Hey, what is up, nation?
In this session I'm gonna be going over my seven
favorite plugins to use in Sketchup.
All right, so the first thing I just wanted to tell you guys about, is that
I use Sketchup for architecture mainly. So, if you use Sketchup for architecture,
these are gonna be helpful for you. If not, these may or may not be helpful for
you. I felt like I needed to just share that bias before I made this video. So,
just be aware of that. There are lots of other great plugins that they haven't
listed here, because I don't use them all the time. And some of these plugins are
really simple. But I use them so often, that I think that they were worth
mentioning. So I've imported a little table here from the 3D warehouse. And you
can see it has a lot of straight edges. And that's sort of inherently what
happens with Sketchup. Cuz you're making odd geometries and then you're push-pulling
them to to make them into 3D. But in the real world, pretty much nothing
has a straight edge. So you know, you may want to add a bevel or something to this.
And the Fredo, join push-pull. s a really cool tool that you can use. So if
I select this, I have the Fredo six joint push-pull plugin. There's this round
push-pull. So if I bring this up a little bit, you can see that now my edges are
rounded. So it was just super quick I was able to do that.
Now there's also lets you extrude like normals. And there's a bunch of different
options in here. The Fredo plugins are always really great. They're well
made. I haven't had, you know, tons of problems with them. So, and they're free.
Which is probably the best thing. I love all the Fredo tools, would highly
recommend them. So there is that. And then secondly, another Fredo tool. You may
decide that "Okay, well. I don't really want it to be all of the sides. So maybe
you just want something like the round corner plugin. And just one
around the corner. So, I've come in here. It's already set up. Offset. It's a one
inch. So maybe I just want this top edge to be sort of like a...just around it. And
I want though the bottom to be flat. So maybe we change this. We'll just change
this to 3/4 of an inch. And some of these things like...it kind of
feels like sitting behind the cockpit of an airplane or something. Because there's
so many options. I just mess around with stuff. You know, typically there's a lot
of these things that I don't use often, because they're set up the way that I
like them. Let me just turn on "hidden geometry" here. So you can see that bevel
a little bit better. Or that rounded top edge. So that you can see the bottom is
flat. It's a flush hard edge. And the top is rounded. Alright, so that's the
second one. There's no tutorial that I did on "How to make a spring essentially",
or a helix. If you want to learn how to make this shape, you can refer to the
description for a link to that video. One thing that's kind of annoying is that in
order for me to select all these things, I can double-click this. But if there's
like a lot of geometry. Then maybe it's intersecting.You know, sometimes I
feel like I have to like click all of these....you know. Hold down ctrl and start
coming through and selecting all of this stuff. So what I actually like to do is
click on this. Actually, it's under tools. Ok, extensions.
I love the weld plug-in. What that does, is it picks all of these random lines,
these line segments, and makes them one. So now, when I go to instead of having to
select everything, I can select this line. Go to the follow me tool, and then choose
this. And it extrudes that along the path. Or push-pulls it along the path, I guess.
Similarly, I have the this curved life plug-in installed. That is also a free
2:6 plugin. So if I select this here, I can select this rail. Can select this
shape. And then I can also select that third shape. You can see this is a
Pentagon. This is a triangle. I'd enter. It allows
me to essentially go between the two shapes. So it starts at the bottom, it's
doing a helix starting as a Pentagon. Then as it gets towards the top, it turns
into a triangle. This is probably an odd, an odd solution for this. I don't know, I
can't think of any options that you would want to do this a specific shape.
but there's lots of applications for that, kind of cool. If you've ever
imported a DWG drawing, you know that like a lot of times you have issues
closing walls. Now this is an exaggerated version. But what happens sometimes, is
that your geometry, especially if you're like drawing everything, your line work
starts to go to different planes. So it's not all on a single plane. And that makes
it, so that when you try to go to make this a shape, you want this to be a solid.
