SketchUp Pro Archives

School Yourself in SketchUp

Posted on September 07, 2022February 09, 2024 by Lauren Donnebaum

You’re keen to get cracking with one of the world’s best-loved 3d design tools. But how do you learn SketchUp, and are there any handy SketchUp tutorials to play with? Luckily it’s actually really easy to learn SketchUp, and there are masses of excellent tutorials of every imaginable kind, all designed to help you hit the ground running. Many are created by a huge community of happy SketchUp users, providing intuitive and enjoyable ways to discover the magic of the software and everything it can do for you. In fact it’s such an easy tool to use that it’s perfectly possible to teach yourself SketchUp in no time, supported in every way by an abundance of cool online resources. By the end of this guide you’ll know exactly where to go for help, guidance, information, and inspiration. Here’s your expert guide into how to learn SketchUp online, free!

SketchUp Reseller Resources

Let’s start off with SketchUp Reseller Resources, often overlooked and well worth exploring. Did you know your UK Reseller is a treasure trove of essential insight? An authorised reseller is someone who has partnered with SketchUp and its distributors to make buying and using SketchUp as easy as possible. Our SketchUp Pro resellers are local experts who are delighted to provide consulting, training and support in your language and time zone, wherever you happen to be. Go direct to elmtec-sketchup.co.uk to discover more.

How to learn to use SketchUp in more detail? There’s also a top class support hub to tap into, where you’ll find all sorts of useful information about Getting Started on SketchUp. It covers everything from your SketchUp subscription to setting up your first Trimble account, SketchUp Technical Support, how to become a 3D modelling wizard, using Layout for SketchUp designs, extending into SketchUp plugins, and 3D modelling and rendering. The hub also contains a load of guides and articles into specific challenges, things like SketchUp for interiors, joinery and carpentry, students and much more. There are some FAQs about SketchUp Pro on the page as well, plus links to fast help via the SketchUp Community, SketchUp tutorials, and free trials.

SketchUp Campus

Next, let’s take a look at SketchUp Campus. What is SketchUp Campus? SketchUp Campus is an exciting in-depth learning hub packed with SketchUp-approved courses, all created by SketchUp’s team members to make learning convenient and simple. It’s good to know you can translate the SketchUp tutorials in there into more than 100 different languages.

The courses are a series of short videos and quizzes, designed to make learning easy and fun. Go to Campus to find out about rendering with Photoshop, Layout, and SketchUp Fundamentals. It’s all quick and simple. The quiz answers give you instant feedback, letting you see straight away where you need to improve. Take the courses at your own speed, do them again if you like, whenever you like. Track your progress, resume where you left off, stop and start whenever you feel in the mood or the need arises. It’s all there for you, clearly laid out.

All you do is sign in with your SketchUp login or Google account to choose a track and begin learning. Click here to sign up and get going, and sign in either with your SketchUp login or your Google account. The learning library is still growing, with new items coming on board, so you’ll be able to keep developing your skills. There’s something for everyone, whether you’re a newbie or an advanced user.

YouTube

YouTube is one of our most popular resources, packed with exciting SketchUp tutorials content in a visual format that many of us enjoy best of all. Click your way to the SketchUp YouTube Channel, search for detailed, in-depth guidance in the form of topics and tutorials, or grab yourself a handy Quick Win with a bite-sized video less than 90 seconds long, a pleasure to consume. Many of them will save you hours and hours of work in future. It makes sense since SketchUp is a visual tool – visual tutorials and lessons are unusually powerful in this context.

Take a look at our popular YouTube channel and explore a thrilling collection of video tutorials including Set Design from Netflix’s number one show THE SANDMAN Live!, How To Scale in SketchUp for iPad, Modelling a P-51 Mustang live, How to Push/Pull in SketchUp for iPad, and Woodworker DEFENDS Pocket Hole Design. There’s even a really good, clear video explaining Sketchup Layout.

Aaron from the SketchUp team shows you how to set up Scenes, Styles, and Sections and use Outliner to make it quick and easy to generate drawings in LayOut.

