Hi all,

For those of you who have started using or are thinking about using Maxwell Render, I have a new short tutorial on my site for getting Maxwell Materials into SketchUp, which is a little buggy on the Mac especially. I hope you like it!

In this Methodcast Quickie I will teach you how to get Maxwell Materials into SketchUp. We all know the materials we use in SketchUp are the most basic there are, but what if you want to get things like frosted glass, cobblestone, textured wood, or board-form concrete in your scene? This trick will get your images looking better in no time when you use Maxwell Render and their sophisticated materials.

http://getmethod.com/blog/2014/1/26/-methodcast-quickie-14-maxwell-materials-in-sketchup

Thanks,

Evan

That happens for me too. Here is the workaround:

1. Create a new material by adding any color to your scene by applying it to a plane. Once applied, go to Colors in Model in the material browser.
2. Select the material in the material browser and double click it to edit it.
3. Give it a name, hit the enter key and the Close button
4. Open the Maxwell Scene Manager
5. In the first tab (materials) select the new material you just added in the drop down list with the name you gave the material
6. Click the MXM button next to it
7. Click the folder icon and select your MXM material
8. Done!

--evan

http://getmethod.com/grass
Get my Maxwell Grass Preset Pack for Sketchup!

Hi all,

Long time lurker here. I have some video tutorials on my site where I focus on architectural designers who use digital tools. Over the past few years I've come up with a handful of SketchUp tutorials I thought I would share here as well. I hope you find something useful - they range widely from beginner to experts working in conjunction with other tools like Revit.

Here's the link:

http://getmethod.com/sketchup/

Yours,

Evan

Hi all,

If you're interested in more of what I've been up to on my site for digital designers, I'll be sending out my first newsletter that has a few highlights from the past 6 months. Please sign up here for an infrequent email newsletter:

http://www.getmethod.com

On the right hand side you'll see a signup form.

Best,

--evan

Wyatt,

Do you have Bonzai3d or Revit? I know how you can do it in there, but not SU. I can tell you how to go through one of those programs and then bring it back into SU if that's an option.

--evan
http://www.getmethod.com

You can get Rhino for OS X for free right now because it's in beta. So now you have a way to get your SketchUp models onto the iPad, if you have a Mac

http://mac.rhino3d.com/content/DownloadWIP.aspx

--evan
http://www.getmethod.com

Holy Moly those are awesome plugins!

--evan
http://www.getmethod.com

This is not something SketchUp can do automatically. If you're up for it, Bonzai has a 3d wall tool that does what you want. They have a 30 day trial, and it's got a similar learning curve to SU.

http://www.bonzai3d.com

They also have a window & door creation tutorial here:
http://www.formz.com/products/bonzai3d/bonzai3dVideo_320.php?startMovie=Interface

--
Evan
http://www.getmethod.com

Thanks for following up Martha. I'm happy to hear that it can be a better experience using the plugin. I've had the exact opposite results in Bonzai3d... DWG is better than the ATL export plugin in that application.

I'll add your suggestion to the chart.

--evan
http://www.getmethod.com

@pyroluna,

What errors have you seen? I've never found an error in the SKP import. Maybe the ATL export contains more options? I know that the ATL exporter allows you to export by layer, but i find that a mess of a way to work in SketchUp. I prefer to work with groups, wherein there may be an object with different materials on different faces of the same object. Working this way makes sense moving into Artlantis because of the way materials are handled by grouping like-materials together.

I'd love to hear more on this.

Thanks!

Evan
http://www.getmethod.com