Alex Schreyer's Blog, Projects, Books, and 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..
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).
This is a bit off topic but I just discovered aviary.com. If you haven’t checked out their image editing tools, give them a try. They are (for the most part) free, online and surprisingly powerful (for an online-only application). There is even an online community for sharing and discussing the final creations. So what will […] Read more..
There are now so many free 2D CAD drafting programs available out there that it is almost amazing why Autodesk’s AutoCAD LT is still selling (let alone their recently updated software AutoSketch). Some examples are: DraftIt, Solidedge 2D, D-CAD-L and there are more, I just can’t remember all the links. Here’s the new contender for […] Read more..
This looks like a great idea. I was wondering how to work easily in SketchUp on a Tablet PC. The main drawback was always the lack of a wheel-mouse. This might be great for community charrettes where the actual model gets modified during discussions. Get the how-to on this forum page: Sketchup & tablet pc: […] Read more..
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.