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SketchUp

SketchUp is an intuitive and easy to use 3D modeling program.

Download the FREE SketchUp Make 2017 desktop application Here.

SketchUp ramains popular amongst architects but also gained popularity with hobbyists during the late 2000s after Google released a free version in 2007. This helped encourage users to create 3D models and share them with the rest of the SketchUp community via the Google 3D Warehouse. In doing so they provided Google with an efficient means for [[Crowdsourcing]] content for their 3D mapping platform Google Earth.

Personal Experience

It was SketchUp that first got me interested in 3D modeling for architecture and planning. While tools like 3DSMax, Maya and Blender had many more features, SketchUp was simply much easier, quick and more intuitive to model with. Key to this was the simplicity of the user interface and efficiency of SketchUp's inferencing system which made modelling as easty as drawing by contextually locking the user's cursor and interactions to a particular point, edge, axis, or face as a reference. The SketchUp community also developed a large range of free plugins which further augmented the software.

While SketchUp remains as usable as ever the licensing situation changed when Trimble acquired SketchUp from Google in 2012. By that point Google had established new means for acquiring 3D geographic information at scale from aerial [[photogrammetry]] and [[LiDAR]] scanning. The free version of SketchUp was then migrated to a less powerful online version while the more powerful desktop version became a paid product.

Despite this an older version of the desktop application SketchUp Make 2017 is still FREE to use. Download the FREE SketchUp Make 2017 desktop application Here. Be sure to download SketchUp Make, NOT SketchUp Pro.

Tools & Software Integrations

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  • CleanUp by Thomas Tomassen - This plugin cleans up and optimises your SketchUp models. Key fiunctions include purging unused items, erasing duplicate faces, erasing lonely edges (disconnected lines), merging coplanar faces and more. Ultimately this reduces the polycount of your models to improve performance and visual quality in downstream applications. Use of CleanUp requires the plugin TT_Lib as a dependency.