Category: General

Next here’s some inspiring guidance for beginners to show you how to go about creating an interior design in SketchUp. This is how to plan interior design of a house. 

Start by preparing your workspace. It’s good to know SketchUp provides some useful templates to help you create an accurate floor plan for the project, saving you even more time. Next, you’ll need to set the camera viewpoint. You set it by clicking Camera > Standard Views > Top, which gives you an essential Plan View of the area you’ll be working on. It could be a single room, it could be an entire floor of a building, but whatever your starting point it has to be accurate, so measure more than once to double-check your assumptions. 

Next, it’s time to draw your geometries. In SketchUp Geometries consist of faces and edges, where edges are simply lines. As you can imagine it takes at least three lines to create a single face. If you change your view to X-Ray by clicking View > Face Style > X Ray, you’ll see the floor plan image as well as your lines. 

You’ll want to add accurate doorways and frames, windows and mouldings. If you’d rather just model one door and one window, you can do that with ease in no time. Rather than model them from scratch, you can simply use a pre-designed door, window or frame component made by someone else. 

It’s handy to be able to organise the model using groups and components. Groups let you keep related elements organised in the drawing area, to make choosing and copying multiple elements easier. And SketchUp components let you re-use objects. 

There’s a huge collection of components and entire designs in the SketchUp Warehouse, all free to download and use in any way you like to save time and hassle. Choose from a wealth of quality pre-designed doors and windows, cabinetry and furniture, lighting, textures, materials and more. The 3D warehouse also provides cool examples of interior designs for you to refer to or use as you wish. 

It’s just as easy and enjoyable to apply materials and decorate your interior once you’ve designed the layout. Materials add convincing colour and realistic textures to models, including delights like tiles, woods, colours, finishes and every imaginable texture. And you can add lighting, as we’ve mentioned, to reveal how natural and artificial light falls and moves within the space throughout the day. SketchUp provides a variety of lighting options including spotlights, sphere lights, rectangular lights, disk lights and linear lights as well as natural light in every imaginable weather condition and time of day. 

Last but not least SketchUp makes it a dream to render and visualise your interior design into convincing images that bring your work to life for clients. Take real-time rendering plugins for SketchUp like Enscape, which instantly create beautiful, realistic renderings to bring the interior to impressive reality.  

Shave hours off your Revit-to-SketchUp workflow

The new import feature within a Studio subscription allows you to accurately and efficiently convert your Revit models into SketchUp geometry for deeper collaboration across project phases, teams, and stakeholders. Various workarounds exist to export Revit models to SketchUp, but this new importer saves the most time, is more accurate in geometry conversion, and leads to much lighter models.

By preserving model structures between Revit and SketchUp – Revit families and layers neatly translate to groups, components, and tags in SketchUp – you can save hours or even days of model cleanup and progress your project with accuracy. A smoother transition between design phases allows you to focus on what’s essential: fine-tuning your vision. 

“The Revit Importer sped up my importing and cleans up workflows from a couple of days to a few hours, even with complex models.”

-Carl Goodiel, VDC Manager

Why use it?

1. Improve collaboration with project stakeholders who create Revit deliverables.
2. Preserve model structures between software for less cleanup.
3. Move Revit models into SketchUp to iterate new ideas quickly. 
4. Build efficiencies; the imported Revit file is automatically optimized for easier geometry manipulation in SketchUp and significantly reduces file size.
5. Create compelling visuals; Revit material colors and transparencies are respected during import to speed up visualization workflows.
6. Translate Revit levels to SketchUp section planes. 

“We love the Revit Importer. It has saved us lots of time, and to my amazement, the converted file sizes are much smaller than other methods. This importer has become essential to our workflows. “

-Shyam Singh, GLMV Architecture

Trimble has made the Revit Importer a native functionality in SketchUp’s desktop application. Customers with Studio subscriptions can access this feature as soon as they update to the 2023 version. Customers with Pro subscriptions can install the Revit Importer in SketchUp 2023 and then initiate a trial to evaluate this new workflow. No Revit license is required. 

