3D Basecamp in Vancouver is a Wrap!

3D Basecamp in Vancouver is a Wrap!

by Alex SchreyerNo Comments
First impression for all attendees The SketchUp 3D Basecamp (and Bootcamp) user conference that just wrapped up its weeklong stay in beautiful Vancouver, BC, Canada, is the latest in a series of bi-annual meetings. The organizers again chose an inspiring venue and the main difference with previous conferences was that the 2000 iteration never happened due to a well-known global event. Therefore, attendees were four years out from their last meetings and hence quite excited to see each other again. Now, that is a pretty nice location for a conference! Everyone who knows this city knows how nice the conference location in the convention center is (or is it "centre" - we are in Canada, after all). The only disruption came when cruise ships departed next door with their horns blaring. I gave four talks on different topics at this conference. Below are the cover slides for those. When I get back home, I'll post more here about various details that I just didn't...
Read More
Floor Flatness Check in SketchUp with Point Clouds

Floor Flatness Check in SketchUp with Point Clouds

by Alex SchreyerNo Comments
As I covered in last week's post, Trimble recently released a new point cloud extension for SketchUp, Trimble Scan Essentials For SketchUp. In today's post and video, I am using this tool to perform some analysis with the same 3D point cloud data that I introduced earlier (a scan of our classroom). I am basically checking how level the floor in our classroom really is by using what is aptly called a "floor flatness analysis". This approach is useful to verify any concrete work, especially if tolerances were defined in the specs. As you may have guessed already - our classroom's floor is not overly flat at all in some areas. My solution uses the extension's Inspection Map feature and simply compares the floor scan's points to a planar reference surface. This then results in a color-coded map that nicely illustrates where the ridges and valleys are. You can even label individual points and produce well-documented reports from this. Of course, the...
Read More
Point Clouds in SketchUp – Much Improved!

Point Clouds in SketchUp – Much Improved!

by Alex SchreyerNo Comments
The new Scan Essentials extension in SketchUp A few days ago, the Trimble folks announced the release of a new point cloud extension for SketchUp, Trimble Scan Essentials For SketchUp. This came on the heels of their release of version 2020.1 of SketchUp Pro. And if you asked me, being able to easily work with point clouds in SketchUp is absolutely the most exciting feature of this year's release cycle! TIP:Never heard of point clouds? Check out this Wikipedia article as a primer. Up until recently, Trimble produced the Scan Explorer extension for SketchUp that allowed you to load a point cloud and extract construction points, planes, etc. into the 3D model. The workflow was a bit clunky in that the cloud would never load into the modeling environment but remained in the viewer dialog. This is now much improved in this new extension. I should mention at this point that there are also other LIDAR and point cloud extensions for SketchUp, most notably...
Read More