The following is a cross-post from my other site http://sketchupplugins.com. When you are done creating your new plugin, feel free to add it to the index on http://sketchupplugins.com. It’s free and easy.

Learn Plugin Developement

There are many tutorials, resources and forums available online that will help you get started. Use the following list as a springboard:

• Hello world!
• Distributing your plugin
• SketchUp API documentation
• SketchUp Ruby Cheatsheet
• Official SketchUp API Blog
• SketchUp Ruby Resources
• Ruby Code Snippets
• Ruby Documentation

You can also find great forums for discussion in the official Google Developer Forum or at SketchUcation.

The following concerns plugins written in Ruby (the programming language included with SketchUp’s free and Pro versions). It is a basic template to get you started. Also note that SketchUp has a C++ SDK (in case you intend to work with it from other software).

Although you can use any text editor to create a plugin, it might be a good idea to install my Ruby Code Editor plugin into SketchUp first. This allows you to experiment with Ruby scripting. You can then afterwards package your code in a plugin using the instructions below.

RBZ Plugin File Structure

The RBZ file format was introduced in Maintenance Release 2 of Version 8. Packaging a plugin this way allows a user to easily install it from SketchUp’s Preferences dialog.

To enable use of the RBZ-installer functionality, all files that make up a plugin must be packaged in one single compressed file (note that the RBZ file is simply a re-named ZIP file). The following is a minimal sample file structure. You can add as many other files and folders as necessary for your plugin. The entire contents of the compressed file will get copied into SketchUp’s Plugins folder on installation.

my_plugin.rbz (compressed file)
  |
  |-- my_plugin_loader.rb
  |
  |-- my_plugin (directory)
        |
        |-- my_plugin.rb

As a reference: SketchUp’s default Plugin installation folder can be found here (replace version number with current major version):

Windows: C:\Program Files\Google\Google SketchUp 8\Plugins\
Mac: /Library/Application Support/Google SketchUp 8/SketchUp/Plugins/

Plugin Template

It is a good idea to a) use SketchUp’s extension system and b) wrap your plugin in a Ruby Module. Below is some sample code to get you started. Replace “my” with your initials to keep things clean.

Contents of /my_plugin_loader.rb (in main directory)

require "sketchup.rb"
require "extensions.rb"

# Load plugin as extension (so that user can disable it)

my_plugin_loader = SketchupExtension.new "My_Plugin Loader",
"my_plugin/my_plugin.rb"
my_plugin_loader.copyright= "Copyright 2011 by Me"
my_plugin_loader.creator= "Me, myself and I"
my_plugin_loader.version = "1.0"
my_plugin_loader.description = "Description of plugin."
Sketchup.register_extension my_plugin_loader, true

Contents of /my_plugin/my_plugin.rb (in subfolder)

=begin
Copyright 2010, Author
All Rights Reserved
THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND WITHOUT ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
License: AuthorsLicenseStatement
Author: AuthorName
Organization: AuthorAffiliationOrOrganizationIfAny
Name: ScriptName
Version: ScriptVersion
SU Version: MinimumSketchUpVersion
Date: Date
Description: ScriptDescription
Usage: ScriptUsageInstructions
History:
 1.000 YYYY-MM-DD Description of changes
=end

require "sketchup.rb"
# Main code (start module name with capital letter)
module My_module
 def self.my_method
# do something...
end
 def self.my_second_method
 # do something...
 end
end
# Create menu items
unless file_loaded?(__FILE__)
 mymenu = UI.menu("Plugins").add_submenu("My Plugin Collection")
 mymenu.add_item("My Tool 1") {My_module::my_method}
 mymenu.add_item("My Tool 2") {My_module::my_second_method}
 file_loaded(__FILE__)
end

Tip: If you prefer to not have your plugin’s source code visible, then you can use SketchUp’s Scrambler to encrypt Ruby files.

Now that the holidays are almost here…

I wish you all a joyful and peaceful time. Wherever you are and whatever you celebrate, enjoy time with your family, rest, relax, take some time off and recharge. All the best for the new year. See you in 2012!

