UMass Press Release: Alexander Schreyer, director of the building and construction technology (BCT) program, has revised and expanded “Fundamentals of Residential Construction” to produce the fourth edition of the guide to professional construction of single-family and multifamily homes. Schreyer joins Edward Allen, formerly of MIT, Yale University and the University of Oregon, and Robert Thallon […] Read more..
Today’s opening of the T3 building in Minneapolis marks a spectacular milestone: The construction of the tallest contemporary heavy-timber building in the US so far! I am saying “so far” because as this trend continues, it will surely by surpassed in height very soon. Completion of the T3 building continues a recent trend of larger, […] Read more..
When I initially made my Place Shapes Toolbar extension for SketchUp, I created it with a weird unit convention that used one foot as base size in the US and one meter everywhere else. That did not make much sense at all, because even in the US, folks might want to use millimeter-sized shapes for 3D printing […] Read more..
As you may know, I have written a SketchUp extension that lets you follow SketchUp news (official and inofficial) and discussions right within SketchUp. You can install it from the Extension Warehouse or the SketchUcation PluginStore and then afterwards access it anytime you like from SketchUp’s Help menu. Because Yahoo recently discontinued its Pipes technology, I […] Read more..
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..
This extension adds a toolbar (and some menu items) that lets you easily place several common 3D shapes (geometric primitives).
When it comes to learning construction methods and systems (and, of course, the related materials), it is crucial for a student to understand how things fit together. Every construction system is an assembly of subparts (e.g. beams, bolts, decking) and often a layering based on various functional requirements (e.g. air barrier, insulation, structural sheathing,…). This […] Read more..