Centroid and Area Properties Plugin for SketchUp

Alex Shreyer has posted a plugin written for his students. It calculates the centroid and area properties of planar shapes.

See Alex's centroid plugin project page for details.

Plugin: Free STL Exporter

CADspan is giving away a free SketchUp plugin for exporting a your model as an STL file used by 3d printers and CAM software.

The plugin provides several tools to ease the process of preparing a model for 3D printing:

-Resurfacer: Shrinkwrap a model into one continuous, solid mesh

-3D Print Visualization Style: A visual style that highlights problem areas in a model

-Layerize tool: Easily move all geometry within components and groups to a layer

-Smooth/Unsmooth: Toggle smoothing on a model's rounded geometry

via SketchUpdate

Plugin: Follow Me Rotate

wikii has release a new SketchUp plugin he called "follow me rotate". 

Plugin: Matchbox

Matchbox is a recent SketchUp plugin written by SketchUcation user antantant. 

See this thread for the download.

Plugin: SmoothStep Animation for SketchUp

Dale Martins (Whaat) has release a new plugin which "allows you to smooth out the jerky scene transitions in a SketchUp scene-tab animation."


Visit SketchUcation for the download.

20% Discount Offer from Hand Drawn Images

Last month I posted about a new company - Hand Drawn Images (HDI), who provide landscape texture collections for CAD and SketchUp users.  HDI was excited about the response to the post, and is offering readers a 20% discount on purchases for a limited time.

To get the discount, visit Hand Drawn Images, make a purchase, and use the Coupon Code: SketchUp when prompted.

New 3D Warehouse Features: Sharing & Collaboration for Models

Google has introduced some great new sharing features to 3D Warehouse - its online SketchUp model repository.

Sharing gives you control over who can view, download, and even edit your models.

It's now possible to make a model private, but invite people as either viewers or collaborators on the model. Collaboration does not happen real-time. As a collaborator, you would download the model, make your edits, and then re-upload it. The model owner would then accept or deny the changes. A history of changes is also maintained and previous versions of the model are made available for download.

The Official Google SketchUp Blog has a run-down of the new features, and Alex Schreyer has a write-up on how it works and how it is useful.