SketchUp Plugins: Creating Tensile Like Structures

Learn about a Plugin that will allow you too create Curved Tensile-like surfaces.
Català - Castellano
Soap Skin Bubble is a Plugin developed by Josef Leibinger intended to represent tensile like structures.
The truth is that as you will learn with some practice, it is a tool to create almost any curved surface based on it´s profiles. THe plugin includes a Flash animation that I am including below and that quickly shows some of the features of this Plugin.

The Plugin use is not very intuitive, in the beginning you might think it is not working properly. Just give it some trial an error and you´ll see you can achieve almost any shape with it, so it is worth the time it takes to get used to its "weird" behaviour.
You can download the Plugin here directly on the developer website. You can find some more information and examples that will help you understand better how to use the Plugin.

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Rhino: Commands List

A quick reference of commands for Rhino.
Català - Castellano
Rhino is a great tool for designing and modeling complex shaped buildings. We've have recently increased in my office the use of this tool and it is giving results far better than what we could achieve with SketchUp, so expect to get also tips about Rhino once in a while.
I have started lately to get some time to restart my Rhino training and one of the first things I was looking for was a list of commands. The help provided with the program is actually great. For an online list of commands you can go to the McNeel website where the list is reproduced.
This post will be in the future the directory where I will update any commands I find specially important to know when using Rhino.

• BlockManager: Updates and deletes Blocks and linked files.
• FlowAlongSrf: Transforms a group to match any type of curved or flat surface.
  
• InPlaceBlockEdit: Edits Blocks in Place (requires the Block Editor PlugIn)
• PluginManager: Allows you to load Plugins
• SoftMove: Moves objects according to their distance from a central point.
  

Remember that Rhino has a similar system of Aliases like AutoCAD. See this post to know how to import AutoCAD Aliases or your customized ones.


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AutoCAD: Attachments or Overlays?

Know what it means to use Attachments or Overlays as XREFs. It is important to avoid file troubles.
Català - Castellano
XREFs can be inserted as Overlays or as Attachments. That choice will affect the behaviour of the drawing where they are inserted.

• Overlay: Inserting a drawing A as an overlay in drawing B is the equivalent of just allowing that external reference A to bee seen in the current drawing B. The external reference does not become part of that drawing. When inserting drawing B in another drawing, let's say C, A will not appear.
• Attachment: Attachments work the opposite way. An external reference inserted as an attachment becomes part of the drawing where it is inserted. In this case, drawing A would become part of Drawing B when inserted as an attachment. They would still remain two separate drawings, but any time we'd attach drawing B in lets say drawing C, drawing A would be attached too since it is "part" of drawing B.

Letters apart, consider the implications of this. If you are working on a section and insert a floor plan as an attachment, this floor plan will become part of the section drawing. Then if you work on the floor plan and insert the section (as attachment or overlay, it doesn't matter) you will be also inserting the floor plan (the same you are working on) creating a circular reference.
You will get a warning message when this happens, and remember, when you do is it time to consider what are yo doing. Circular references are number 1 ingredient i a recipee for disaster.
In general, when projects get more and more complicated, the amount of circular references could be so big, you will have big trouble detaching XREFs or worse you will be unable to batch Plot, etransmit files, etc.
In my team we have long ago decided to not use attachments at all, since they have been giving us a lot of trouble.
The use of attachments is in general only justified to save some steps reattaching drawings. On certain situations, you might choose to use them, sometimes it feels almost unavoidable, but remember the possible problems described when doing so and consider if an overlay would do the trick.
My advice is to use always overlays, only use attachments wisely and because you feel there is no other option. And s a general rule, if you are in charge of the file structure of a project, don't let anyone else use attachments except with your permission. Knowing who is using attachments and why will allow you to control where the problems could arouse and how to solve them.



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AutoCAD: Getting Back the old XREF manager

Are you missing the old and simple XREF manager? Don't worry, it is still there.
Català - Castellano
Since version 2007, AutoCAD uses by default the External References Palette instead of the old XREF Manager to handle External References and Images all in one interface.
Although it is useful to have a palette always on to handle XREFs, it is sometimes a big annoying to have all images and XREFs listed. What we do with images and XREFs tend to be pretty different, so it could be good to see only the XREFs listed if we wanted.
If we add that the External Reference Palette tends to be much heavier in terms of computer resources used, we have enough reasons to want to old XREF manager back. That wish is granted just by knowing that the old XREF was never deleted from AUTOCAD (at least till the day and version 2009), and it can be accessed typing CLASSICXREF. See the image below where I have the new External References Palette and the old XREF both showing on the screen.

