Alex Schreyer's Blog, Projects, Books, and More
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..
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..
The Daily CatchUp The first news about SketchUp is news itself. To be more to the point, the folks at SketchUcation.com have just launched an interesting news portal. It is called The Daily CatchUp and it was created to bring frequently updated news to us SU users. So far, posts seem to follow the major topics […] Read more..
Shells and tension structures (cable nets or fabrics) are beautiful structural elements that provide a very lightweight organic shape with a visually clear structural language. When it comes to creating these, however, specialized tools are required since the underlying math is anything but trivial. If you want to work with shells or tension structures, try […] Read more..
A few days ago, a new tool for SketchUp was released. It’s called FreeScale 2.0 and it allows to do a lot of geometry manipulations that SketchUp by itself wasn’t able to do. It should be a default plugin for any serious SU-user. The links below lead to this and other great geometry deformation tools. […] Read more..
I just released a new SketchUp plugin. Its main function is to load other plugins. Here’s a screenshot of the main menu options: You can find a detailed description (and the download link) on the project page. Here are the feature highlights: Browse the main web plugin repositories and then load any plugin into SketchUp. […] Read more..
This SketchUp extension was created out of a need for having extensions available in a “locked down” computer lab setting (similar to my solution for AutoCAD). It also provides an easy way to use extensions in SketchUp without having to install them – therefore making SketchUp start (and possibly run) faster. In addition, you can use this tool to run any external ruby code (e.g. for development purposes).