Round Corner

Like making slanted edges, this Freedo plugin permits you to round only the edges of a surface. This may prove to be useful on the off chance that you need to round the edge of articles like tables or ledges.

Dissimilar to the joint push pull choice, this plugin enables you to get a hard edge in one area and a rounded edge in another. There are numerous alternatives to tweak like balance, edge parameters, and rounding parameters.

On the off chance that you are uncertain what each setting does, simply mess with them until you get the look you need!

Weld

This plugin takes chosen line fragments and gatherings them as one thing. This is an extraordinary device to utilize in the event that you need to interface a long string of line fragments that make a bended or spiraling shape.

With the weld apparatus, you can undoubtedly expel or utilize the “tail me” instrument along a bended way without choosing each line section.

Joint Push Pull

Searching for a simple method to add a sloped edge to an item? Attempt the Joint Push Pull plugin to snap and drag a surface to make it rounded. Select the “Round Push Pull” choice and you can expel a surface to have rounded corners rather than hard edges.

You can likewise utilize this plugin to expel bended or smoothed surfaces. For an increasingly point by point instructional exercise on the best way to utilize this plugin, look at this instructional exercise.

We energetically suggest any of the Freedo6 apparatuses in light of the fact that they make probably the best Sketchup plugins. They are anything but difficult to utilize, very much made, and in particular free!

Curviloft

Curviloft is another Freedo6 plugin. It includes truly required usefulness that makes it extraordinary compared to other sketchup plugins. With Curviloft, you can make an expulsion that starts as one shape and finishes as another.

In the first place, select your way. At that point select your beginning shape and wrap up by choosing your consummation shape. Hit “enter” when you wrap up your determinations to produce your shape.

Artisan

Another option in contrast to utilizing the Joint Push Pull plugin to make bended edges is Artisan. When you have the plugin introduced, select the block symbol in the menu that says “partition and smooth.

This will take any hard edges and transform them into a smooth surface. There might be a couple of regions that need extra smoothing, yet this plugin gives you an incredible beginning stage!

Eneroth Flatten to Plane

In the event that you’ve at any point imported a DWG to Sketchup, you may experience some difficulty shutting everything down on the grounds that your lines end up in various planes.

A straightforward arrangement is utilizing the Eneroth plugin.

Just select your lines and afterward explore to “augmentations” > “eneroth flatten to plane.” Select the plugin and the entirety of your lines will be on one plane!

ClothWorks

This plugin will permit you to take a level surface and wrap it over another item to make the presence of fabric.

Initially, right snap on the item you need to wrap and select “ClothWorks” > “make material.” Then, right click on the article you need to wrap your fabric over and select “ClothWorks” > “make collider.” Use the UI switch device in the menu to modify choices. Right click on your fabric and ensure you select “ClothWorks” > “1 material” > “basic network.

Use the reproduction apparatus close to the UI switch device to wrap the fabric. At the point when you are content with the manner in which it looks, click the stop symbol to stop the activity.

Okay, so which sketchup plugins and extensions do you believe are the best? Tell us in the remarks! Make certain to look at our different instructional exercises in case you’re searching for increasingly incredible tips and deceives for Sketchup.

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Make a group by creating a box and selecting all items in it. If you click Subdivide & Smooth, you can smooth and divide your image. Double-click the boulder after you do that. Then you click the extrude button.

Editing can also be done with other tools, such as scaling and moving. Deselecting a face is as simple as pressing the escape key.

A boulder can only be created by exploding, erasing, unlocking, and repeating the process.

After clicking sculpts brush, you can begin to sculpt. By holding down the arrow keys and moving your mouse, you can control strength and radius in Sculpt Brush. It is also possible to invert strength using Sculpt Brush. Adding material to your boulder will give it a professional look.

For 15 days trial period, you can evaluate Artisan for free and create models that you never thought possible in SketchUp.

About Artisan

ARTISAN is an extension for SketchUp that offers powerful tools for modeling organic shapes. Terrain, Furniture, Characters, Abstract Sculptures, Fabric, curtains, pillows, Rocks, tree trunks, plants, and much more can be created with it.

Features

1. A robust subdivision algorithm capable of handling complex geometries.
2. Faces, components, or groups can be divided and smoothed.
3. To create hard edges, create edges or vertices.
4. Create loops with the knife subdivide tool.
5. Using the extrude tool, you can create loops without interior faces.
6. When you edit in proxy mode, the subsurface geometry is automatically updated.
7. After subdividing, maintain texture position.
8. You can preview the subsurface geometry before you commit.
9. Any selection of faces can be subdivided or smoothed.