Udemy

There are some really cool SketchUp tutorials available from Udemy, like this one that details all the SketchUp tools used to model the extraordinary Barcelona Pavillion, available for £15.99, reduced from £59.99. It teaches you how to model your architecture, landscape, interior design or industrial design project from scratch to the finished design. It reveals the assignment of materials for subsequent rendering, and shows you how to create technical plans, elevations, sections and 3D images. You even learn how to create beautiful animations in video format, to display your work in an exciting interactive way.
You don’t need any prior knowledge about SketchUp. You get a full 5.5 hours of on-demand video, a downloadable resource, full lifetime access, access on mobile and TV, and a Certificate of Completion. And that’s just one of the SketchUp courses available on the platform.

SketchUp Community Forums

Head to the SketchUp Community Forum, a friendly and approachable place where you can ask a question of your own and get a fast answer. You can also search through a multitude of user questions by topic. All you do is sign up, log in, and take advantage of an enormous collection of forum subjects, from Optimising Cutlist Efficiency to Setting the Clipboard, Scan Essentials snap to section, Object Flickering problems, Clipping Bug functionality and more.

SketchUp Reddit Community

Reddit is another top resource for learning SketchUp. Almost eight thousand subscribers provide awesome tips, tricks, feedback and inspiring examples of designs to fire up your creativity, and there are 25.9K members at the time of writing. Right now the front page of the SketchUp Reddit community contains posts about how to convert an image to CNC design and convert an image to a 3D model in SketchUp, help creating topo surfaces from contour lines, SKP + Enscape, and GPS relative positioning.

SketchUp on social media

Once you’ve nailed the basics, there are loads of wonderful plug-ins and extensions to play with, designed to up your SketchUp game. Our SketchUp UK Facebook and SketchUp UK Twitter accounts are where you’ll find a collection of excellent video tutorials for SketchUp shortcuts, along with our pick of the best extensions, for example PlaceMaker and Profile Builder. This is where you can also tap into inspiring content about people and businesses using SketchUp to boost their workflow and their creativity. Now you know how to find the best SketchUp tutorials and how to learn SketchUp, what will you create first? Why not test drive SketchUp Pro here?

Love for LayOut, SketchUp: An Introduction

Posted on August 05, 2022December 16, 2022 by Lauren Donnebaum

LayOut is one of the most underrated features in SketchUp, and we’ve always wondered why. If you’re not using LayOut, you’re missing out on a lot of potential!

2D drawings do get the job done when it comes to presenting work to clients. However, LayOut can make your design come to life by transforming SketchUp models into impressive diagrams, scaled prints, CD sets, and more.

Better yet, LayOut makes the presentation itself less nerve-wracking. This nifty tool even has intuitive presentation features so you can focus on your material, not on the logistics.

We want more people to see the value in LayOut, so we’re showing it some love in this post! Read on to find out what LayOut is, what it can do, and why it deserves a place in your design workflow.

What is LayOut

SketchUp is one of the best tools out there when it comes to creating 3D models. Still, creating an outstanding design is one thing. Having the collateral to show it off is another.

That’s where LayOut comes in – this brilliant tool was developed to help designers, architects, and other creatives communicate their work through detailed and beautiful 2D architectural documents. In other words, it takes your SketchUp models and turns them into presentation-ready 2D drawings, diagrams, prints, and more.

LayOut is built into SketchUp Pro, so you can’t use it without SketchUp. There’s no separate LayOut app, extension, or plugin.

That’s because they’re a team – SketchUp models and LayOut drawings work together to create stunning, comprehensive design documents.

LayOut Features

Once you start using LayOut in SketchUp, your days of wrestling with 3D models and trying to get them to look right in a 2D document are behind you.

Here are some of the features that make LayOut such an incredible design tool:

1. Automatic and dynamic updating

Every page you create in LayOut is connected in real-time to your SketchUp model.

So, if you make a change to your SketchUp file, it’ll automatically update in LayOut – no need to go in and make changes manually. It’s a massive time-saver, and you don’t have to worry that your LayOut documents are ever out-of-date.

2. Vector drawing tools

LayOut comes with a handy set of vector drawing tools. This means you can add text, dimensions, arrows, and other markups to your LayOut documents – all without having to leave the program.

This is also convenient during a presentation, when clients and other stakeholders might have questions or suggestions about your design.

3. Print and export HD documents

Once you’re done putting together your LayOut document, you can print it out in high resolution or export it as a PDF, image, or CAD file.

Every single detail in your design will be captured, so you can be confident that everyone who sees your documents will be seeing your best work.

4. Annotate and explain in real time

LayOut for SketchUp empowers you to present your work as dynamically as you design it. In addition, you can annotate it with whatever you need – materials, lineweights, dimensions, callouts, and more – to ensure that your designs are clear and easy to understand.

