I am very excited to be announcing the release of the second edition of my book "Architectural Design with SketchUp" today!
For this edition, I went back through the text and updated and improved a lot of content. As before, my main goal was to keep it relevant for as large a variety of SketchUp users as possible and at the same time provide thorough yet easy to follow examples and tutorials.
I am also very excited to announce a completely new chapter on physically making things with SketchUp that includes 3D printing, CNC cutting, and other techniques. Lots of fun stuff!
As before, this second edition will use the companion website at http://sketchupfordesign.com/the-book where you can find free sample chapters, videos, references, 3D models, and tutorials.There are also now over 30 videos that accompany the book and can be accessed using the instructions in the book.
Interested in getting the book? Check out Amazon or Wiley.
Here's the official press release:
3D Modeling in SketchUp and Digital Making Come Together in Second Edition of “Architectural...
Just a quick heads-up: The SketchUp folks just posted a set of videos that explain how to create better models for sharing on the 3D Warehouse. I am linking to the videos and post here because I have way too often come across models where the scale was off, the component nesting didn't make sense, textures were too detailed etc. This is especially crucial if there might be a desire to 3D print them later.
Check out the videos and original link below for more information...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PL-bndkJaV8A75zuNAf0A5NCfF8beEve7V&v=_JHWKf0D070
Original Link
What makes a great 3D Warehouse model? A checklist…
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UPDATE:Unfortunately this service is no longer available.
One of the hardest tasks with 3D printing with SketchUp is often making something that has not been modeled properly 3D printable. This means that whatever geometry you are given needs to be turned into a "watertight" or "manifold" solid. In SketchUp there are a bunch of extensions that help with this task (namely Solid Inspector and Solid Solver). But even they can't automatically fix a model like the one shown in the 3D viewer and images below. Fortunately for us, SketchUp and iMaterialize just announced a solution that is baked into 3D Warehouse.
An Example
As you can see, this model is an intersection of three shapes (made without using SketchUp's Intersect tool), where I removed two faces and introduced a small triangular hole in one of the faces.
I then uploaded this model to the 3D Warehouse the usual way (File > 3D Warehouse > Share Model...) and made sure the checkbox at the bottom was checked.
After a...
As I describe in chapter 3 of my book, a component-based modeling workflow makes a lot of sense. It allows you to use a hierarchical model organization, work with attributes, dynamic components and - most recently - Industry Foundation Classes (IFC). I covered this approach at Trimble's SketchUp 3D Basecamp in Vail earlier this year. You can view the entire presentation as a video below:
Tutorial Video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWUyyP9v6hw
If you are interested in Dynamic Components, also watch Eric Schimelpfenig's presentation on "Dynamic Components, Greatest Hits, Vol. 1".
P.S. This a similar presentation to what I gave at Trimble's Dimensions 2014 conference last week.
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This is What's New...
Depending on who you ask and how those people use SketchUp, it is quite likely that they will hone in on different favorite elements in the 2015 release of SketchUp, which came out just this week and parallel to Trimble's Dimensions user conference in Las Vegas (which I attended, hence the late post). High on many people's wishlist was 64 Bit support, so that is likely what will get mentioned most. Others will find the new IFC (Industry Foundation Classes) importer extremely useful. Here is my perspective on the new features:
The performance improvements from 64 Bit support, face-finder improvements, and the "fast styles" labels are significant. Even with a thorough, component-based workflow (as I described in Chapter 3 and in my Basecamp presentation) especially large models could in the past bog SketchUp down quite a bit. Things should now get much smoother, especially on powerful machines.
The now built-in IFC importer is a tremendous addition! This allows SketchUp to at least...
