model. Just choose a face or multiple faces, pick the materials you want, and apply them using the paint bucket tool.
Create 2D Woodworking Designs with LayOut
Another great benefit of this exceptional woodworking software is the LayOut function. It lets you transform 3D models into beautiful 2D drawings including all the dimensions and annotations. All you do is place your SketchUp model into a LayOut document, then you’re free to design the document so it highlights the best features of the 3D version. To change the original SketchUp model, simply update the model in LayOut and every detail is automatically synced. Amazing!
SketchUp Woodworking Extensions
SketchUp’s Extension Warehouse is a popular resource. There’s an inspiring collection of brilliant carpentry extensions to download at the warehouse itself. You can find them here and they’re available for both Windows and Mac. And there’s more at Smustard, the Ruby Library Depot, and SketchUcation.
The OpenCutList extension, for example, creates cut lists and cutting diagrams for woodworking. First, it examines the components and material properties, then it automatically creates a list of parts plus cutting diagrams based on the material’s properties. It looks at the type of material, the grain direction, trimming sizes and saw kerf width, part oversizes, standard panel sizes and so much more. It makes your life easy by allowing you to highlight parts of your model, reveal the grain direction and make the components’ orientation crystal clear. You can print out part lists and cutting diagrams or export them as a regular CSV file as well as importing CSV files.
SketchUp Woodworking Tutorials
How do you learn best? Whatever your learning style is, there’s an exciting abundance of SketchUp Pro tutorials on every topic and many take the form of easy-to-digest video tutorials on YouTube. Here’s a link to lots of brilliant ‘getting started’ tutorials. SketchUp’s legendary woodworking software could be the best decision you ever make!
We use cookies for ads personalisation and to ensure we give you the best experience on our website. If you continue to use our site we will assume that you are happy with it.OkPrivacy policy
