SketchUp to Revit to Solar Study

Expanding on yesterday’s post, I wanted to try out how I could take a building shell model that I originally created in SketchUp, take it into Revit 2010 and run a solar analysis on it using Autodesk’s new Solar Radiation Technology Preview for Revit Architecture and Revit MEP (download it from Autodesk Labs). And guess […] Read more..

Revit design whitepaper and new 3D Warehouse rules

Two interesting news items: CASE architects have developed an interesting whitepaper for Autodesk that illustrates nicely the conceptual design process in Revit 2010. In this paper, a highrise development is taken from the conceptual stage through some Ecotect solar analysis all the way to facade panelization using the new Revit tools. You can download the […] Read more..

SketchUp 7 is here!

I just saw on a forum post that SketchUp 7 is out! Although the Google website still only shows SU6 for download, its shop now offers the new version for purchase, too. Until the new (free) version is available on their site, do this: To already download a copy, remember the old SU download link […] Read more..

Visualizing Data with SketchUp

This video is actually a bit older but it illustrates a great way to visualize data in 3D – using SketchUp. Data is loaded into SketchUp from an Excel file using a Ruby plugin and then plotted in 3D. In this case, geological data is presented for a geothermal drilling operation. Links: More videos at […] Read more..

And there is SketchUp #2: The Free TrueSpace by Caligari

Competition is great, isn’t it? This is especially the case when big companies are fighting over a market segment. As I speculated earlier, Microsoft is now following Google’s lead and is releasing Caligari’s TrueSpace 7.6 for free. I am installing TrueSpace right now and will post some examples soon, but for now the capabilities seem […] Read more..

Reducing SketchUp File Sizes for Google Earth

One problem when exporting a SketchUp model that contains images as textures to Google Earth is file size. You do not want to have a building model that weighs in at more than 500kB. A 1 MB file may be justified for a very complex building, but anything beyond that will a) load slowly (remember […] Read more..