If you are using SketchUp, then it’s time for you to soon browse over to Google’s website and download the latest version (v.8 M2). Although this release is not a new version but rather a maintenance release (hence the “M2″), there are a few new features and a bunch of bugfixes.

So what’s new and exciting in this version? The new features are:

• A new plugin/extension file format and installation procedure
  Plugins can now be “packaged” in a ZIP file (which has the RBZ extension). This has the advantage that the end user does not need to worry about a plugin’s files and where they need to go. He/she simply needs to go into the program’s preferences and click the “Install Extension…” button. Done! Time for me to re-write my Plugin Loader plugin, I guess.
• New Ruby method to support this behaviour
  A developer can now program this behaviour into their own plogin using the new Sketchup.install_from_archive(path_to_rbz) method.
• Better COLLADA import/export
  SketchUp’s support for the COLLADA file format (with a DAE extension) has been improved and made more reliable.
• Advanced camera tools are now included in the Pro version by default
  This set of tools that was previously only available as an additional plugin is now included in the main installation. Even if you are not a cinematographer, an advantage of these tools is pre-visualizing how a real camera would see a scene.
• Pro trials stop working without a license
  In the past, when a trial for the Pro version ended, SketchUp would simply revert to the free version.  This option has now been removed – mainly to reduce user confusion.
• Support for the Mac’s Lion operating system

For more on the release:

• sketchup.google.com
• Official Google SketchUp Blog: Another important update for SketchUp 8
• Release notes for M2
• RBZs in SketchUp 8M2: Distribute Your Plugin as One File!

When I went to the 2011 Google Geo User Summit United States in Mountain View, CA this July, I had the chance to present two projects that I have worked on in the recent past here at the University of Massachusetts.

“Building a 3D World”

The first presentation was on our campus modeling project in which my students (mostly from the BCT 420 class) and I have been modeling the entire UMass campus using SketchUp for Google Earth. This is still an ongoing project because we are continuously refining the models. If you want to see the results, browse to the “01003″ ZIP code in Google Earth and make sure the 3D Buildings layer is turned on.

Due to the 3-dimensional nature of this talk, I decided to present it in SketchUp instead of Google Docs or Powerpoint…

“Finding Our Favorite Places”

In a second presentation, I talked about the UMass Favorite Places project in which people at UMass can show off their favorite places on campus by submitting a placemark and a short description. If you have your own favorite places on the UMass campus, feel free to add your own here.

Overall, my visit to Google was great fun and I enjoyed meeting many similarly-minded people. For a recap of the event, visit my other post.

(Images by Geoffrey Zub – @gzub and Nicole Drobeck. Thanks!)

While I am semi-comfortably seated on my United Airlines flight and traversing all three North-American time zones on my way back to Massachusetts, it’s time to recap what happened at the 2011 Google Geo User Summit United States over the last two and a half days*. Overall summary: Wow, was that ever great fun!!! If Google is good at two things, then it’s providing useful web-based tools and taking amazing care of their users.

The whole event started on Wednesday evening with a boathouse party at Shoreline Lake in Mountain View. It gave many of us a chance to reconnect with some friends from former summits and make new acquaintances. It was actually quite interesting how many east-coast folks I ended up meeting for the first time on the west-coast.

The main focus of the summit was how people used geo-based Google tools. To give you an overview: There are Google’s MapMaker (an addition to Google Maps that lets everyone add content to Google Maps as well as edit inaccurate maps) and Panoramio (a photo-sharing site where all photos are geo-tagged and will therefore show up accurately placed in Google Earth). Then there was 3D modeling, represented by SketchUp (Google’s 3D modeing software) and BuildingMaker (an online tool that allows users to easily create building models from oblique photography) to create 3D objects that are accurately geo-referenced and will therefore show up in Google Earth. As you likely know if you follow this blog, this third field (especially SketchUp) is my background but MapMaker offers some interesting new avenues that I will likely explore soon.