So you can extrude it. That doesn't let you because everything some on the same
plane. So what I like to do, and what I've used a ton of times super simple plug-in,
I select all my line work, go to extensions, and then there's just "Eneroth
Flattened to Plane". So now everything is on the same plane. And you
can close your shapes. Just like you would normally. A little bit earlier I
was talking about how nothing every world actually has like a really hard
edge. And we used the joint push-pull, plug-in to make some rounded edges. An
alternative way to do that, is with a plug-in called "artisan". So I have a mug
that I found on the 3d warehouse here, and I've added a few extra edges around
here. And the geometry doesn't change at these points. But if you've ever used any
other 3D modeling software, I'm essentially treating these as some edge
loops. So if I come in here, and have this whole mug selected. Now there's two ways
the artisan works. You can have sort of like a "Preview option". If you have a
group in the new applied artisan to it. And then you can also just
like to apply it directly. And this we're going to just
apply it. A preview. So I'm gonna just do subdividing smooth here. So you can see,
it's smooths everything out, this from the top out. And basically what it's
doing, is it's finding the average between the points. Now this isn't like
the cleanest right now, because I haven't... I didn't model this for one. But it also
just doesn't have all the lines and it needs. But, you know, there's you can make
this edge hard if you want. You know, if I want to just like undo that and say "Okay,
well. I want this to be a hard edge. You can always make that a crease". So we're
just gonna say "Yeah, this is a crease", or make sure that that is is a hard edge.
And then when we go back, and select everything, and subdivide. Now that bottom
piece is straight. And let me turn off "hidden geometry", because you might be able to
see it a little bit better. Obviously, there's some weird stuff going on with
the cup. But you start to turn Sketchup from that like hard modeling surface
where everything is straight, into something that does a little bit more
organic feeling. Obviously, this needs a little bit of massaging. But, I really
love this plugin. And it opens a whole different world
for Sketchup, that was previously, I guess, unavailable.
One of the last plugins that I'm gonna talk about is called "cloth work". So I
have a plane here that is set up, and what I wanted to do is essentially take
this as if it was a blanket, and drape it over the table. But that's not 100% easy
to do in Sketchup. It would take me a ton of time. Or it just wouldn't look very
organic. But with cloth works you can actually do it pretty easily. What I'm
gonna do is I'm gonna select this. I've already grouped this plane together. I'm
gonna come down to cloth works, and I'm gonna say "Make cloth". I don't know if
I've already done this, but I want to right-click on this group and say "Make
Collider", yes. It's already a Collider. It's basically like what the cloth is
going to hit. I just want to make sure that that drapes over and not through
that. I'm gonna open up this little UI here, cloth, preset. So you have some
different presets here. I always like to turn on self-collide, so that it does
like "overlap" itself. Okay, now the the other important thing that you need to
do with this, is select that group, and you need to make it a grid. Basically,
you're subdividing the surface, so that the program has different vertices that
it can bend. So if I come back in here you can see all these little hidden
lines that it made. Now, when we simulate, because of gravity this will fall over our
table. And it's simulating now. So you can sort of like, go to be what you want. If
you really want, you can actually click on it and move it. Just kind of cool. Nice
little feature. And then, when it looks good, you just hit this little stop
button, and I'll stop animating. And now you have your cloth on your table. You
know, and there's like a weird...it's sort of like bowing here. You may want to
change. I had it at three inches, for my grid spacing. But you may want to lower
that if you want. But it's a really cool feature, because a lot of times I feel
like I want to do cloth things. But I'm just like "There's no way I'm gonna be
able to do this", or like putting a blanket on the bed, or things like that.
This makes it super easy to do. Now lastly, I'm just gonna mention. I'm not
going to go into it, I have a video, I'll post in the description about this
plugin where I start making things with it. But, viz is a really great plugin.
Before Sketchup basically brings parametric modeling to Sketchup, so you
can start writing code and connecting nodes. Sort of like grasshopper. If you're
familiar with that for Rhino. So really cool plugin.
And that adds a bunch of dynamic things to Sketchup, as well. So basically
allows you to do things, yeah, parametrically. I guess is is the best
way to put. And if that none of that made any sense to you, don't worry about it.
But yeah, hopefully this video helped. If you guys have your own plugins that are...
that you enjoy, feel free to post them in the comments below. I'm always looking to
explore new plugins, as well. So I'd love to hear what you guys enjoy. So leave a
comment below. If you like this video, please don't forget to share it with
your friends, like and subscribe. And as always, happy hacking!
All right, designers!
Just because this episode of designer hacks is over, doesn't mean we're leaving
you out in the cold! Tony's got tons of great content available at
designerhacks.com, so join design nation right now,
and we'll see you on the next episode of designer hacks!