So now that you have upgraded to SketchUp 2013 you should be facing the question: What to do with SketchUp's plugins in this release. After all, when you started the new software for the first time, it likely only had the default plugins installed that Trimble released with it. But there was also a new toolbar button for the Extension Warehouse! At this time, you have a few options. Let's look at them:
A) You are upgrading and you had plugins installed in the earlier version
With the new Extension Warehouse and the SketchUcation Plugin Store now available, which both include one-click install and easy updating, it makes most sense to get plugins that are hosted in these places through the respective installers. So even if you had installed specific plugins in a previous version of SketchUp, I would recommend to go to these tools first to find them (instead of simply copying the Plugins folder). So here's my suggested order of...
Anticipated by many and announced last year at 3D Basecamp, SketchUp 2013 is now out and available for download. If you are still using SU 8 (or dare I say even 7 or 6), swing over to their website and download the latest version. The free version is still free and there are upgrade options for the Pro version.
So what's new? Quite a few things. Here's the run-down:
Extension Warehouse
There is finally an official place where you can find the many plugins and extensions that are available for SketchUp (including mine). While all the other sites out there (Ruby Library Depot, SketchUcation, Smustard and even my sketchupplugins.com) did a great job accumulating these, the new warehouse is integrated right into SketchUp (just look for the toolbar button) and it features one-click installation and plugin updating as well as the usual app-store stuff of reviews, popularity stats and hopefully later: ratings.
This might have turned SketchUp into the first CAD application with an App Store!
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The folks over at SketchUcation recently released a plugin that allows you to a) browse their extensive collection of plugins and b) directly install them. Very nifty! The image above shows the search function (you can also browse by author or category) and the image below shows the install button.
Go ahead and try it out here.
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Have you ever wanted to…
make sure you never miss a blog post by the Trimble SketchUp folks?
stay up-do-date with your favorite SketchUp blogs?
follow what’s going on at SketchUcation?
keep an eye on Twitter and Facebook?
make sure you never miss any of my blog posts?
do all of this while you are working with SketchUp?
Then consider yourself lucky! I just posted a SketchUp News plugin that lets you do all of this – right inside SketchUp.
Even if you don’t usually use SketchUp plugins, this is the one to have!
Get your copy at the link below. Oh, and did I mention it is free?
http://www.alexschreyer.net/projects/sketchup-news-plugin/
Enjoy!...
I finally got around to updating my Ruby Code Editor to version 3.0. There are quite a few upgrades including: better environment stability (editor, scrolling, results, etc.), code completion for SketchUp classes and methods and a variety of other minor updates (including the fact that it now remembers the last file).
The following video gives a brief overview of the current version:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGWs9p2WZsg
As always, you can get this editor from my website (and look at the more detailed changelog or leave comments) at:http://www.alexschreyer.net/projects/sketchup-ruby-code-editor/
For more on what you can do with this tool, check out Chapter 6 in my book "Architectural Design with SketchUp".
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