Attendees at the summit came from all walks of life. There were users that were simply interested in adding their knowledge of their neighborhoods to the official Google Map. Then there were federal employees whose job is to make the Census data presentable and usable. Another attendee was in charge of officially mapping the US-Mexico border. And finally, there was one person whose company had modeled Disney’s parks in 3D for Google Earth (check it out with your kids if you haven’t done so yet – it’s much cheaper than actually going to the parks). Of course there were many more…

Day 1

The official day one started with a morning of keynotes and user presentations. First up was a motivating and insightful presentation by Ed Parsons, Geospatial Technologist at Google. Next came four user presentations, one of them being mine.

It is always interesting to see how people use mapping for their interests or projects (or to help aid organizations in developing countries). Examples of the user talks were: a student who added many walkways to his campus map to help with pedestrian traffic. Another presenter showed how he mapped an entire city in Syria based on satellite photography (and his friends’ knowledge of the place) where there was no map data in Google Maps before. This was followed by presentations about mapping public bike paths in North Carolina, using Panoramio photographs to let people explore places visually, starting mapping parties (so-called MapUps) and using mapping and building modeling in a K-12 environment. My presentation on the UMass 3D campus building models rounded off this first part (you can see the presentation in my next post).

Next was a talk by Brian McClendon, co-founder at Keyhole (the geospatial visualization tool that later became Google Earth) and now a Vice President of Engineering at Google. He outlined the visions of the Geo team and responded to a barrage of questions.

To prevent jealousy I’ll spare you the details of lunch but I must add a mouthwatering picture of the oysters:

In the afternoon we split by discipline into the three topic areas and I went with the 3D modeling and SketchUp group, led by Nicole Drobeck from Google Boulder. (a fun aside in the image below is the “sculpture” on the wall – it’s a Google search box).

During the group session, some user stories emerged: First is the case of Peter Sih who somehow managed to model over 2500 buildings for Google Earth. Another one was Ron Hall’s story whose interest in historic buildings led him to model some of Lexington’s historic monuments – even without having physically been there! Another story was of Douglas Willett of Luna Tech Designs who presented on how his company is providing 3D geo-modeling-related services. I added to these presentation mine in which I described a recent project at UMass, called “My favorite places”. I will post separately about that one later.

Before dinner, we were bussed over to the main Google headquarter, the Googleplex, where we were given a tour (looks like a pretty fun place to work!). Below are some images of what we saw along the way:

The main court at the Googleplex (it’s here).

Google skateboards

Branded lava-lamps at the reception – a must-have

An immersive Google Earth viewer

Day 2

The second day (Friday) was mainly made up of user-centered discussions. Officially called an “unconference”, the discussion topics are determined in the morning and then experts and non-experts are being mixed in small groups that discuss the various issues that users of the above mentioned products faced. Unfortunately I had to leave half-way through these.

Somehow these conferences always reveal a lot of interesting tidbits, here are some:

• The new Audi A8 will have Google Earth built-in through a dashboard display (looks a bit like too much information for the driver, though).
• A nice mashup combines Google Maps, YouTube videos and MP3 embedding: Moscow-Vladivostok transsiberian train journey. Very meditative…
• Most people use Google Maps via the API (vs. the web version).
• Watch live-updating of Google Maps: http://www.google.com/mapmaker/pulse
• Google Earth has been downloaded so many times that it ranks in distribution close to the big web browsers.
• Traffic-speed data on Google’s online maps uses anonymously-collected velocity data from travelling Android phones – a great idea (as long as it remains anonymous).
• Google has a fleet of company bikes that look like someone threw E.T. out of the basket and painted the whole thing in bright primary colors. Apparently they are all over Mountain View.
• Google employees have access to an amazing array of fun stuff. My way to the bathroom led me past a bowling alley and a dance studio, for example.

Me and my pin

*This was written en-route but edited a week later.