5. Produce construction docs

If you’re an architect or construction professional, LayOut was made for you. With its powerful tools and dynamic updating, you can easily create construction documents at each stage of the design process. No more missed details or out-of-date drawings – just accurate, reliable construction docs that everyone can understand.

As you can see, LayOut doesn’t just complement SketchUp. Instead, it amplifies its capabilities and creates a better experience for both you and your clients.

The LayOut SketchUp Interface

Aside from being helpful, LayOut also happens to be easy on the eyes. The interface is designed for intuitive use, so you can focus on your work and not worry about how to use the program.

Here’s a quick tour of the LayOut interface:

The Menu bar: This is where you’ll find most of LayOut’s available commands, including those for adding and arranging elements, navigating pages, and more.
The Default toolbar: You’ll find the most common design tools here, such as Select, Line, Text, Label, Erase, Style, Join, and Start Presentation.
The Document area: This part is where the magic happens – the Document area is where you SketchUp images and models go. After inserting them, you can then add dimensions, text, shapes, and anything else you need to create your final design.
Tray and Panels: If you look at the right side of LayOut’s screen, you’ll see panels that appear to be stacked on top of each other. These panels are how you access various options for fill, text and dimension styles, etc.
Status bar: At the bottom of LayOut’s window, you’ll see a gray box. This is the Status bar. On the bar’s left side are helpful tips for the tool you’re currently using. On the right, you’ll find the Zoom menu and the Measurements box. We recommend making a habit to glance at the Status bar every so often – it lets you know every time your document is autosaved by LayOut.
The Zoom Menu: Being able to zoom in and out is important when you’re working with detailed designs. The Zoom menu is how you do it in LayOut. Select your preferred zoom value from the menu or use one of the other zoom options, such as Zoom To Page, Zoom Selection, and more.
The Measurements Box: The Measurements box displays the coordinates for the current position of your mouse cursor, as well as the dimensions of any selected entity. You can also use the Measurements box to input specific values for entities, such as lines, rectangles, and polygons.

Those are the basics of the LayOut interface. To give you an even more personalized experience, LayOut developers even made it possible to customize the toolbar based on your workflow and preferences.

You can make the toolbar icons smaller or bigger, add your favorite commands to the LayOut toolbar, establish global preferences for backups, companion applications, startup templates, folder locations, and so much more!

Creating Documents in Layout

Are you ready to start creating in LayOut? Let’s take a quick look at how to create a new document in LayOut and how to insert a SketchUp model into the document you created:

To create a new LayOut document:

First, open LayOut. You’ll see the Welcome dialog box.
In the Welcome dialog box, you’ll be able to select a LayOut template.
Next, adjust document settings like orientation and paper size.
Once you’re happy with your settings, save your LayOut document.

To insert a SketchUp model into your LayOut document:

First, go to the LayOut document where you want to insert the SketchUp model.
Then, from the menu bar, select File > Insert.
After that, an Open dialog box will appear. Navigate to the file for your SketchUp model and click Open.
Next, after inserting the SketchUp model into your LayOut document, you can now start designing it to put the spotlight on the best features of your 3D models.
Need to update or change the SketchUp model? Simply go back to SketchUp, make your changes, and then update the model in LayOut. All your changes will be synced automatically!

Finally, it’s time to show off your work to the world (aka your clients). This is perhaps one of our favorite things about LayOut – it makes giving presentations a breeze!

You can present the design right from LayOut itself. Access this feature by selecting View > Start Presentation. You can also use the default toolbar and click on the Start Presentation icon.

Clicking either of these options will take your LayOut document full screen. Now you’re ready!

Play animations, navigate seamlessly between pages, and change the view of inserted SketchUp models – all with just a few clicks. In addition, you can control every aspect of your design, from the camera angles to the annotations, so you can be sure that your audience is seeing exactly what you want them to see.

Wrapping It Up

We’re excited for you to see how much LayOut can do for you. With its user-friendly interface, brilliant tools, and customisation options, we’re confident that LayOut will help you work smarter and have fun while you’re doing it.

Still have questions about LayOut? Watch our tutorial on Getting Started with LayOut!

