AEC CAD/BIM, SketchUp, Timber Engineering, Web Design and more…
When I recently organized my many construction images, I realized that I had a rather large collection of pictures of various construction mockups. Those structures typically only serve a temporary purpose during construction and are then removed once a project is complete. It always seemed to me (as an educator) to be quite a waste […] Read more..
I just updated three of my most popular SketchUp extensions: Scale By (Image/Attractors/Equation) Tools, Random Tools, and Unwrap and Flatten Faces. Beyond squashing a handful of bugs, these are the most important new features: Scale By (Image/Attractors/Equation) Tools now lets you transform objects by proximity to other objects (“attractors”). Not sure what this means? Check […] Read more..
Joseph Kelly of MassConstruction.org visited our BCT program at UMass a few weeks ago for a tour of the Olver Design Building, our award-winning home at UMass. He also brought along his microphone and taped a two-part podcast with Peggi Clouston and me about the Design Building and the current wave of new MassTimber buildings. You […] Read more..
As anyone who follows our UMass social media feeds (@UMassBCT on Twitter and Facebook) knows, this fall we (the BCT program at UMass) organized an exhibit of some of our work under the title of “False Color”. This exhibit was up in the UMass Design Building since October 8 and will be taken down tomorrow, […] Read more..
I just updated my Unwrap and Flatten Faces SketchUp extension to version 2.4. You can now choose an option to colorize faces as they are being unwrapped. This provides a reference for reassembling those faces later. If an object is textured and you would like to preserve those textures, don’t turn this option on and […] Read more..
Whether you are working with paper or sheet metal, unfolding is a crucial step in the manufacturing process when you are starting off with a digital model in SketchUp. If you want to build something exactly as designed on-screen, then you will need to unfold complex shapes and lay them out flat for cutting. Of […] Read more..
I just updated my “Flatten Faces” SketchUp extension to include an unwrapping algorithm. This not only allows you to lay arbitrarily oriented faces flat on the ground but also to unwrap (or unfold) them first. Check out the video in this post to see how it works. As always, you can get or update this […] Read more..