Plugins and extensions for a newbie!
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Hey all! So after years of using SketchUp I'm finally ready to start making use of the abundance of glorious plugins/extensions etc that have been developed over the years!!! (I know....slacker)
I'm wondering if any one has a good catalogue of essential plugins/ a valuable website to guide me through the process and any other helpful knowledge. I use SketchUp mainly for interior design but I also build furniture with it.Any tips, tricks, referrals etc would be MORE than appreciated.
Thanks a ton and I'm looking forward to participating on these boards and learning a ton of cool new stuff.Best,
HT -
You're likely to get as many suggestions as users. However this thread might provide some useful info, as it contains quite a few screenshots...not only of people's Plugins folder, but also how they have arranged the resulting toolbars in SU.
It would enable you to compare Plugin collections and see for yourself which are the most popular...rather than taking someone's word for it. -
Depends on what you what to model. House, furniture, cars, organic modeling. I would start Fredo6 joint push/pull, round corner, curviloft need to download Fredo lib most current ver. There are a lot of good plugins here, at Smustard.com and Ruby.com. I would stick to the ones here first so you can get help if you need it. There's a book store here with really good books (PDF) to help in using the plugins for that particular model.
Walt
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You might look at this thread: http://sketchucation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=323&t=16909
Must Have Ruby plugins" I don't know why the topic is locked.
Some plugins are utilitarian and great for keeping your drawing straight or speeding up cleanup after an operation, managing layers. (remove lonely vertices, TT's CleanUp, default layer geometry, front face tool)
Others add basic functions that are commonly looked for (Mirror, round corners,Follow me and keep, Joint push pull)
Others do fancy things that might just be used once in awhile but really save time and/or are really fun. (Fredoscale, Curviloft, Extrude Tools, Shape Bender, Screw)
Just dive in. Or, when you feel "there must be way..." ask in the forum and you'll probably get a specific answer, or ten.
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@pbacot said:
I don't know why the topic is locked.
There is a discussion topic linked at the top, perhaps you can suggest new entries there (?)
@pbacot said:
when you feel "there must be way..."
A quick way for searching would be the browser search function within the plugin list...
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My little list of "Indispensables" ?
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For me, the most essential of the essential, why-wasn't-it-part-of-SU-to-begin-with? plugins is Rick Wilson's weld.rb available at http://www.smustard.com/script/Weld.
Even if you don't ever use any other plugin, the ability to join connected segments of curves, arcs, edges, etc. into one "polyline" is super useful, for instance so you don't have to group together or select each of them separately to scale them together, or so you can extrude a face along a complicated, multi-segment "Follow Me" path in one operation.
And it becomes much more useful if you use other plugins that operate only on or with connected line segments. like TIG's extrusion tools.
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@cotty said:
@pbacot said:
I don't know why the topic is locked.
There is a discussion topic linked at the top, perhaps you can suggest new entries there (?)
@pbacot said:
when you feel "there must be way..."
A quick way for searching would be the browser search function within the plugin list...
I use the page "find" function in FF on that page. Sometimes though it might not be clear what the name would be for the plugin that you are imagining.
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