SketchUp for Architects

Posted on August 03, 2022December 12, 2023 by Lauren Donnebaum

Are you researching SketchUp for architects? Good move! SketchUp is brilliant for architecture, your logical, simple and highly creative solution to stunning architectural drawings and remarkable designs. Perfect for representing hyper-realistic interiors and exteriors, it’s exactly what you need to impress clients, convince stakeholders, and share your ideas with colleagues and managers. SketchUp architect is a comprehensive, flexible tool set that brings your imagination to life in no time with superb 2D and 3D design. If you work in architectural design it’s an enjoyable way to achieve great things quickly and easily. And it’s rich in resources with masses of tutorials to tap into as well as a multitude of brilliant plugins and extensions. So let’s go on a voyage of discovery into SketchUp architecture. By the end of this article you’ll know exactly why it’s such a good idea to design buildings in SketchUp.

SketchUp Tips for Architects

First of all, as a SketchUp architect you’re never short of cool resources. There’s an abundance of excellent tutorials and guidance for architects, however experienced you are and whatever your skill levels. Take a tour of the SketchUp website to join the latest 3D Basecamp Conference, grab a Bootcamp ticket for top class training, or do both.

You’ll find a free trial to download and test drive for a full 7 days, more than enough time to get to grips with the programme. There’s SketchUp Campus to explore, for in-depth SketchUp training at your own pace. There’s a list of expert SketchUp Trainers who can help you, and a whole load of top class video content to consume on YouTube, including a three part series about learning SketchUp Architecture.

There’s a Help Centre stacked with SketchUp Pro tips, tutorials, and user guides. Plus forums to ask your own questions and find answers to existing questions, release notes to update you on every new version, and – last but not least – SketchUp Quick Reference Cards to make your design life even easier, faster, and more enjoyable.

SketchUp Plugins and Extensions for Architects

SketchUp architect plugins and extensions give you a huge resource supported by an enormous community of keen and creative users. No wonder this is one of the most popular digital design software programmes. Large companies contribute, as do indie developers working on exciting new plugins and extensions, delivering a growing wealth of functionality to users. Harness the right plug-ins for a specific task and you’ll save time and hassle. There’s a vast amount to choose from, easy to narrow down by category or industry, or via reviews from the architectural community.

Plugins and extensions are much the same thing, simple tools that do very specific things for designers in no time at all, often via clever shortcuts. You might want to choose from an abundance of realistic-looking trees to save having to design trees yourself. There’s a free plugin called Architextures, which you use for creating and editing seamless textures, bump maps and hatches. 3D Bazaar gives you high quality render-ready content at your fingertips. ConDoc Tools optimises Layout and SketchUp for architects and interior designers. Instant Roof Nui does exactly what it says on the tin, creating amazing roofs in no time. The 3D Tree Maker is another popular choice for SketchUp architecture, as is Pushline, a super-simple and fast way to click an edge, or preselect and click on it, then push it.

SketchUp 3D Warehouse

The SketchUp 3D Warehouse is a vast library of custom-made third-party extensions created to optimise your SketchUp workflow. It is also packed with handy resources to support architectural design excellence, stashed in the ‘architecture’ category, along with building products and much more. You’ll find a collection of excellent 3D components relevant to architectural design including traditional windows and casements, full architectural design examples, and the same for interior designs.

This is your SketchUp architecture go-to workflow optimisation resource. It contains more than 600 extensions, with a team of developers working full-time to hack your workflow. You can tap into industry and workflow categories. Simply choose a pain point in your modelling or choose your sector to see a list of exciting extensions to ease your workflow. Every extension integrates smoothly and directly into SketchUp Pro. This is how you create beautiful photorealistic renderings in seconds, bringing your work to life in fresh new ways. You can model anything in a few clicks to level up your drawing skills. There are even dozens of extensions to prepare your model for 3D printing, designing and cleaning up solid shapes with ease and flair. That’s the way to do it!

Rendering in SketchUp

Rendering in SketchUp is a dream. As a SketchUp architect all you do is make your way over to the extensions warehouse to discover a wide variety of excellent rendering tools for SketchUp, including the top notch choices V-Ray, SU Podium, and Thea Render. You can integrate useful software into SketchUp simply via the Extension Warehouse then make stunning, fantastically realistic renders.

Combining rendering software with SketchUp is often all you need to deliver outstanding professional results. You can imagine how creating a hyper-real image of your design for clients, colleagues and other stakeholders to examine makes life so much easier. People can see exactly what you intend from the design. The lighting is completely realistic, whether it’s internal lighting or light from the weather outdoors. In a nutshell, rendering makes architectural designs easier to understand, more attractive, more realistic and easier to digest.