Discoverable and connected workflows

Using Studio’s new common installer, you can discover, download, and install all the tools you need for advanced workflows and complex projects. The subscription also includes V-Ray 6 for creating cutting-edge visuals and Scan Essentials for importing point cloud data – both were enriched with new functionality in late 2022. Please note that Studio is a Windows-only subscription. Scan Essentials is English-only, and V-Ray offers English and Chinese versions.

V-Ray focuses on rendering. Rendering, also called image synthesis, involves generating a photorealistic or non-photorealistic image from a 2D or 3D model using software to analyse and configure remarkably real-looking and attractive imagery. The image created by the software is called the render. 

V-Ray is popular with a broad range of people in all sorts of sectors, all of whom use it to transform their designs into awesome photo-realistic and creative images. As you can imagine architects in particular love the tool’s outstanding capabilities, as do their clients, simply because it turns flat architectural designs into extremely real-looking, wholly convincing images.  

How does it create magic? It’s a bit like having a virtual camera inside SketchUp. V-ray uses something called ray-tracing, a clever way to build an image by tracing the paths of light from the camera through pixels in an image plane, then cleverly simulating the effects as it comes across virtual objects. Creating different effects simply means the programme traces different rays. 

Expressed another way, V-Ray is a rendering engine that harnesses illumination algorithms like path tracing, photon mapping, irradiance mapping and something called ‘directly computed global illumination’ to build real-feeling imagery and animation. It illuminates exteriors and interiors with natural light using either the Sun and Sky system or a Dome light to set up image-based lighting. The resulting scenarios are presented as thumbnails for you to easily apply to your scene, to see which you like best.  

There’s more. You can also use V-Ray to make amazing animations. It cleverly renders the animation sequence as separate frames which you join together later to make an animated clip. No wonder it’s so popular with everyone from architects and product designers to Interior designers and landscape designers, as well as artists, animators and all sorts of other creative types. 

Next, how to install V-Ray for SketchUp on Mac machines, assuming you’ve already confirmed your hardware and operating system provides what you need, and you’ve also verified you have the right version of SketchUp itself. Here’s the installation process, step by step: 

• Go to chaos.com, the developers of V-Ray 
• Click the ‘Try’ button at the top right hand corner
• Create an account for yourself – it’s easy and intuitive 
• Choose the right ‘role’ from the drop-down list
• Click continue
• Select ‘V-Ray’
• Under ‘Host Platform’ select: ‘SketchUp’
• Click ‘continue’
• Select V-Ray for SketchUp
• Select the latest version of SketchUp – it should already be installed on your Mac 
• Click ‘download’
• Click on the downloaded file to open it
• Click on the installer to begin the installation
• Agree to the installation settings – remember the host version should be the version of SketchUp you chose, for example SketchUp 2022
• Once it has installed, click ‘Done’

Now you can test your V-Ray installation by opening up any project, perhaps a 3D studio project you’re working on, and choose the basic V-Ray render settings to reduce the render time. If all is well it’ll render a superb quality image for you.  

As we’ve mentioned, every design project’s render quality and timescales are different. V-ray’s render production focuses on either image quality or render time. To pin down the best compromise between image quality and render time, software engineers spent a lot of time measuring V-Ray’s performance on literally thousands of different scenes. This testing gave them a solid basis for the software’s optimised setup as well as a reliable starting point for a wide variety of designs and projects. The end results are always impressive.   

It’s interesting to know what happens behind the scenes. The render quality and time are driven by the number of calculations per pixel and whether the calculations are time-limited. That’s why V-Ray has two image samplers, Progressive and Bucket. The software creates the perfect balance using Max.sudivs and Noise Threshold parameters, basically the intelligence controlling the quality versus time ratio. 

For a better quality image you can increase the Max.sudivs value and/or decrease the Noise Threshold. Do the opposite to render faster, decreasing your Max.sudivs value and/or increasing the Noise Threshold. Just bear in mind the Render Time (min) parameter is exclusive to the Progressive Image Sampler. 

