An active extensions community of developers currently contribute to the Extension Warehouse, which has surpassed the 1 million download mark. On the more technical side, Trimble also announced the open source Ruby debugger, which will significantly aid developers who write plug-ins. SketchUp's Mobile Viewer for iPad lets users view their own models or models available on SketchUp's 3D Warehouse.

Since its founding eight years ago, the warehouse has served nearly 1 billion models and now has more than 900,000 users actively logged on each week. (An Android version is in development for later release.) After rebuilding the virtual warehouse recently from the ground up, Trimble relaunched it earlier this year in conjunction with SketchUp 2014.

Trimble also announced two new products at the conference: Trimble Scan Explorer Extension for SketchUp Pro, which allows users to bring data from reality capture devices, such as laser scanners, directly into their models to show real-world conditions and SketchUp Mobile Viewer for iPad, for presenting decks or design portfolios, one’s own building models, or any of the models available through SketchUp’s 3D Warehouse. During the event’s working sessions, the instructors diligently shared those differences so participants, regardless of operating system, could follow along. Naturally, SketchUp works slightly differently in Windows and the Mac, in terms of keyboard shortcuts and menus. This ensures they develop both versions concurrently, a claim that few software vendors can make.

It turns out that the software only has only one development team, Chopra said. Chopra has the techy title of SketchUp evangelist-though he’s serving more as a cruise director during the conference.Īs a Mac and PC user, I wanted to know how SketchUp’s development teams ensure it works well on both platforms. Sean Burke In this design computation example, a Ruby script varies the sizes of the panel openings based on their proximity to an attractor.Īfter a productive first day at the annual three-day conference in Vail, Colo., I sat down for an informal conversation with Aidan Chopra on the morning of day two.

Sketchup 2014 shortcuts