News Blog Archives | SketchUp for Design

SketchUp 2025 is Here!

February 27, 2025March 5, 2025 by Alex SchreyerNo Comments

To properly introduce ThomThom - this version's scale figure - I decided to go with a Nordic look for this post's title image As of this week (February 25, actually), the latest iteration of SketchUp - version 2025.0 - is now available. Desktop users can click on the Help > Check for Update menu item and download it (or get it here) and iPad users can see new (version 7.0) features once the app updates. Users of the web app will apparently need to wait a little bit longer to see the new visualization features appear. What’s New in SketchUp? There are a bunch of new features, some of which were teased at last year's Basecamp/Dimensions conference. Let's dig into those... PBR Materials and Environments Now that SketchUp has a new graphics engine under the hood, it was apparently possible for the developers to implement not just ambient occlusion (which was introduced with SketchUp 2024), but also PBR (physically-based rendering) materials and environments. With those...

Dark Mode is Here! And so is Bluesky.

February 5, 2025February 5, 2025 by Alex SchreyerNo Comments

Well... at least on this web site it is. A few days ago, I went through the visual styles of this sketchupfordesign.com website and edited them so that dark mode is now available. You can see an example of this in the image below. One of my articles, now much easier on the eyes. As is good practice, I implemented this in a way that lets you - as the site reader - choose what you want to see. It is all based on what you have selected on your device as the preferred view style. I.e. if your operating system is set up to dark mode then you get dark mode. If not, then the site's design hasn't changed at all from before. Since I am hosting my SketchUp News viewer also on this site, it is now also available in dark mode, both on this site or in the SketchUp extension. See the image below for an example. The SketchUp News part of...

SketchUp 3D Basecamp (and Trimble Dimensions) 2024 – Recap

December 9, 2024January 16, 2025 by Alex SchreyerNo Comments

SketchUp's party was in the not-quite-rectilinear Frank Gehry-designed "Keep Memory Alive" event center After the 2022 3D Basecamp in Vancouver, Canada, it was time again this year for Trimble's bi-annual conference that covers everything relating to SketchUp. This year marked the first time that SketchUp's conference was co-located with Trimble's big (now annual) event, Dimensions. And since Dimensions had been in Las Vegas for many years, this year's 3D Basecamp used that location, too. Overall, the venue was great (as can be expected in Vegas)! Basecamp had its own space on the third floor of the Venetian's conference center, complete with a Knowledge Hub, Art Gallery & Lounge, an AR Exhibit Space, and a SketchUp Labs zone that allowed everyone to test unreleased features and provide feedback on SketchUp directly to the developers. But most importantly: This event is always a great time to check in with old friends and fellow SketchUp-pers and see which cool projects everyone is working on. Equipment at...

Never miss SketchUp News, Videos, and Articles with this Extension and (New!) Web App

June 6, 2024June 6, 2024 by Alex SchreyerNo Comments

I recently refreshed my SketchUp News extension. You can now stay on top of SketchUp News (from blogs, videos, forum discussions, and social media) in three ways: As before, with the SketchUp extension (download from the Extension Warehouse or here). On this website on the SketchUp News Viewer page. As an installed (Progressive) Web App. You can install it on your computer or phone/tablet with the instructions on the bottom of the SketchUp News Viewer page. This news dashboard updates every hour and features many of the sources that you are all following already - albeit in a convenient format and in a single place. Video https://youtu.be/Lwri-QGoRMw...

Adding AI Vision to SketchUp with OpenAI’s gpt-4o Model (Ruby Snippet)

May 16, 2024May 21, 2024 by Alex SchreyerNo Comments

Response to the prompt: "Is there anything wrong with this building?" Earlier this week, OpenAI released its new gpt-4o model. This model not only improves and updates its current AI models, but it also adds vision ability. As a result, a user can upload images and then the AI can identify things in the image based on a user prompt. There are some great examples of the new capability on OpenAI's website. Since I previously implemented the OpenAI connection with SketchUp using both plain Ruby code and a handy extension, I had to try out whether we can connect the two using these new capabilities, too. One use case for this could then be the ability to ask questions like "What may be missing in my model?" or "Is there a cat in the model?" (Not sure why you would ask the latter but it leads to a correct answer!) As it turns out, giving SketchUp this AI capability is not too hard...