When you increase the Render Time (min) you get progressively better image quality because you’re letting V-Ray take longer to sample the image, and vice-versa. But how do you find the ideal settings? For the best results change one parameter at a time then run a test render to check the direction. The same goes for the value of every parameter. It’s best to stay within two times more or less than its original value.

First in our guide to simple earthquake proof building design, here’s a broad-brush look at how to make a place safe. Earthquake-proof buildings are carefully designed to withstand the destructive forces unleashed when the earth moves. So what are the design features of an earthquake proof building? Whatever the circumstance, they tend to focus on five key solutions.

An appropriate, flexible foundation provides strength and durability exactly where it’s needed, at the point where the building and the earth meet. Seismic dampers reduce the impact of shaking. Thanks to them a design will be able to handle severe input energy and slash harmful deflections, forces and accelerations. Seismic dampers come in a variety of types: viscous dampers, friction dampers, yielding dampers, magnetic dampers, and tuned mass dampers.

Shielding structures from vibrations keeps the elements of a building where they belong, more able to stay put simply because they vibrate less. Structural reinforcement adds core strength to the whole thing. And using adequately ductile materials means the structure can flex and bend safely rather than crack and break. Let’s take a detailed look at these in action.

So where do you find all this amazing stuff? Materials for SketchUp can be found and downloaded from the 3D warehouse, a huge collection of free resources for users to dive into. The only limit is your imagination. Why not have a look for yourself? All you do is enter the search query ‘materials’ into the search box at the top of the page to see what’s there. The popular 2016 stone colour collection, for example, contains 34 different materials covering all sorts of stone types, from golden sandstones to pale and dark grey slate-look materials and pure white marble.

There are countless brilliant wood materials textures to tap into as well. There’s wood with and without a strong visible grain, in every shade and colour, whether it’s decking for your garden design or wood for kitchen cabinets and work surfaces. Marble wall pattern material helps designers create drawings of luxurious interiors and exteriors, and there’s a host of gorgeous landscape related materials to enjoy. Imagine a collection of materials for making hyper-real trees, shrubs, site furniture and more. Think travertine steps and black slate tiling, and loads of wonderful tile materials including mosaic tiling and subway tiling, marble tiles and patterned ceramic tiling.    

How do you download all this fabulousness? SketchUp materials download is really easy, the same as everything else in SketchUp. Once you’ve found the material you want to download, simply click the Download button. If you like you can download just the material itself and avoid importing the whole component into SketchUp. 

Let’s use this collection of wood materials and textures as an example. To download individual materials from this collection, from the model info (RHS) – click ‘Materials’. This’ll present you with a list of the materials used in the particular model. Each has a name and dimensions, along with the file size. Just find the material you want then click the ‘Download’ button. That’s it. 

Next, let’s explore the agile design process and the associated agile design principles. The agile design process involves a series of logical phases:

• Understand
• Research
• Sketch
• Design
• Prototype
• Test
• Refine

The idea at the core of agile working is that you forget about perfection, and it’s actually liberating. In agile methodology it’s more important to make progress than have endless lengthy discussions. The emphasis is on building, testing and iterating solutions instead of getting mired in endless talk. 

And how about agile design principles? While many of the ideas behind agile modelling specifically relate to software and website development, it’s easy to see how they apply perfectly to the work our users do. 

For a start you model with a purpose. You’re not confused about the project and your role in it. You have a specific purpose, which helps drive you in the right direction. Embracing change is a key principle, since the goals and requirements will change as the project evolves. Every aspect of the project might change over time, and that’s fine. Incremental change is usually easier to handle than big, sudden changes, and that’s an agile way to work. 

When you assume the best solution will almost always be the simplest, you’re engaging in agile thinking. Agile designers keep their modelling simple so it’s easier to re-think future requirements without problems. And because your goals are small and incremental, the next goal is always front-of-mind. Quality work sits at the heart of all this, which means you meet people’s expectations more efficiently. There’s no rushed work. And the fast feedback agile demands is also a big advantage too, keeping your project firmly on the rails and heading in the right direction. 

