# New Sketchup plugins



## Chris Knight (28 Nov 2009)

I have been playing with some Sketchup plugins recently. There are lots of really great ones available at Sketchucation that take a lot of the frustration and grunt work out of using SU.

One I like a lot is called Extrude Edges by Rails and it will produce a complex surface from a profile and a couple of curves. Here's an example. I left the mesh showing in the one on the right so you can see how hard the plugin has to work to generate all the faces! On the left the faces have been joined and smoothed then covered in sycamore


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## oddsocks (28 Nov 2009)

Thanks Chris
I've just started finding plugins to help. I have the cutlist plugin and last week found one that rounded the edges of a rectangle (which helped when modelling a sink unit) in one click - doing this manually was taking a lot of effort, the plugin just asks for the radius you want to achieve.

EDIT - found the link 
rounded rectangle plugin


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## Chris Knight (29 Nov 2009)

Dave,
Plugins make Sketchup work for you instead of the other way around  It's really worth getting to know the Sketchucation site where you will find a wealth of great stuff. For example, there's a far more powerful rounding plugin here http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtop ... 23&t=20485

Chances are, if you think "Why can't I do X?" someone has a plugin to do just that.


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## devonwoody (29 Nov 2009)

If it doesnt stop raining this winter I might get stuck in and learn this sketchup program. :wink:


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## Steve Maskery (29 Nov 2009)

Chris
That roundover plugin is excellent. I've been using am older version to try to do the same thing. It worked but was not very user-friendly. This is much better.

If we had UKW New Year's Honours, I'd nominate you for The Most Useful Stuff award!
Thanks
S


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## oddsocks (29 Nov 2009)

Steve Maskery":3ecpbpd3 said:


> Chris
> ....If we had UKW New Year's Honours, I'd nominate you for The Most Useful Stuff award!
> Thanks
> S



Seconded!

I've now got over the initial learning curve of sketchup, read the sketchup 7 for dummies book and watched most of the authors videos, so next set of 'evening classes' has to be learning what's on the Sketchucation site


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## oddsocks (29 Nov 2009)

waterhead37":7zzbpzc9 said:


> Dave,
> Plugins make Sketchup work for you instead of the other way around  It's really worth getting to know the Sketchucation site where you will find a wealth of great stuff. For example, there's a far more powerful rounding plugin here http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtop ... 23&t=20485
> 
> Chances are, if you think "Why can't I do X?" someone has a plugin to do just that.



Chris, I just installed the two plugins needed to use that rounding function and it is excellent. I have just experimented and was able to draw a ball in less than a minute...circle of radius 100mm, pulled to 200mm high and the rounded edges with limit set to 100 -result is a ball


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