Here are my pictures from the event:

(Disclosure: Google provided food and other considerations for me)

One of the greatest benefits of having a 3D modeler like SketchUp is that creating and sharing explorable representations of real-world objects is extremely easy. It was therefore just a matter of time before Osama bin Laden’s hideout in Abbottabad appeared on Google Earth. So before the real building gets taken down, and for the architecturally-curious, here are a few relevant links:

• Abbottabad Mansion – The SketchUp model that made it into Google Earth
• Osama Bin Laden’s hideout compound – Another model that includes trees and shows the context
• The plans of Bin Laden’s compound – Somehow the BBC found these original plans for the house. They even include foundation details but exclude the later added second floor.
• Location in Google Maps

(via SuperModelers discussions)

Yesterday, Autodesk announced the new features for their 2012 roster of architectural software. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to watch the webcast, but there is ample chatter in the blogosphere this morning. To keep you up-to-date, here is a good reading list for Revit 2012:

• Autodesk Revit – David Light’s exhaustive overview of the Architectural enhancements
• Bim Boom – The post-a-minute coverage of anything related to Revit
• Do U Revit? – Overview for all three flavors of Revit
• Jason Grant – Even more…

Since I am not using the work sharing tools in my classes, I am mostly looking forward to some of the modeling improvements and the assembly/part features.

SketchUp QR from Alexander Schreyer on Vimeo.

As you may have noticed, I have been experimenting with QR codes lately. There’s just so much fun you can have with these little black-and-white icons. For your Friday enjoyment, here is a list of where I have used them so far:

3D QR code

The example video above is simply a vectorized QR code with randomly extruded faces.

T-Shirts

A fun way to say something on a shirt without displaying it as letters. Also a great way to link to your website. It just looks a bit nerdy…

Signage

I realized that there was no good way to link visitors in our building to our departmental website. Therefore, a good-size QR code (filled with a grass pattern) got added to the signage. In the next iteration, I think I’ll make it a little smaller (and also add the URL).

Want to make your own? Just google “QR code” and use any of the free generators out there.

Interior perspective by senorjerome, on Flickr (CC)

I meant to create a concise visual comparison of all available rendering software for SketchUp for quite a while now. To keep things organized I only added one video per software as well as links to the manufacturer’s websites and the current (February 2011) published cost. All prices are in US $ for single-seat licenses, taken from the manufacturers’ websites. Many of these packages are also offered with multi-seat and educational discounts. Because these are not always easy to find, you will have to check them out directly.

The videos are typically made by the manufacturers and either give an overview of the software or where that wasn’t available are illustrative showreels. Feel free to alert me of better videos, other software and updates in the comments.

Here’s the list:

3D Paintbrush

WIN - Website - Features – Cost: free trial, $99 full version

Artlantis

WIN/MAC - Website – Features – Cost: free trial, $765 full version (rendering software)

IDX Renditioner

WIN/MAC - Website - Features – Cost: free trial, free size-limited version, $99.99 full license

Indigo

WIN/MAC/Linux - Website - Features – Cost: free trial, $820 full license

IRender nXt

WIN - Website - Features – Cost: free trial, $499 full license

Kerkythea

WIN/MAC/Linux – Website - Features – Cost: free

LightUp

WIN/MAC - Website - Features – Cost: free trial, $149 full license

Maxwell

WIN/MAC/Linux – Website – Features (SU plugin) – Cost: free trial, $995 full license

nXtRender

WIN - Website - Features – Cost: free trial, $149 full license

This is the low-cost version of IRender nXt. There doesn’t seem to be a YouTube video but there’s a video on their website.

Podium

WIN/MAC - Website - Features – Cost: free trial, $198 full license

Render[in]

WIN/MAC - Website - Features – Cost: free trial, $160 full license

Shaderlight

WIN/MAC - Website - Features – Cost: free trial, $199 full license

Thea

WIN/MAC/Linux - Website - Features – Cost: free trial, $214.19 full license + $26.34 for SketchUp exporter (converted from Euros)

Twilight

WIN - Website - Features – Cost: free trial, $99 full license

There are more videos on their website.

VRay

WIN/MAC - Website - Features – Cost: free trial, $799 full license

Now that the year is almost over, it’s time to step back and look at what we all built over the past weeks…

Wherever you are and whatever you celebrate, enjoy your holidays and some relaxing time with your families. I wish you all the best for the new year!

Cheers,
Alex

P.S.: Yes, it’s another SketchUp Christmas model. This time I had fun using the new solids tools.