Agile working involved just enough documentation rather than drowning in too much paperwork or struggling to understand too little of it. You keep stakeholders in the loop, with incremental decisions to make along the way. Every piece of documentation is worth having. 

Here’s some step by step instructions on how to design a small garden in SketchUp, showing how easy it makes your life. Never designed a garden in your life? You’ll be fine. Never used garden design software? Not a problem. Here’s how to design a small garden layout in a few steps. It really is this easy to use: 

• Make sure you’ve chosen the right units – choose feet or centimetres 

• Use the SketchUp drawing tools – the pencil, rectangle, arc and more – to draft the overall shape of the small garden. You’ll be surprised how well you get on

• Draw in your garden paths, patio, borders, fences, walls and other solid structures 

• Set the dimensions to match the your garden layout – this makes for an accurate design that works in real life 

• Apply ‘materials’ to the garden surfaces like patios and paths, lawns and gravelled areas

• Find cool premade SketchUp models from the 3D warehouse to use in the garden design, everything from fountains and trees to individual plants, lawn textures to ponds and garden furniture. Some of the furniture is real, you can buy it in the shops if you like the way it looks in your design

• Import the models from the 3D warehouse and scale them to match your garden dimensions – another easy job 

• Move the imported 3D elements around until they’re in the positions you want – do they fit, are they too big or small? If so, find more in the Warehouse to suit your small garden design. It’s almost as fun as actually shopping

There’s more to think about. How does the light fall into the space in real life in summer and winter, and at different times of day? Knowing where the sunshine and shade fall will help you decide where to put the garden furniture, outdoor heater, patio, flowers and whatever else.  Once you render the finished design with a lighting plug-in, you’ll see exactly how the sunlight affects the space. 

Then there’s privacy – you can design it into the garden if the space is overlooked.  Maximising the patio space becomes easy. Move things around with ease and choose the best patio size and position. Adding height to the garden helps create interest and visual enjoyment. Take a bare rectangular garden, interrupt it in any number of ways and you instantly get a bigger-feeling space, no matter how small it is, like putting plants in the centre to make the views more interesting than planting round the edges. 

Grow plants up walls and fences to soften the lines and provide places for wildlife. Add a simple pond and watch the wildlife arrive like magic. Use digital paint to test the colour of the garden fencing. Black, deep purple, deep red, they’ll all make the space look bigger. Rich colours also showcase planting beautifully, adding instant drama. To draw things in and make the space feel more intimate, paint the fencing or walls a light colour.

Can you see how much fun it’s going to be, and how satisfying, now you know how to design a small garden for free? SketchUp is ideal for experimenting with small garden design ideas fluidly and enjoyably. Happy designing!  

The 3D Warehouse you get free access to with Sketchup is packed with beautiful examples of garden border design in SketchUp, and they’re great for inspiration. Take a look at this one, and this. You can download them, redesign them, move the elements around, change the dimensions, add more features and plants, and more. Because the foundation is already there it’s an easy and exciting process. So how do you design a garden border in SketchUp step by step? Let’s have a look: 

• First, choose the right units, either feet or centimetres. The results will be very different so don’t get them mixed up! 
• Use a variety of cool SketchUp drawing tools – the pencil, rectangle, arc and so on – to draft the overall shape of the garden border
• Find inspiring SketchUp models from the 3D warehouse to incorporate into the garden border design, things like the right kind of shrubs and plants
• Import existing models from the 3D warehouse then scale them to match the garden layout dimensions
• Move your imported 3D elements around to create the kind of garden border design you have in mind
• SketchUp lets you also design the associated garden walls and fences 
• You can even use light to show where the shadows and the shaded areas they create are – this is particularly handy because once you’ve got an accurate pan of where the sun and shade falls throughout the day and through the seasons, choosing the right plants is so much easier 
• You can also add in features like sheds, lawns, trees, and other exterior structures into the design easily and quickly, making the end result as accurate, attractive and easy to understand as possible – which makes getting the go-ahead from clients more of a pleasure than a potential pain 
• Combined, SketchUp and the 3D Warehouse make a brilliant tool for effective garden design whatever the size, shape, and style of the land