I have my list of aliases customized so XR points to CLASSICXREF instead of opening the External References Palette. By typing IM (for Image) I still get to access easily the new External References Palette. (note that the old Image Manager can also be accessed using the CLASSICIMAGE command)



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Finding Any Possible Vehicle Turning Radius

Do you need to find out if you have enough space for vehicles to turn? There is a pogram to draw any possible turning radius.
Català - Castellano
If you are designing a parking garage and have very narrow turning spaces or if you are trying to fit a service dock in an area where you are not sure if the trucks will be able to manoeuvre a template showing the inner and outer turning radius might not be enough.
What you need is a program that can simulate the trajectories of Cars, Trucks, Buses, etc. And there is one. The awesome piece of software created by Transoft Solutions is called AutoTURN. It is a commercial product with a price that varies depending on the type of license (we inquired at work some months ago and the price given for our type of license was around $250), but if you are into any kind of Site Design, Road Design or anything involving vehicle movement it is worth the price in a single use.
Let me show you a quick snapshot so you can get an idea. Recently we've been trying to figure out if we could fit a Service Dock for 4 SemiTrailers 16.50m long in a pretty tight piece of a project. With AutoTURN we managed to see that we did have enough space making some little adjustments on the project.


The Program works both on AutoCAD and Microstation platforms, it has a very wide range of vehicles for many different countries, works both in metric and imperial unit systems and I insist it is amazing how useful it is. Just imagine the fees you could save on Traffic Consultants...
You can download a Demo Version going to the AutoTURN Website to give it try with only one vehicle type (an articulated Bus).


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SketchUp Plugins: The Scale Tool Becomes Smart

Finnally someone made some sense and created a Plugin that allows us to scale the objects properly no matter they orientation
Català - Castellano
Thanks again to Jim and his amazing SketchUp Plugins Blog I came across the video you can see below that shows the very impressive FreeScale.rb Plugin developed by Fredo6.

I think the video speaks for itself, but basically what you should know is that the new Plugin allows you to Scale any object basing the bounding box alignment on any line you have in the drawing. (there is also an amazing Taper tool). This is no doubt one of those Plugins it is hard to believe it is released for free.
You can download the Plugin here and the library needed to run it here or go to the Plugin release thread. One of the most complete, easiest to use and most useful Plugins I've come across. Thanks Fredo.

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AutoCAD: Drawing Construction Lines XLINE vs RAY

Two commands allow us to draw infinite length construction lines. Use them wisely
Català - Castellano
AutoCAD has two commands to draw lines of infinite length that can work as construction references for drawings. They are very useful to draw elevations or sections based on a plan. They are both very similar.

• XLINE: Draws a line of infinite length. We can draw it free or set it to be horizontal, vertical, follow a certain angle, be the bisector of an angle or be parallel to certain line. If we draw the line directly after entering the command, we will draw it freely, if we check the command line, we will find the different options mentioned before.
• RAY: Is like a simplified version of XLINE. RAY draws an infinite length line, but from a start point (a line wih a beginning but without end). It has no options like the ones availabel for XLINE, simply select a initial point and a second one will define de angle.
  

I personally tend to use XLINE much more than RAY becaus the diferent options and specially the possibility to lock them to horizontal or vertical makes XLINE ideal for translating dimensions from plans to elevations. Just one advice if you work in amultiuser environment where others wil have your drawigns as XREFs insertd in theirs, try to use this only temporarily, since it is quite annoying when suddenly an XREF that you have inserted suddenly shows a million XLINES.


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AutoCAD: Object Smart Selection QSELECT vs FILTER

There are two commands to select objects on a smart way. Each of them has different features.
Català - Castellano
When we have a complicated drawing and need to select some of the objects in it we have two commands that will help us do the selection process easier:

• QSELECT: Also accessible on the upper right corner of the properties Tab, this command is probably the best known to select only certain objects in the drawing. Once the command is active, its dialog box looks like the image on the right (click the image for a larger version of it). You can select objects by object type, color, layer, plot style, etc. making it quite simple to select several objects at once. You can choose to select all the objects in the drawing that comply with the properties you assign in this dialog box or just those of the current selection. See a quick example of what QSELECT can do. The images below, show a bunch of lines and arcs drawn on different layers. Using QSELCT we selected on the second image only the objects on the layer named "2" that has Yellow as the layer color. On the third image we used QSELECT to select only the Arcs regardless of their layer. You can see how useful this can turn to be.

• FILTER: The command FILTER is not as widely known as QSELECT, probably because QSELECT has the icon on the properties tab and this one doesn't, and because since the introduction of QSELECT in version 2000, this command seems to be left with no updates. It is though a very useful complement, specially because it allows us to store selection filters. This will turn to be extremely useful in complicated drawings. See below the interface of the FILTER dialog box, and how we filter the objects to only select those Arcs that are on Layer 2 (again click the images if you want to see an enlarged version)
  

Both commands are very important to speed up the selection of multiple objects. QSELECT has a more intuitive interface, but the capacity of saving selection filters with FILTER makes it also very useful.


