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..

SketchUp 3D Basecamp, here I come!

This Sunday, I will be heading to Trimble’s SketchUp 3D Basecamp in Boulder, Colorado. This year’s iteration of the Basecamp is promising to be a great event. There will be lots of presentations showing what can be done with SketchUp once one masters the basics. For example, rendering in SketchUp has a solid block on Tuesday’s agenda. […] Read more..

Maker Faire 2012 was a blast!

My family just spent an amazing day at the 2012 World Maker Faire in New York. It was a blast! Between the life-sized mousetrap and the kids coloring a Zipcar, there was so much to see and do. What amazed me most was the fact that almost every single booth had at least one 3D […] Read more..

Power tools for wood construction

Here are two videos that nicely illustrate how traditional timber framing (and even panelized light-framing) has evolved from the chisel to the CNC cutter and the nailing gantry. The first one is a more hands-on approach where power-tools are used to do individual cuts. The second one is a fully CNC-based process, where every single member is […] Read more..

Using robots.txt to your advantage to reduce server load

A little while ago, my hoster (1and1.com) whom I actually like quite a bit, decided that I was using too much of my fair share of the common server and decided to warn me that I was “abusing” the system. They told me that if I didn’t reduce my server load, I would have to […] Read more..

Google SketchUp sold to Trimble

As announced today, Google has sold their widely popular 3D modeling application, SketchUp, to Trimble, a company that focuses on GPS- and heavy-construction hardware and software (for example, the steel and concrete BIM software Tekla belongs to Trimble). This is a very interesting and at least on the surface quite appropriate move. After all, SketchUp […] Read more..