In past May Sketchup 2013 was released. During this time I
have concentrated on updating the content of my books to this version although many
other authors chose not to update theirs as no substantial changes were
introduced. Since the visual environment looks slightly different and some
menus have changed I thought that there was a need to rewrite the contents
especially for those who have no previous experience in Sketchup. I am happy to
announce that we have just published “Sketchup for Interior Design Revisited” -
Course 1 and 2. These two titles are now available on Amazon and Kindle. The
PDF format is available at http://www.sketchup-interior-design.com.
"Training Course 1. Developing Basic Skills"
offers to those that are new in the use of Sketchup 2013 the basic knowledge to
draw, edit and manipulate various elements. This book focuses on the
fundamentals for the interior design field. "Training Course 2. Acquiring
Intermediate Skills" focus on maintaining the geometry of a model under
control. Having a disorganized model can be a real headache and this book
teaches how to use Groups, Components, Outliner and Layers for those wishing to
reach a good end.
I am currently writing the most complex of all the four courses
due to the differences between Windows and MAC. This third volume focuses on
how to incorporate materials and textures and will be available in two months.
Then, How to Communicate Your Ideas in a Convincing
Way will be published.
In SketchUp 2013 two things are important to mention: the
search and selection of appropriate plugins useful for interior designers through
the Extension Warehouse, and creating documentation and presentations by using
LayOut. The two first courses only use a couple of plugins as the audience for
these two books are primarily students with no previous experience in Sketchup
. The books provide information about the two versions offered by Sketchup:
Make or Pro
The Extension Warehouse has been incorporating most of the known
plugins. However, many of those that I frequently use are not yet showing when I
request a search. To fill this gap I installed Sketchucation Plugin Store to
complete my search options. Both, Sketchucation Plugin Store and Extension Warehouse
as well offer the user a brief description of the use of the plugin and you can
also make a search by topic of interest .
Layout includes now a variety of patterns to create
architectural drawings. A great benefit for my students has been Speedier
Vector Rendering that provides significantly less time waiting for LayOut to
vector -render the contents of a model viewport. Another fantastic inclusion
has been Numbered Pages in the Pages panel . No more counting down from the top
of your Pages panel to figure out which is the page you want to print.
