Numbering vertices in SketchUp

As it turns out, I need to revisit my centroid plugin for SketchUp. While it accurately calculates area properties for a face that does not contain internal (and fully enclosed) openings, it apparently gets it wrong as soon as an enclosed opening is present (like the face in the top-right corner of the image above). […] Read more..

Summer is over!

Summer is officially over in a few days and the semester has been on its way again for two weeks now. This means I can finally catch a breath and get back to posting on my own blog. But before I get back to CAD and wood topics, one trip should be mentioned: Among the […] Read more..

Autodesk sells something for $2.99! SketchBook Mobile for the iPhone/iPod Touch

Now that’s a very interesting surprise! After releasing a rather useless “Fluid” application (actually a technology preview) on the iPhone a while ago, Autodesk this time released a winner. SketchBook mobile is a nice sketching application. Other than most similarly-minded iPhone software, it has nice brushes and even boasts a layer system. Here is a […] Read more..

Hot 3D (SketchUp) models

Oh, dear – maybe the title goes a bit too far. It’s not about what you may think this is about… This really is about combining temperature and virtual 3D models of buildings. Click on the image below to get an idea of what I mean. For this project I took a lot of thermography […] Read more..

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’s solar study has evolved!

Turns out Autodesk’s purchase of Ecotect does not limit their offerings to one additional piece of software. It even sprouts some very useful off-shoots. A first glimpse at new energy-integrated planning tools offers the recently released Solar Radiation Technology Preview for Revit Architecture and Revit MEP. This software, which has been published on the Autodesk […] 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..