3D Architectural Walkthroughs in SketchUp

An architectural walk-through is like magic, an exceptional way to reveal your design in all its realistic glory. So what is a 3D architectural walkthrough? It’s an interactive 3D virtual tour of a property’s interior and exterior, and it’s a remarkably powerful visual tool. This is where SketchUp architecture really comes into its own, and the impact is quite something. All you do is use Sketchup along with rendering extensions from the Extension Warehouse to enable the creation of engaging 3D walkthroughs. As you can imagine they really bring architectural designs to sizzling life – enabling architects like you to showcase their work professionally. When impressive presentations are the name of the game, it’s a winner.

And the tech? Architectural walkthroughs are animations designed to reveal 2D designs, drawings and plans in 3D. It’s a proven way to help architects realise ideas.

Accurate SketchUp Measurement Tools

Obviously, accuracy is key to your SketchUp architect workflow and your success in architectural design. It’s good to know that Sketchup not only aces 3D design, you can also easily convert your work into 2D plans and elevations. There are loads of great measurement tools in SketchUp to ensure 2D drawings and plans are always accurate. And the software lets you change your designs dynamically whenever you like, as often as you want.

We recommend you always use the Measurement Tools provided in Sketchup, simply because the biggest challenge for architects using SketchUp is making sure you align models on the right plane. You have to think about the X, Y, and Z axes at every stage to avoid losing the plot! A change to the model on one axis will cause changes on the others, and the same goes when you want to move the model around. This leads to your lines failing to match up when you switch views.

Your best tools in this situation are the Tape Measure and Protractor tools. They mark out the three main axes so they’re always visible. And that means you can see exactly how your changes affect the overall model. Neat.

Now you know how SketchUp architecture will help you create ‘amazing’ every day. Have you tried it yet? Why not give it a free trial?

ClothWorks SketchUp: Everything About This Extension

Posted on June 14, 2018July 14, 2023 by Lauren Donnebaum

Why Use Clothworks SketchUp Extension?

So, you’ve designed your tables, chairs and windows. Are you going to just leave them naked? Nope. You’re going to use the fantastic ClothWorks extension for draping cloth and ropes over components of any shape and size and for simulating flags and curtains.

Workflow functionalities include:

● Simple Grid and Smart Grid options for turning face or a set of faces within a component/group into a grid of faces, with a desired padding. An additional Purge Edges option can be used to remove the generated grid. These options are for manipulating cloth.

● Split Edges option for dividing an edge or a set of edges within a component/group into segments, with a desired padding. An additional Weld Edges option merges the split edges.These options are for manipulating wires.

● Loop Subdivision and Laplacian Smoothing options for subdividing and smoothing the resulting, simulated cloth (meanwhile preserving texture UVs).

● Drape and Undrape options for resetting and renewing cloth, rope, and pin orientations. This option is particularly useful for when changing cloth texture material.

● Record and Export options for recording simulation and then exporting the final animation into a sequence of PNG or JPG images, SKP files, OBJ files, and many other formats. A third-party

software, such as MakeAVI, can be used to combine a sequence of exported frame images into a video file.

Check out a few different ClothWorks tutorials below and have fun dressing up your modelling!

http://https://youtu.be/W6_3wn-j83c

http://https://youtu.be/HSf1rzhGL7I

http://https://youtu.be/cJTMcJc6FqI

Need more ClothWorks in your life? Download it here.

Need more tutorials on ClothWorks? Head over here.

Tips for Agile SketchUp Modelling: Part 2

Posted on May 25, 2018July 14, 2023 by Lauren Donnebaum

So, we covered some of the basics in the previous post and now we’re getting down to the finer details of ensuring our SketchUp modelling stays as lean as possible. Read on for more smooth and speedy tips and tricks.

Components vs. Groups

Always make Components instead of Groups whenever an object might repeat, or ever be used in another model.

Groups are great for grouping together components, such as grouping the landscaping elements together.

File Size: 101 kb

File Size: 135 kb. Even if the component instances are flipped, rotated, coloured from the outside, or scaled, the total file size stays small.

File Size: 143 kb. A model with 100 of the same tree component isn’t much bigger in file size than a model file with only 1 tree component.

