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.

You can now use SketchUp with Allen/Iano’s Fundamentals of Building Construction book

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..

My SketchUp Book is Out!

This is an exciting week! My book “Architectural Design with SketchUp” is now available from all of the online booksellers and should be in stores soon, too. After a year of writing and a few months editing and finalizing, it feels really good to see the final product now on store shelves and on Amazon’s […] Read more..

2012 SketchUp 3D Basecamp Recap

Now that the fourth SketchUp 3D Basecamp is over and the participants are heading home, it’s time to look back and recap some of the news and things that happened at the event. But first I have to say that Trimble’s SketchUp gang has yet again put together an amazing event in Boulder, their hometown. I […] Read more..

What’s Your Favorite Place at UMass?

I finally got around to writing something about an exciting project that I completed last year at UMass (and which I presented at the Google Geo User Summit 2011 in the meantime). This is the crowdsourcing website application where students, faculty, alumni, employees and visitors to UMass can submit their favorite places on our campus. […] Read more..