Welcome Pack | Your SketchUp Essentials

Welcome to SketchUp
Your toolkit of essential shortcuts and must-have
extensions to get you on your way.
Content guide
Getting started

Extensions

General tools

BIM & Engineering Tools

CAD Imports & Making

volumes
Terrain & Advanced Modeling

Rendering & Textures

Plugin Resources & Websites

 Welcome Pack | Your SketchUp Essentials

Getting Started
One of the best things about SketchUp is Online resources
how easy it is to get started. In many
cases, SketchUppers are ready to start SketchUp Campus
using it as soon as it is installed. Sketchup Pro Basics Videos
SketchUp Blog
However, if you are interested in getting Our Forum
trained up, we have a ton of learning Skill Builder Videos
resources listed to the right and SketchUp Talk Podcasts: RSS/iTunes
throughout this document.
Extension resources
We think that this document is a great
collation of resources that will help you
Installing Extensions
be as productive as possible, as quickly
Essential Extensions
as possible.
SketchUcation Plugin Store

If you are interested in a larger,

authorized training session, please
contact sales for more information, or
keep an eye out for upcoming events
near you.
Extensions & Resources
Supercharge your SketchUp workflow.
 Welcome Pack | Your SketchUp Essentials

Extensions

Whatever you do with SketchUp, odds are that there is an extension out there that will
help you to do it better/quicker/easier. Extensions are bits of software that run inside of
SketchUp that give you additional functionality within the native design environment.

Extension Warehouse Installing extensions

Check out our online repository of For information on installing extensions,
extensions, Extension Warehouse, for a full check out this video for step-by-step
list of certified extensions available to you. instructions.

If the Extension Warehouse is not quite

enough for you, you may want to take a look
at the extensions available on the
SketchUcation Plugin Store (note you will
need to register for a free account to
download from the Plugin Store).

Not sure where to start?

750+ extensions might leave you feeling
overwhelmed. We’ve shortlisted some
essential SketchUp extensions that will
improve the productivity of your team.
Some of these plugins are free, but we
have indicated the commercial extensions
with a (C):
 Image courtesy of Sheppard Robson Architects

General tools

A wide range of tools to make complex or

repetitive tasks a piece of cake.

Selection Toys RoundCorner Layers Panel

Offers a wide range of selection RoundCorner rounds the Designed to be very similar
modifiers, filter out all edges, faces edges and corners of 3D to Photoshop's layers panel.
etc. Lets you quickly select entities shapes along a 2D profile, in It adds the ability to group
with similar properties such as three modes: Round corners, layers, sort them, lock them,
material, layer orientation etc. Sharp corners and Bevel. hide/collapse groups, etc.

CleanUp JointPushPull Weld

Cleans up and optimizes Extrusion of faces with Join edges and curves
your SketchUp model. various methods. into "polylines".

Fredo6: Bezier Spline MaterialResizer DropGC

Draws a variety of Polylines, Bezier Finds and resizes materials Drop groups/components
and Spline curves, all in 3D. used in the model. to face below

Q JS Align Toolbar Eneroth Reference Manager (C)

Aligns objects along the three Manage linked models in
main axis, x, y, and z. SketchUp.
 Welcome Pack | Your SketchUp Essentials

BIM & Engineering Tools

Automate, populate, specify. These extensions will make your SketchUp

model that bit smarter, and ready to play with advanced BIM tools.

3Skeng (C) PlaceMaker (C) ConDoc Tools (C)

3skeng is an extension for Add instant context to your model Automate and simplify the
the design & documentation by importing OpenStreetMap creation of construction
of MEP and 3D piping and roads, buildings, paths, water documents in SketchUp Pro
steel structures. bodies, trees, and high-res aerials. and LayOut.

Profile Builder (C) PlusSpec (C)

Lightspeed parametric Think BIM + VDC +
modeling of intelligent Parametric modeling +
component assemblies. Estimate
Working with CAD Imports & Making Volumes

StrayLines Edge Tools

Label, Select, Delete or Suite of tools to simplify
Show all the open-ended edges, close gaps,
line segments in a drawing. cleanups and more

Make Face Solid Inspector

Fills line-drawings with Inspects and highlights
faces. problems with solids.

Fredo Tools
A collection of various inspection
and simple manipulation tools. In
particular, Edge Inspector is a
handy tool for inspecting edge
connections.

Working with Terrain & Advanced Modeling

TopoShaper CutNfill (C) Artisan (C)
Generates Terrains from iso- It calculates Cut and Fill from two Subdivision, sculpting, and
contours, that is, contours overlaid terrain-mesh solid groups. soft selection tools for artists,
which have a constant or Also add Skirts to selected meshes designers and landscape
quasi-constant altitude. to aid the Cut and Fill process. architects

Extrude Tools FredoScale Joint Push Pull Interactive

A varied toolset for Interactively apply a number of Performs push pull on multiple
extruding edges into geometric transformations, faces in one operation. JPP can
meshes etc. such as Scaling, Tapering, maintain the continuity of the
Stretching, Plane Shear, offset surfaces (mode joint push
CurviLoft
Twisting, Bending and pull). This is useful to thicken
Dedicated to generating Rotation. non-planar surfaces.
surfaces from contours
through Loft and Skinning.
 Welcome Pack | Your SketchUp Essentials

Rendering
Take your design presentations to the next level with a wide range of
native rendering extensions. Full list of available rendering extensions.

V-Ray (C) SU Podium V2.5 Plus (C) Thea Render (C)

V-Ray for SketchUp is a professional SU Podium is a high quality, Thea Render is a physically-based
lighting and rendering tool for photorealistic, rendering plugin for photorealistic renderer of high
architects & designers. SketchUp. quality.

Enscape (C) Lumion LiveSync for SketchUp (C)

A real-time rendering plugin Lumion offers real-time,
that creates remarkable photorealistic renderings of
visualizations with one click. your SketchUp model.

Rendering Prep & Working with Textures

V-Ray Tools Material Tools
This extension contains a tool to The Material Tools plugin lists
set the camera aspect ratio so one all materials in the model
can get the same scene aspect ordered by their texture size.
ratio from different computers. This means that you could
Without it, different monitor sizes pinpoint which textures are
or number of toolbars would large.
affect the output image.
Extension Resources & Websites

Although the SketchUp Extension Warehouse is your

first stop for extensions that are built off of our robust
C API, the SketchUp community offers many more
useful extensions on other platforms outlined below.

SketchUp Extension Warehouse

SketchUcation Plugin Store
Smustard
RubyLibrary Depot

How to install Extensions

Plugin Installation
Visit this page for simple instructions on how to
install a SketchUp Ruby plugin script.

Interested in developing your own extension?

SketchUp API
This page gives you details about how to
develop your own Ruby script, access to
SketchUp’s C API, and links to securely encrypt
and publish your extension.
 Welcome Pack | Your SketchUp Essentials

Learning Resources

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latest written content. YouTube channel. learning platform.

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