Need 10,000 trees? Thanks to components, the total file size only rises to 1.5 MB. Each extra tree component instance adds only a fraction of a kilobyte.

Stand-In Components

Save a complex component to your hard drive as a reference back-up.
In the model, edit and simplify that component to a few lines, or a rectangle, so that it renders more easily than the “real” component.
Later, when it’s time to present the model, right click on the component in the model and select Reload.
In the Reloading navigation folder, find the saved component on your computer and select it.

The Select/Replace technique works just as well.

Use a low-poly tree, for example, until it is time to present the model.
When it’s time to show the model, import a high-poly model into the file (place it anywhere).
Select all of the low-poly components.
In the Components Window, right-click on the high-poly component and select “Replace Selected.”
Delete the first randomly placed high-poly component.

Turn off some Layers

If your model is acting sluggish, try turning off some layers that you don’t need to see right then.

Here we’ve deselected the roof and can also peer into the second floor.

Styles

If needed, switch to the “Shaded” style while building geometry, as textured materials can slow down rendering.

Turn off hidden geometry when not editing hidden lines.

Use a “fast modeling” style when building the model and save it for the “Working” scene.

Materials

Examine image file sizes before importing. Pre-crop and resize images before importing them into the model.
For some imported photographs it helps to right-click on model surface and select “Make Unique Texture” to further crop and reduce pixels. Undo this step if it makes it too blurry.
Use .jpg files wherever possible for imported tiling images, as they often have smaller file sizes than pngs. Some exceptions are site maps, logos, and images with transparencies.
Don’t choose a tiling image file when a flat formulaic colour will do. Example: You can usually use a flat shade of grey instead of “brushed aluminium.”

There we have it. Just a few of our favourite tips to ensure modelling in SketchUp stays as agile as possible!

Please do let us know in the comments below if you’ve got a great tip that wasn’t covered here or in Part One.

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Get Speedy with SketchUp: Our Top 5 Tips

Posted on April 18, 2018July 14, 2023 by Lauren Donnebaum

We’re all familiar with the old adage, ‘seconds turn into minutes and minutes turn into hours.’ So no matter if you’ve been using SketchUp for years or are a newcomer, we’ve compiled five of our favourite tips that will get you designing smarter – and faster.

Use the Shortcuts

Yep, we’re going with the most obvious one first. SketchUp comes with a predefined set of shortcuts, but you can customise these to best suit you. Using shortcuts will help you work faster, make your user interface cleaner, and allow for more screen space for you to model. When shortcuts are used efficiently, they’ll enable you to skip menus and toolbars and boost productivity. Some SketchUp users tell us they barely even use the standard menu for their work and keeping only those related to plug-ins that can’t be conveniently switched to a shortcut. Need more information on customizing the keyboard? Have a look here.

Guidelines are your friends

Actually, maybe they’re better than your friends. Unless your friends happen to be multi-directional and infinitely flexible, too. They really are an amazing tool for speeding up your workflow unless you have super-human abilities to mentally visualize the model you’re working one (if you do, tell us how!). Add parallel guidelines and check distances using the Tape Measure tool. Check angles and set slopes using the Protractor tool. Added bonus: Too many guidelines? Just clear ’em all out with one shortcut and start all over again.

Group first, Layer later

Remembering ‘group first, layer later’ is an excellent rule of thumb when using SketchUp. By grouping first you can separate your geometry while also ensuring that the base geometry of the grouped object stays on Layer0. Having two levels of information separation allows it to be enhanced by using the scene system for more than just saving viewpoints.

Photo Matching

Success in using SketchUp’s photo matching relies on two things. First, you must ensure you’re using unedited original photography. Second, you need to ensure your model matches the scale of the subjects in the photo. A further tip is to get the camera’s focal length to match to the photo you’ve selected. To do this, place your yellow origin mark at the spot on the photo where you will place your model. From there, align the green and red axes to the features of the subjects in the photo to ensure everything is following the same direction.

Get in the habit of Good Housekeeping

Because SketchUp models save all the information inside the file, you’ll need to keep this in mind – the information stays inside even if you delete it from the workspace. This can clearly slow down your file performance. Therefore, a good tip is to do some regular housekeeping in order to keep your workflow speedy and snappy. To clean the excess element, go to ‘Purge Unused’ command in the components, material and layers.

So there we have it. Five of our favourite tips for speeding up your SketchUp workflow.

