Merry Christmas, Joyful Holidays, and a Happy New Year 2016!

For this year’s Christmas post, I went back to a simple rendering approach. Mixing some extruded shapes, eroded boxes, basic materials and a few lights makes for a nice, moody image. As always, all done in SketchUp (and Twilight). To you and your loved ones a peaceful and joyful holiday season and a happy and successful […] Read more..

Upgrading our Bath Fan Light – for Under $25

Our bathroom fan light was driving me crazy for a while now. No matter how much wattage I would put into it, the plastic cover only allowed for a very dim light to come out. And the arrangement of the bulb in the fixture together with the housing forced most light to emit downward and to […] Read more..

Second edition of “Architectural Design with SketchUp” is now available!

I am very excited to be announcing the release of the second edition of my book “Architectural Design with SketchUp” today! For this edition, I went back through the text and updated and improved a lot of content. As before, my main goal was to keep it relevant for as large a variety of SketchUp users as possible and […] Read more..

Place Shapes Toolbar Extension for SketchUp

This extension adds a toolbar (and some menu items) that lets you easily place several common 3D shapes (geometric primitives). While SketchUp’s native toolset allows you to create any of these shapes without too much effort, using this toolbar permits quick “solids-based” modeling where you only work with added and subtracted primitives to end up with a perfectly watertight object that poses no problems for 3D printing, for example.

Unwrap and Flatten Faces Extension for SketchUp

This extension allows the user to do three things: Unwraps non-coplanar faces (any shape objects, shells etc.) using an automatic (randomized) algorithm and then lays the resulting set of faces flat on the ground. This is done without creating any distortions. Lays any arbitrarily-oriented face or collection of coplanar faces flat on the ground (without distortion). Use e.g. in combination with a manual unfold tool or to make sure faces are perfectly horizontal. Projects a set of faces to one of the three main planes by smashing all faces flat. This creates distortions, of course.

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays and a Happy New Year 2014!

While Santa is getting settled in his new abode (looks like there is still some construction to do), it is time for me to wish you all wonderful holidays, a relaxing time with your family and friends and all the best for the new year! I hope to meet you, see you, email you or […] Read more..

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays and a Happy New Year 2013!

I sincerely hope this post finds you all happy and healthy. Enjoy your holidays (whatever you celebrate and wherever you are) and any time off that you can spend with your family. I wish you all a successful new year and all the best for your future endeavors. It remains to be seen whether politicians […] Read more..