To learn more, CLICK HERE to watch the video tutorial.

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Given below is the list of some of the most important plugins that you can use in SketchUp:

1001bit Tools – Helps Modelling Architecture

The 1001bit tool is a SketchUp plugin that is a must-have. Several architectural elements can be created using this tool as it works as a collection of tools. The architectural elements range from roofs to railings, windows, staircases, and roof design. This plugin provides some tools which can be used for drawing/editing geometry such as fillet, extend and chamfer which are missing in the native Sketchup.

After the installation of the plugin, SketchUp can take time to open as it takes time to load the plugin. The reason why it takes time to load is that it checks the license status before loading. The basic tools of 1001bit are the ones regarding distance which includes Information Between 2 Points, Point on Face, Center Point of Arc, and Circles.

For creating complex objects, the most efficient tool is the Divide tool where the selected edge can be divided.

The 1001bit provides a better layer management system than Sketchup provides originally. Switching layers using 1001bit will seem a lot easier than the SketchUp workflow.

Best Fit Face is a useful tool for creating organic shapes. Using this tool you can after creating non-coplanar points pick the series of points for double-clicking so that you can create a face that will contain those points as part of the edges of that face. If you want to create structural models in SketchUp then the Edges to 3D Profiles tool can be of immense help, it can also be used for making bridges. Given below is the procedure:

• At first, have to select the edges you want to work with and then run the tool.
• You have to then choose your desired profile and enter the parameters. You can choose the default steel profiles which you can apply.
• Create profiles

The Array tool comes with several settings that you can apply, the Polar Array is the most useful one, as it helps you to create a spiral staircase with minimum parameters.

The wall tools are a simple-step solution than trying to build a wall with the SketchUp way. This tool helps you to draw a wall by simply choosing a type of wall instead of drawing and extruding planes. Also, you can apply details to your walls by using this, for example, baseboards.

In the case of wall openings and columns, the parameters work in a similar way. By using a dialog box you can select the type and apply parameters and simply create.

One of the tools for Structural Models is to create Foundations. It is extremely helpful as you can quickly be made anything from pad footing to strip footing.

To create stairs, use the stair tool, which will allow you to create 12 different kinds of stairs whereas the Escalator is meant for creating mechanical stairs. and, to create windows and door Frame use the tool with the same name, here you have to create a face at the opening prior to being able to apply the command to it. The skin for the façade can be made by using a Perforated Screen, this can be an important part of some projects.

The other important tools that are present are Louvres, Joist, and the Roofing tools, the alternative for Joist and roofing tools is the Vali-Plugins which will be explained later.

Instant Roof – Plugin to Model Complex Roofs

Part of the Vali plugin the Instant Roof is extremely useful to create a wide variety of architectural elements.

In the Vali plugin, the focus is on making roofs from selected faces and edges. There are infinite possibilities, as it depends on both, the kind of roof you want to make along with how the geometry looks like for what you created for hosting that roof. and to create a roof using the Craftsman-style roof, you have to create in Sketchup a figure where two shapes are joined is up to you how you decide to create the geometry but you must remember that if you don’t want to be change parameters and use the default method then the geometry group must be a bit large in scale for the roof so that it is able to adapt.

Selectedges+faces

Leave one edge unselected as it will determine the direction of the slope.

Go to Plugins → Instant Roof → Make Roof

Select the roof type and adjust parameters if you like after which you have to hit OK.

Instant Road – Creating roads and pathways

This other plugin part of the Vali Plugins helps in creating roads, pathways, and waterways on terrains.

The elements that are required for creating the necessary geometry are lines, curves, and faces. You can create a road from a centerline, or even create a road from faces and also make islands inside the created roads. and first, you have to create a Terrain mesh by using the Sandbox tools of Sketchup. After which you have to draw connected lines or curves within our terrain.

After that, you have to group the lines and select both the group and the terrain.

Plugins → Instant Road → Road from Centerline

After this you have to apply the parameters needed for the road, such as its Width, depending on if it is curved or if additional parameters are required to be applied. After it is created make sure to double click the road group to open it for editing. You must then apply the changes you want. Close the group and select it as well as the terrain.

