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Google Sketchup is awesome

Chaotic42

Lifer
I'm not normally a fan of Google, but Sketchup is fantastic. I just made a model of my new house in a couple of minutes. The program has lots of little tricks that make it easy to build things. There are also tons of videos for it and the basic version is free.

If you're bored and like model building programs like I do, it's worth checking out.

Google Sketchup
My quick little sketch

 
Just so everyone is clear, google did not make this product, they just bought the company and put their name on it and released a free version. But either way it is very interesting, in terms of design flow, product.
 
Originally posted by: Lord Banshee
Just so everyone is clear, google did not make this product, they just bought the company and put their name on it and released a free version. But either way it is very interesting, in terms of design flow, product.

It could use some additional functionality, but I like it. They need to steal some stuff from ArcGIS.
 
Not sure what functionality you are looking for but..

Personally i use Rhino3D for most of my modeling.. I feel in love with the software 😛 at work. Got a copy for home for $100 as i was taking college classes so edu discount, and the best part is the license it says you can use it for professional work and upgrade to full pro version with only a commercial upgrade cost after you are not a student anymore. Best damn edu license in the world in terms of 3D applications as far as i can tell. I just wish it would have better texturing ability. I been thinking about writing some polygon tools for it i.e. 3dsmax tool flow and add the edit/unwarp/map UVW as it is done in 3dsmax. Just have not had the time or bored enough to spend the time learning the inside of rhino sdk. Maybe after i finish college (5 days lol) and get settled at my new job i will spend a couple hours a week on it.
 
Originally posted by: Lord Banshee
Not sure what functionality you are looking for but..
Well, I do cartography so I'm used to dealing with large datasets. I want to be able to control the X,Y, and Z of each point, have objects in "layers", be able to select items by their attributes, etc, etc, etc.

Hell, it's free, so I can't complain.

 
Yeah it is fee so no complaining lol 🙂

But Rhino3D can do all that expect for maybe the select by attributes as i am not sure what attributes a "point" can have other than color (?). It does have select by names, layers and all that stuff. Anything specific such as select by colors that is as easy as writing a couple lines in vbscript inside a button. Made similar functions when i was working with point sets made from MRI scans (MRI->image->C++ edge lines->R3d points->R3d curves->R3d lofted surface->model from MRI scans).

There is a demo you might want to try if you really do need something little more powerful.
http://www.rhino3d.com/
 
Honestly, I don't know all of the differences, but the Pro version can import from and export to more formats. I don't think the free version can export to AutoCAD, for example.
 
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