After working a while with SketchUp, every 3D modeler will invariably find out that the best thing about this software is that it can easily be extended using free plugins. If a function is not available in plain (free) SketchUp, then chances are actually quite good that there is a plugin available on the internet to fill that void. Functionality that can be added to SketchUp in this manner includes curved shapes (like spheres or onion domes), physics simulation, otherwise unsupported file export (like OBJ or STL) and many others.

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Just a few more days until the updated roster of Autodesk products arrives. In the meantime, I came across this screenshot from our good ol' CAD application, which apparently now has been renamed "Raptor". While the name should give it more bite, the user interface comes across featuring a sleek and stylish dashboard.

Source: It's alive in the lab blog

Let's see how the horizontal band works out. For example, I don't like it in the latest MS Office release - it is just too feature-laden. And with screens now being manufactured predominantly in wide-screen aspect ratios, it would have made more sense to arrange everything in a vertical bar on the side of the screen.

It seems like this is the year for industry consolidations in the technology field. After Microsoft's bid for Yahoo and their purchase of Caligari it is now time for Green Building Studio to be acquired by a much larger company, Autodesk in this case. In an announcement that just fluttered into my inbox, GBS acknowledges the acquisition and pledges their commitment to easy-to-use and efficient BIM-based energy evaluation of building designs.

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After a year of amazing development work, the team behind the freeware rendering engine Kerkythea finally released the 2008 version. It is called "Echo" and features some major improvements. While the most noticeable one will be the redesigned sleek user interface (it now has scrollable material list menus!!!), some under-the-hood improvements are worth mentioning, too.

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Now this one ought to be quite interesting. Microsoft just bought out Caligari, maker of the 3D modeling, animating and rendering software TrueSpace. Is this a new, free SketchUp in the making? Microsoft wants to use the software for their Virtual Earth platform - similar to Google using SketchUp for their Google Earth platform. This also would perfectly fit into Microsoft's current "I wanna be Google" expansion ambitions - see the recent Yahoo offer for additional reading on this.

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