With the recent introduction of SketchUp 2024 came one change in functionality that has the community talking here and here. In 2023, when you went to the File > Save As... dialog, you had all of the SketchUp versions available all the way back to version 3 (Why not version 2? That's when I got into SketchUp!) as a file format option (see image below). With 2024, this has now gone away and files can "only" be saved in the version-less SketchUp file format that was introduced with SketchUp 2022.
SketchUp Desktop 2023
SketchUp Desktop 2024
In principle, the version-less format (which, by the way, has with the 2024 version also been introduced for LayOut) is a very convenient thing: You can open a newer file in an older version (albeit with a warning that some functionality may be lost). That makes working in computer labs (which are notoriously slow to update) and other environments much easier. It is also VERY MUCH better...
In this (beginner!) video tutorial I give a very basic overview of the process needed to create a SketchUp extension from scratch and then distributing it as an RBZ file. Admittedly, this isn't completely from scratch since I am starting with a template file that you can simply download from this site, but the result is a very basic yet fully-functional SketchUp extension.
Want to learn more about Ruby scripting? This video does not cover much of Ruby scripting, but you can read up on that topic in Chapter 7 of my book.
Tutorial Video
https://youtu.be/fDV92tkzTh0
Links
Extension template files - You can download those from my website here.
SketchUp Ruby API - SketchUp's official API reference.
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Are you using SketchUp Pro on multiple computers? As I mention in Chapter 2, it may make sense to leverage one of the many cloud storage services (that you may already be using) like Dropbox, OneDrive, GDrive, etc. to make your life easier by synchronizing those. In essence, using the approach presented here, you can off-load extensions that you want to have available on both machines onto a shared drive, and then you load them back from the respective computers using the script shown below.
Tutorial Video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mI6FvENlIno
Tutorial Steps
Step 1: Designate a folder on your cloud drive
First, designate a folder on your cloud-synchronized drive as the Plugins folder. As you can see in my example below, I am using OneDrive (at C:/Users/<username>/OneDrive/SketchUp/Plugins), but you can use any other service, too (e.g. for Dropbox on Windows it would likely be C:/Users/<username>/Dropbox/). Of course, for this to work you need to have a cloud-synchronized local folder, not just an online folder. And that folder...
AI can create a box from a text prompt and even show a completion message
Just like everyone else these days I have been trying out OpenAI's ChatGPT and Microsoft's Bing (which now also uses the same AI - artificial intelligence - engine). One of my lines of exploration (beyond "what does this thing know about me?") was the question whether it can auto-generate SketchUp Ruby code with AI. And - as it turns out - it can do that. Albeit with some caveats.
As a start, you can go to ChatGPT and (after signing up) ask a reasonably specific question like "Which Ruby code would draw a box in SketchUp?". That would spit out somewhat appropriate code that you can just paste into e.g. the Ruby Code Editor. Apparently the SketchUp API is part of its knowledge base and generating SketchUp-specific Ruby code is thus well within its grasp. You could even refine the query with a comment like "Isn't there...
In this tutorial I am demonstrating how you can import geometry that was created in SketchUp (and an image) into Trimble Creator so that we can add parametric behavior to it. I cover the basic import workflow, model cleanup, texturing, and parametric sizing here.
Trimble Creator is a tool/service that allows you to create parametric "Live Components" for SketchUp and lets you come up with some cool designs (or product configurators). You can try it for yourself at creator.trimble.com. If you like, you can modify and download the Live Component that I created in this tutorial here.
Tutorial Video
https://youtu.be/pOpmThy1KA8
Have you tried Trimble’s Creator yet? Let me know below in the comments what you think about it.
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