SketchThis Kitchen design plugin released!

It's finally here! After years of development, testing, and more testing the SketchThis Kitchen Design Plugin is finally ready for public consumption. If you need to design kitchens, and you've been stuck with slow, outdated, expensive design software, today is great day for you.  Even with Sketchup's meteoric rise as one of the most popular and easiest to use 3D modeling tools, there's never been a dedicated plugin to make designing kitchens so fast and easy... Until now...

This plugin features an incredibly flexible library of Dynamic Components built by kitchen designers, for kitchen designers.  In addition to that you'll find a growing materials library, Shaderlight enabled lights for rendering, and a host of help videos.  Best of all, when you're designing kitchens you can swap doors in and out right from the cloud.

Speaking of the cloud, every aspect of this plugin is hosted in the cloud.  What does this mean for you?  As we continually develop and add to the component library every user benefits from every change instantly, no waiting for software updates and long installs!

The plugin runs on any version of Sketchup 8 or later.  It will work on Mac's and PC's.

Most of the content that is available is free, and "pro" content is available as a subscription for $29.99 per month.

Download for free right here and check it out!

A new way to design

It's been a long time coming, but the SketchThis.NET Kitchen Design Plugin for Sketchup is finally here.  Built by magic and powered by awesome, it will make your experience using Sketchup much faster and easier then ever before. Here are the headlines:

• It works on Sketchup Free or Pro, version 8 (or later)
• It works on Mac's and PC's
• It's very easy to install
• It's totally cloud based, so you always have the most up to date components
• Features a highly configurable catalog of cabinets designed by and for kitchen designers
• Has a library of configurable doors
• Has content from the 3D warehouse, curated especially for kitchen designers, no more searching through 1000's of bad models just to fine the one that you need (Appliances, faucets, sinks, etc)
• Has built in Shaderlight lights and window components, to make your Shaderlight renders easier
• Social Login (Create your account with Facebook, Gmail, Twitter, and more) Now you don't have to remember another password!
• The basic version is free, and the pro version is available for a very small monthly fee (TBA)
• Much, much more!

While the plugin isn't ready for general release just yet, we're looking for beta testers.  What do you get when you beta test?  For the time period of the test you'll get full access to all of the pro components.  With your feedback, we can squash bugs and make this the most awesome plugin for kitchen designers anywhere.

If you're interested...

Request your invite to the beta here

Brizo adds TONS of models to the 3D Warehouse

Some of the finest faucet models in the 3D Warehouse just got a whole lot more awesome recently.

Brizo and Igloo Studios have released 103 new Sketchup models of some of the best faucets around.  They're available for free on the 3d Warehouse for you to use in your next Sketchup model.

They are beautifully modeled as well.  Take a look at this side by side comparison of a Sketchup model, and an actual faucet.  I know what you're thinking, it's rendered.  Well, it's not.  Igloo has a fantastic method of taking photo textures and wrapping them around 3D models so that these faucets look great at any angle.

But wait, there's more!

These beauty of these Sketchup models, much like Brizo faucets is more then skin deep, they're quite smart.  They are embedded with information that can help you, the designer use these in your model and get the information you need, see this screen shot from Sketchup:

Dimensions, model numbers, and even a link back to the faucet on the website are all there.

But wait, there's EVEN MORE!

So you've built your fantastic model, and you want to get a list of all those Brizo faucets you've specified so that you can order them really easily.  You CAN do that.  Just use Product Connect, a free plugin for Sketchup that allows you to run reports on your models.  Igloo and other companies have made tons of Product Enabled models that you can use.  If you want add information to your own models so that you can get a report, you can do that easily with their plugin.  I'd explain it more, but I think this video can best do this awesomeness justice:

Happy modeling (and specifying!)

Texture trick to look into a small space

The other day I was drawing a kitchen that had a roof detail that was important to the design of the kitchen.  I found it frustrating to be constantly hiding and showing the roof.  To make things easier,  I came up with this technique to use textures in Sketchup to allow me to "see through" the roof, without spoiling the view once you were inside the kitchen.  Take a look at the video to see how it all works.

A Rendered Garage

Over the past few years my view on renderings has changed quite a bit.  I used to be very against them, but now I am loving them! This is my latest rendering, designed by Mark Johnson FAIA. and modeled by Joe Sharkey.

This Sketchup model started out looking like this:

And ended up looking like this:

Pretty cool right?  And just for a reference, here is the garage in real life:

And lastly, if you want to see experience the model in 3D, you can download it and view it here: