Most Popular SketchUp Plugins

After working a while with SketchUp, every 3D modeler will invariably find out that the best thing about this software is that it can easily be extended using free plugins. If a function is not available in plain (free) SketchUp, then chances are actually quite good that there is a plugin available on the internet […] Read more..

AutoCAD Extreme Makeover

Just a few more days until the updated roster of Autodesk products arrives. In the meantime, I came across this screenshot from our good ol’ CAD application, which apparently now has been renamed “Raptor”. While the name should give it more bite, the user interface comes across featuring a sleek and stylish dashboard.   Source: […] Read more..

Autodesk Polishes its Green Thumb

It seems like this is the year for industry consolidations in the technology field. After Microsoft’s bid for Yahoo and their purchase of Caligari it is now time for Green Building Studio to be acquired by a much larger company, Autodesk in this case. In an announcement that just fluttered into my inbox, GBS acknowledges […] Read more..

There’s a new Kerkythea in Town

After a year of amazing development work, the team behind the freeware rendering engine Kerkythea finally released the 2008 version. It is called “Echo” and features some major improvements. While the most noticeable one will be the redesigned sleek user interface (it now has scrollable material list menus!!!), some under-the-hood improvements are worth mentioning, too. […] Read more..

It’s history repeating…

Now this one ought to be quite interesting. Microsoft just bought out Caligari, maker of the 3D modeling, animating and rendering software TrueSpace. Is this a new, free SketchUp in the making? Microsoft wants to use the software for their Virtual Earth platform – similar to Google using SketchUp for their Google Earth platform. This […] Read more..

Nice match: Carbon neutral design with Revit and GBS!

Greenbuildingstudio.com, the green-design web-extension for your cad software online service has just announced their third overhaul (i.e. v. 3.0). With more and more architecture and engineering offices embracing parametric building design (catchword: BIM = “Building Information Modeling”), this is a great tool to run a quick industry-standard (DOE-2) energy check on a virtual building and […] Read more..

Where are my AutoCAD settings???

(Or: Customizing AutoCAD in a computer lab with restrictive user permissions) I am teaching several CAD classes and our computer labs are all set up with very restrictive (currently Windows XP) user rights. And that makes sense. After all, I don’t want to find out at the beginning of class that half of the computers […] Read more..