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Spread a bit of 'appiness

After a fallow period, when Sketchup was owned by Google, and nothing much seemed to happen to it – despite widespread adoption – the popular 3D building design application, now part of the Trimble stable, is forging ahead with a number of interesting new apps and extensions that take advantage of its easy-to-use 3D modelling tools and 3D Warehouse, the Sketchup repository for customer inspired designs. . Tools like Trimble MEP Designer, Layout for turning models into sets of drawings by adding model views to pages, choosing drawing scales, and adjusting line weights, etc. Sketchup Make, a fun, free 3D drawing tool for anyone interested in 3D design, and loads more from a community of developers using the Ruby API to produce apps to solve the kind of 3D modelling problems that might otherwise leave you scratching your head.

Typical of these is Modelur – free-of-charge as it is still in beta-testing mode – which adds a new level of functionality to mass modelling using Sketchup. Available in Extension Warehouse, Modelur speeds up urban design by allowing developers to apply modular values to designs, which, in the simplest terms, calculate instantly the number of storeys you will get in an extrapolated building based on its height and the height of each storey, plus much, much more, - a rapid design tool with automatic responses to changes in the mass model.

David Chadwick

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