Let us know in the comments if you have a great tip to share!

Enscape 2.2 now available for SketchUp!

Posted on April 10, 2018February 09, 2024 by Lauren Donnebaum

Enscape™ is a virtual reality (VR) and real-time rendering plugin for SketchUp. With just one click, you can start Enscape and within seconds walk through your fully rendered project – no uploading to cloud or exporting to other programs required. That’s pretty neat.

With the recent release of Version 2.2, we take a look at some of the nifty brand new features that will significantly streamline your workflow.

Multi Point Camera Tool

This camera tool swiftly allows you to add keyframes, change settings such as ‘depth of field’, ‘field of view’ or ‘daytime’ for each keyframe.

VR Interaction

Using this tool you can change the daytime, activate the ‘white mode’ and ‘outlines’ all while in VR. Now Oculus Rift, HTC Vive and Windows Mixed Reality are fully supported.

SketchUp Material Editor

The material editor allows you to specify PBR material parameters like albedo, normal maps and roughness.

Layered Screenshot

For post-processing your images that were created with Enscape, you can now export a ‘depth’ and a ‘material ID’ image.

White Background

By using the white background option, you are able to make changes to the background without changing the skybox scene lighting and reflections.

Batch Screenshot

With just one click, you can export all of your favourite views and compare different stages of the project.

As well as these fantastic new features, there are a host of other improvements.

Light Brightness

A slider has been added to control all light sources at once, allowing a faster calibration of your scene brightness.

Sound Export

The last release saw new sound options for video export introduced – now you can include sounds in exported videos.

Image Quality

Both lighting and image quality has been improved, along with many new parameters like Vignetting or variable Chromatic Aberrations.

Windows Mixed Reality

These headsets offer inside-out tracking – meaning you’re not restricted to one tracking area.

For more Enscape information, please check out our website

Any questions? Please email us at sales@elmtec.co.uk and we’ll be happy to help!

SketchUp Pro 2018 is here…

Posted on November 15, 2017July 14, 2023 by Kyle Wilkins

SketchUp Pro 2018 is here. Deliver work you’re incredibly proud of!

Here’s what’s new in 2018…

Smarter Sections:

Section Planes are essential to architectural composition, so there are some big improvements.

Named Sections – Just like components, section planes have names and symbols, making them easy to find, organise, and edit in Outliner. Now, it’s easy to access and manage sections whenever you need to.

Filled Section Cuts – Filled Section Cuts are now baked into SketchUp Pro. Select a colour for your fills via the Styles dialogue and bake them into templates.

Fast Sections – SketchUp features improved performance for models that use section planes to hide large amounts of geometry. The more geometry you section off, the more you’ll benefit!

Make Better Drawings

Scaled Vector Drawing – Need to add linework that’s not in your model? Create a scaled drawing in LayOut and sketch over a 3D model to flesh out your project. Or draw from details to scale from scratch directly in LayOut

DWG Import – Import a DWG into LayOut and find illustrations already scaled to paper size. Now SketchUp projects can live side by side with CAD linework and take advantage of DWG libraries everywhere. LayOut A+: plays well with others.

Drawing Better – Inferencing, chamfering and filleting, arcs, offset arrays, selections: LayOut is even better at everything you need to draw details or create beautiful illustrations at scale.

Got BIM?

Ultimately, ‘BIM’ is about using information in your model to make better buildings. The focus is to help users embed and manage information in a SketchUppy way.

Advanced Attributes – SketchUp now features Advanced Attribute fields for a component’s Price, Size, URL, Type, Status, and Owner. So now it’s even easier to embed projects with useful information.

Aggregated Reports – Generate Report now aggregates component data so you can do things like configure reports to sum parts and quantities for schedules and cutlists, or create detailed estimates by adding up prices by layer. It’s time to crunch model data!

IFC Import/Export – BIM works best when information moves freely between applications. You can rely on IFC in SketchUp to transfer the attributes you assign and manipulate in project.

There’s more…

Outliner – While adding support for Section Planes, SketchUp have improved Outliner’s overall load performance and sort order so that your component names load in alphabetical and numerical order.

Drawing Improvement – Draw a rectangle about its center using modifier keys. Use simplified inferencing options for line and arc drawing. Employ quicker control for rotated rectangles. Small, smart changes that help you draw exactly what you want.

