Alex Schreyer's Blog, Projects, Books, and More
Since my main interests at the moment are CAD/BIM on one side and structural wood design on the other, it might make sense to talk a bit more on this site about the combination of these two. To start this off, here’s a quick intro on using SketchUp for woodworking. Designing larger objects (i.e. structures) […] Read more..
Over the past while I haven’t gotten around to posting as much as I would have liked to. As a result, here are some SketchUp-related items that landed in my inbox and caught my eye. Create your own Augmented Reality with Google Sketchup (via PSFK). This looks very interesting and when I get some time […] Read more..
I just saw on a forum post that SketchUp 7 is out! Although the Google website still only shows SU6 for download, its shop now offers the new version for purchase, too. Until the new (free) version is available on their site, do this: To already download a copy, remember the old SU download link […] Read more..
This video is actually a bit older but it illustrates a great way to visualize data in 3D – using SketchUp. Data is loaded into SketchUp from an Excel file using a Ruby plugin and then plotted in 3D. In this case, geological data is presented for a geothermal drilling operation. Links: More videos at […] Read more..
Can’t wait to try out the new version of Grasshopper for Rhino. The latest major (well, a round-ish 0.5 at least) release is now available from McNeel.
Based on a recent need, I finally gave plugin-writing for SketchUp a try. The result is a plugin that calculates the centroid and area properties of a shape drawn in SketchUp. You can find more information and download it on its project page.
A little while ago, I had a need for calculating centroids for planar shapes in SketchUp. To be more exact, my students had the need since I gave them an assignment that required this. Not knowing of a plugin for SketchUp that would accomplish this feat, they did it in Rhino or AutoCAD instead.
To rid SketchUp of this shortcoming, I decided to re-use some old Pascal code of mine and try my hand at writing a plugin for this. Here is the result.