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SketchUp: Replacing Components

Easily replace instances of a component by another one. Very useful to speed performance on complicated models.
Català - Castellano
Sometimes when using SketchUp we might find a situation when we want to replace a set of instances of a component for instances of another one. Depending on what we are trying to archive, we can confront this problem differently. If we want to replace all instances, we can simply enter the component, erase everything in it and replace it for the new geometry.
But sometimes we might want to replace only some of the instances. Then is when we have to know how to use the Component Browser. We can access it going to Window (SkethUp in Mac) --> Components. Once we are there, the process is pretty simple.

• We select all the instances of the component (or components) we want to replace.
  
• Then we right click the thumbnail of the new component on the Component Browser.
• A context menu shows and we select "Replace Selected"

The new component will replace the old ones. See the two pictures below to see how I replaced 2 instances of 2 different components for 2 instances of a new component.

One of the great uses of this process is, as I mentioned before, when we have very complicated models. We can use simple components as placeholders of more complicated ones. While designing or building the model we might use the simple components, making it easier and faster to deal with the model. When we are ready and we don't need to move and turn the model so much, we can replace the siple components for the more complicated ones.
As I read in SketchUp for Dummies, you could use a simple 2d tree as placeholder for all the trees in your model and replace them for a detailed 3D tree at the end. This would make your work with the complicated model possible, but still allow you to easily add detail when needed.

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SketchUp: Adding camera control to the Web Exporter

I found a way to control the camera location when using the SketchUp Web Exporter Plugin. A bit rudimentary, but it works.
Català - Castellano
Some months ago we talked about the SketchUp Web Exporter that had been by then released by Google. The biggest flaw I found to that beta release was the lack of control over the camera position.
I've been waiting for a while to see some improvements on that Plugin, but since nothing happened since then i decided to try something I had in mind. As you will can read in the post about the plugin, what this does, is basically create an HTML file plus a set of images. Then I thought, what if we change the images?
This is the basic procedure I used to create the quick fly through that you can see below these lines.

What I did was basically to use the web exporter to export a set of images and the HTML file. Then, I configured the fly Path I wanted and exported the animation as still JPEG images. The next step was simply replace the images generated by the web exporter, for those saved when i exported the animation. There are some issues matching the number of frames, but the result is not too bad.
One more issue I found when using the Web Exporter is that the resulting Java Script is not very smooth to use, you will see when you drag over it that sometimes it gets locked or jumps to a different camera position for no reason. Well there are reasons, is the way the Script is created. Besides, since the path is not a loop, it is giving some problems, i am working on trying to find a better way to make it smoother.
Anyways, since my Ruby programming knowledge is so far 0/10, I just call for someone to try to melt this two processes in a script that can easily do what I did here without all the hassle of exporting twice and overwriting images. Let's see if I am lucky.

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AutoCAD: Switch Text Between Uppercase and Lowercase

Did you forget the Caps Lock on while typing a long text in AutoCAD? Don't delete it, do this.
Català - Castellano
Some people type texts staring at the keyboard instead of at the screen. That together with the fact that sometimes we forget the Caps Lock on, means that we end up deleting and retyping some texts. No need to retype anymore.
If we select the text we want to turn from uppercase to lowercase and press together CTRL + SHIFT + L, it will automatically become lowercase.
The system works too on the other way. If we press CTRL + SHIFT + U, the selected text will turn to uppercase.

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SketchUp Plugins: Windowizer

Do not manually model windows, there is a plugin that can do that for you in a second.
Català - Castellano - Deutsch
I didn't write about this SketchUp Plugin before because I discovered it way before I started blogging. Nevertheless it is a time saving Plugin that deserves to be introduced to those who don't know it.
The Windowizer.rb Plugin as its names states, helps you create windows. As you will learn after you get used to the plugin, many other types of objects can be created using the Plugin.
The methodology is very simple. After installing the Plugin, select a quadrilateral face, right click on it and you will see that the option Windowizer appears in the right click menu. See the image.
After clicking on Windowize, we will get a Dialog Box where we can introduce the different properties of the window we want to create. Something like this:
By default, the Plugin already selects certain properties, like having DimGray as the material for the frame and BlueGlass as the material for the Glass parts. If we select to have a window with 3 rows and 3 columns, the results would be something like this.
You can set the properties to fit with your design needs. If after you create the window you are not satisfied with the results, right click on it and you will be able to modify it or erase it.
You can use it in any quadrilateral face with only 4 edges, be sure your geometry is clean and that you don't have any broken lines or the Plugin will not work.The edges don't need to be parallel to each other. See this example created with windowizer and non regular quadrilateral faces.
The Author of this Plugin is Rick Wilson, you can Download version 3.0 here for free or purchase version 4 here. See that this post uses the version 3.05. I haven't tried version 4 yet but will write about it when I do.

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