STL Import/Export – The SketchUp STL extension is by far the most popular download from Extension Warehouse. Going forward it might not be, because now SketchUp natively supports the import and export of STL files (on both desktop and web).

Preferences Refactor – Improved SketchUp and LayOut preferences so that they are organized and migrated the same way between version upgrades. It should be easy to use the latest, greatest versions of our software!

Mac Improvements – For Mac users, anti-alias settings have been added. Go to SketchUp > Preferences > OpenGL to control the pixel blending, which is the resolution of smoothness in your geometry.

SAAW Line – SAAW (Stippled Anti-Aliased Wide) Lines are an entirely new way that SketchUp renders lines (e.g., edges, axes, guides, text/dimension leader lines, rubber band lines as you draw, component bounding boxes, section plane borders/cuts… ) Sounds pretty fundamental to SketchUp, right? It is, and the good news is that you should barely notice it. This type of line rendering is supported by WebGL and required by OpenGL 3.0, as well as the technologies we expect to use for years to come. We won’t be talking to our users much about this directly, but it’s good for the inner circle to understand more about how drawing works!

LayOut

Better LayOut, Much Better Drawings

LayOut is where people harvest their 3D work in SketchUp to produce excellent drawings. The SketchUp commitment for LayOut is to help professionals make much better drawings, much quicker, and with as much control as they need.

Scaled Vector Drawing – Now you can use LayOut’s vector illustration tools to draft in 2D at scale. Use your SketchUp model as a base for accurately scaled construction details, or just sketch a detail from scratch in LayOut (which is what a lot of LayOut users want to do). Re-set scales as you wish and your work will resize as necessary. As you would expect, your scaled illustrations are fully supported by LayOut’s Dimension and Label tools.

DWG Imports – One reason that drawing in 2D at scale is important is that a lot of LayOut users are trying to work with imported AutoCAD geometry via the DWG format. So in this release, we’re introducing LayOut’s ability to import DWG files. DWG projects import at scale and support the pages, title blocks, and blocks. Even better, LayOut users can now help themselves to the vast world of free DWG libraries. And yes, we also improved the quality of DWG files you export from LayOut.

Group Edit – To support scaled drawings, we made a juicy change we think LayOut regulars will notice right away: Editing grouped entities in LayOut now works just like it does in SketchUp. That means it’s way easier to draw and manipulate grouped entities. LayOut users can also control “rest of document” visibility when editing within a group.

Drawing Tool Improvements

For 2018 there will be a range of improved drawing tools in LayOut. Inferencing, chamfering and filleting, arcs, offset arrays, selections: LayOut will be better at everything you need to draw details or create beautiful illustrations.

Multi Viewport Dimensioning – What sounds like an enabling physics concept for teleportation is actually a pretty simple LayOut idea. Users will be able to draw dimensions across SketchUp viewports in order to create a specific section detail.

Precise Dimensions – LayOut dimensions can now be as precise as SketchUp dimensions. That’s up to 0.000001 inches. Do the math: that means LayOut can show the decimal equivalent of 1/64” (0.015625”).

Advanced Attribute Labels – Like all of the information in your model, SketchUp’s new advanced attributes are easily available when drawing LayOut labels.

Other LayOut Improvements

Entity Locking – Similar to group editing, locking entities is fundamental to how many people organize and navigate projects (both models and documents). Now you can easily lock individual LayOut entities to cut down on accidental selections.

Unicode Font Support – With Unicode font support, LayOut will work much better in languages that don’t use Roman characters.

Want to know more? Contact Us or Visit our website

New! SketchUp License Manager

Posted on February 07, 2017July 14, 2023 by Kyle Wilkins

SketchUp have just launched a greatly improved SketchUp License Manager (a.k.a License Wizard) – and it’s now live for all to use.

A far away place where you can get close to your SketchUp Pro license information and even predict the future with them! (well, view your renewal dates).

Check it out, here

SketchUp Pro 2017 – A look at the new Smart Offset

Posted on January 16, 2017July 14, 2023 by Kyle Wilkins

The SketchUp team are always sharpening their ‘heuristics’, the ins and outs that make SketchUp quick and precise. In SketchUp Pro 2017, the Offset tool has been improved.

The new Offset tool avoids overlapping and self-intersecting geometry. Clean offsets, every time you hit ‘F’ (even in LayOut!). Take a look at our video which demonstrates the offset tool at work.