Plugins → Instant Road → Road from Face

And it is created!

Artisan – Create Organic Shapes in Sketchup

To create organic shapes, you can use the Artisan plugin. Using this plugin you can then “sculpt” your 3D model in a much more friendly way than what Sketchup originally will help you to achieve.

The Artisan plugin is mostly useful for creating complex architectural buildings and also for furniture modelling as it can help you achieve perfect rounded edges and faces, SketchUp is unable to provide this feature while subdividing elements. and understand more about how the Artisan plugin works you can also refer to videos available on the internet to understand better.

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Artisan is one such extension or plugin. This powerful plugin can turn SketchUp from a 3D geometric designer to a 3D organic modeler. In other words, Artisan lets you design your model with such complex geometry that the result looks and feels like a natural object. For example, you can literally draw a lifelike flower using the Artisan extension.

Previously, Artisan was released with the name “Subdivide and Smooth” and it was a hit then already. Developer Del has worked hard for two years over it and the child of this labour is what we see as Artisan – a complex remake and upgrade with a plethora of added features.

The extension exposes itself in the form of a toolbar with large, friendly-looking buttons. Each button represents an important function, and they are arrayed in four basic functional groups. These are Surface Subdivision, Sculpting Tools, Vertex Transformation, Mesh Optimization. Let us delve further into each group below.

Subdivision Surfaces

These functions are used for smoothing a given hard geometry by introducing more subdivisions in the object to make it appear more organic and softer. The robust subdivision algorithm works blisteringly fast on any number of selected faces, groups or components. You can also use the Crease tool to create hard edges from edges or vertices. The Knife tool will let you create loops and the Extrude tool will further help you in this by making loops without interior faces. With the latest version of Artisan, you can preview the subdivision content change before committing. The Proxy button presents you with a low-poly mode that updates subsurface geometry in real-time parallel to your editing.

Sculpting Tools

Any sculptor, be in the real world or digital, will want to manually alter the model by hand. This toolset is intended for that cause precisely. The functions here provide you with an interactive cursor that intuitively changes as you switch between modes. There are the following four sculpting functions provided in this group:

a. Sculpt Brush: Use the arrow keys to change the size and strength of the cursor and switch between five creation modes (sculpt, pinch/spread, flatten, inflate/deflate, smooth/jitter) by right-clicking as you draw on the model to create shapes as you please. The red shadow beneath the context-sensitive cursor will show you the affected zone.

b. Select Brush: you can gather up faces as you draw strokes with this brush.

c. Paint Brush: does what the name implies, as in any image editing software. Except for that here instead of painting colors you are going to use materials from the library.

d. Brush Mirror: why work on one side of a symmetrical model if you can simultaneously work on both sides? This nifty tool will reduce your work by half. Aside from these, you can also loch vertices on a user-defined plane before using the brushes so that they don’t change accidentally.

Vertex Transformation

These tools enable you to perform movements on a surface. There are the following four tools:

a. Vertex Select: this will let you soft-select or hard select portions of a surface to define exactly how much should get changed.

b. Vertex Move: This also has the soft and hard modes, using which you can move the face portion or selection held under cursor in any direction you wish. Use arrow and shift keys to be more definitive in the movements.

c. Vertex Rotate: Works the same as above but it rotates the face instead of moving it. It can cause some pretty interesting results.

d. Make Planer: this is akin to flattening tools in most editors. It can flatten vertices along the XY, XZ or YZ plane as defined.
Mesh Optimization

Also known as Polygon Reduction, it will let you create detailed meshes very quickly. This tool works much faster and less prone to glitches than other similar plugins. This comes indubitably very handy when your model contains too many polygons and the rendering engine is struggling to keep up. Of when you have a really low-end video card.

The Artisan extension for SketchUp Pro or above is available in the Extension Warehouse, in their own website, or in the sketchUcation site. It is free to use for 15 days, after that you will need a paid key to unlock it. It requires a payment of $27 (as of now) to use the unlocked 1.3.1 (latest) version.

On the ending note, there is certainly no other extension that comes close to Artisan in creating organic models with this much ease and yet with so much complexity. Using Artisan will blow your mind even if you aren’t a digital artist. If you are, then installing this SketchUp extension is like starting Christmas early!

The following video from TutorialsUp can visually explain how to use Artisan in SketchUp

Video source : Subdivision Modeling in SketchUp

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