Architectural_Design_with_SketchUp

Architectural Design with SketchUp
Beyond using it for shaping humanoid and animalshaped
blobs, you can benefit from its capabilities to create
rocks, beanbags, jewelry, and much more.
Another plugin that lets you freely deform any shape
(based on an encircling grid of points) is the SketchyFFD
plugin by C. Phillips. It is free, and you can get it from [5,6].
Sculpt Tools by BTM also lets you modify meshes by
sculpting. It is free, and you can download it from [5, 6].
Vertex Tools by thomthom is another commercial
plugin ($20) that helps edit vertices on objects such as
surfaces. You can select vertices smoothly and then modify
them. You can get it from www.thomthom.net/software/
vertex_tools.
Tools on Surface
By Fredo6—Free [5, 6]
When you work with surfaces, at some point the need
will arise to “draw” on them. One example is creating a
line that needs to connect two points on the surface but
can’t leave the surface (a so-called geodesic line).
This plugin allows many other geometric shapes to
be drawn on a surface. The accompanying image illustrates
this by showing two lines extending from edges of
the surface on one side to the other side’s midpoint. You
can also see how easy it is to create circles on a surface.
You can use this tool to section a surface for application
of different materials. You can also use it to help you construct
shapes that are defined by the surface’s geometry.
Weld
By R. Wilson—Free [4]
To be able to use some tools in SketchUp, lines need to
be connected into a polyline. This allows all of the lines
to be selected and modified as one object. This plugin
adds the ability to “weld” many individual (attached)
lines into a polyline.
Table 4.1 lists some additional plugins for modeling with SketchUp.
Table 4.1: Some Other Useful Modeling Plugins
92
Name
Description
Fredo Tools (Fredo6) Various smaller tools for editing [5, 6]
ExtrudeAlongPath (TIG) Extrudes a shape along a path [3]
Fillet (Cadalog)/Chamfer Along Path (A. Joyce) Two plugins that add these missing features [3]
MakeFaces (T. Burch) Creates faces where possible [4]