SketchUp 2025 is Here!

SketchUp 2025 is Here!

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...
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Dark Mode is Here! And so is Bluesky.

Dark Mode is Here! And so is Bluesky.

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...
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