More from Google: 3D Warehouse changes

On the heels of the announcement that SketchUp has been sold to Trimble comes another announcement from Google, this time related to Google Earth. As described in various press releases and posts, Google will – among other changes – implement automated building (and vegetation!) generation from flyover data for major cities. The following video explains this: […] Read more..

Update now to SketchUp 8 Maintenance Release 3

The SketchUp folks yesterday released a maintenance update for SketchUp: Official Google SketchUp Blog: Announcing SketchUp 8 M3. Get it now to keep your favorite 3D modeling software running smoothly. A list of updates  is here: The following issues have been fixed SketchUp can crash when using Ruby plugins that call Ruby observers. In this release […] Read more..

Google SketchUp sold to Trimble

As announced today, Google has sold their widely popular 3D modeling application, SketchUp, to Trimble, a company that focuses on GPS- and heavy-construction hardware and software (for example, the steel and concrete BIM software Tekla belongs to Trimble). This is a very interesting and at least on the surface quite appropriate move. After all, SketchUp […] Read more..

Project #22 in the Daddy Handbook: A Catapult

Because she saw one at her school’s science fair, last week our youngest daughter asked me to help her build a catapult. Feeling intrigued by the idea of putting together something that shoots something else but not wanting to go overboard (you never know what kids do with these), I came up with this design. As […] Read more..

My Students Model Amherst College in 3D

BCT Students in my BCT 420 and ECO 697SB classes just finished modeling 30+ buildings at Amherst College in 3D. Once approved by Google, those will appear in the official “3D Buildings” layer in Google Earth. Follow the link below to watch a video or download the KMZ file for Google Earth: http://blogs.umass.edu/bct420-schreyer/student-work/amherst-college-in-3d

Turner Construction uses my Ruby Code Editor Plugin!

I just noticed something familiar in the images in Google’s latest blog post on the Turner Construction SketchUp Pro casestudy: That window in the right side of the screen is of course my Ruby Code Editor plugin! Great to see it put to such good use. Google’s post shows nicely how Turner uses SketchUp Pro […] Read more..

Creating an RBZ Plugin for SketchUp

The following is a cross-post from my other site http://sketchupplugins.com. When you are done creating your new plugin, feel free to add it to the index on http://sketchupplugins.com. It’s free and easy. Learn Plugin Developement There are many tutorials, resources and forums available online that will help you get started. Use the following list as a springboard: […] Read more..