The Google SketchUp Thread

[LeOn3]

Show off.

You are so right. English is still getting better, but now getting a answer in spanish?? No hablé, I am Dutch.

Van spanje ken ik alleen sinterklaas.   

Leon

[marc_reusser]

Show off.

You are so right. English is still getting better, but now getting a answer in spanish?? No hablé, I am Dutch.

Van spanje ken ik alleen sinterklaas.   

Leon

Sinterklass alleen gaat naar Spanje (Ibiza) voor de partijen.

Sorry...Ik ben dom ... , ik verwarde je met een ander lid uit Argentinië


Marc

[LeOn3]

Marc,

it's okay. I like these kind of answers, makes me smile. We all do not have to be serious all the time.

Leon

[marc_reusser]

Spent most of last night building an SU model for a cliet presentation today, then decided to play around with seeing what presentation/fun/creative effects I fould easily do in SU.....to experiment I built a simple box  house, and then played with the styles and text......probably no application for here...but there are a good range stuff one can actually do, without needing any photoshop, or sim program. This quick image took all of 10 mins, start to fin....all done directky in SU. The base style is "Ground-Glass", which was then mixed and modified to get different edge styles and line styles. The text is the "Crimefighter" style.


...anyhow....just some fun for a burnt-out brain.

[RoughboyModelworks]

Interesting Marc... something of a graphic novel feel to it.

Paul

[clevermod01]

Great thread. I'm learning tons.
Thanks keep it coming

[eTraxx]

Old thread .. but .. shrug .. why start a new one?

Shorpy had a photo titled "O Little Town: 1935" .. November 1935. "Bethlehem houses and steel mill. Pennsylvania."

I was curious about that apparently steep slope the houses are on. I brought the photo into Sketchup and used "Match Photo" on the steps (the Sketchup drawing is from that first concrete steps to the first wooden steps this side of the divider board thing-ie). Interesting how much compression the camera had as the houses are a lot further apart then I realized from the photo (I'm sure it was obvious to others on this forum). The Match Photo tool in Sketchup is pretty 'nifty' for converting a photo of a house to a drawing.

[marc_reusser]

Dont know if Ed has already mentioned this plug-in. Its a rendering plug-in for SU called "Shaderlight"....there is a free/basic version and a pay version that has more features.

The attached image shows the orig. SU model, and then some renderings done using some of the "Shaderlight" basic version presets.


Marc

[finescalerr]

I think I'd almost rather create models with 3-D software than actually build them; that's just too cool! -- Russ

[eTraxx]

I had meant to reply to this thread but my internet was crap for past few days. Turns out it was the freakin' wall cable connector thingie!

Anyhoo. I had Shaderlight working fine until they came out with a "New and Improved" version. Of course I had to delete the old version .. and now the new one won't work. 

Kerkythea is a free open-source renderer that even has a plug-in for Sketchup. Works pretty darn well. (just watch some of the images on the home page there .. )

I downloaded this 3d file from Google 3D Warehouse of an "Old Farm Truck". This is it displayed using Sketchup's renderer



I opened it up it Kerkythea .. and just randomly applied some materials I had. Huh. I don't have any rubber. Need to download some I guess. I used a Carbon fiber for the tires .. .. and various metallic paints for the truck. Silly maybe but it gives an idea of the power of Kerkythea .. and that's without any tweaking at all (I'm tweakless)

[finescalerr]

Fix the tires and frame the pic! -- Russ

[marc_reusser]

I had Kerkythea installed and it never seemed to run well for me, and the rendered images were always wierd looking, and the materials always rendered wierd/off, if they worked at all ...glad it works for you, I always thought it was a useful and great program judging from their site.


Marc

[marc_reusser]

Ed,

Have in all your research and printing have you tried the .STL impor/export for SU? (It's a straight plug-in....not affilliated with any mfr or pay service such as CADSPAN).

It's called "su2stl.rb"....I installed it and it seemed to put out an .stl file...but could not check the stl. file itself to see what the quality was.


For those doing stairs, roofs,slope calcs and other features, (IE architectural items) there is a plug-in called "cd_architect.rb" that will do these things automatically for you...IE when doing a stair, a tablke comes up where you can enter all or some of the parameters..rise, run. treads, steps, length, width, landing etc....and it will then autogenerate that stair for you...including railing height....granted it may not look design-wise like the stair you want, but that can be easily changed...at least the basic math and layout have been done for you.  It doese the same for roofs, and site features.


marc

[eTraxx]

Marc, I have that (or one similar) installed and CADspan .. but found a better way.

Download free program - http://meshlab.sourceforge.net/ .. blurb says ..

MeshLab is an open source, portable, and extensible system for the processing and editing of unstructured 3D triangular meshes.
The system is aimed to help the processing of the typical not-so-small unstructured models arising in 3D scanning, providing a set of tools for editing, cleaning, healing, inspecting, rendering and converting this kind of meshes.

I just use it to import the Sketchup .dae file and export as a .stl

then ..

Netfabb Studio basic .. will 'heal' .. fill open holes in the .stl file - http://www.netfabb.com/basic.php

also downloaded AccuTrans 3d .. will check for Water tightness
http://www.micromouse.ca/

free for 30 days then $20 .. but I have (for some reason I forget) am evidently running it from inside the zip file and it hasn't expired. Shrug

.. anyhoo .. that's what I've been using. I'm working on a plate girder bridge .. just exported, healed, checked for water tight, uploaded a over 2.5 meg file to Shapeways of a Cross-Girder Assembly using those prgs .. sweet! (and free which I like) .. http://www.shapeways.com/model/276797/cross_girder_assembly.html?gid=sg47858

[eTraxx]

For Russ ..