In the half-hour I spent so far with LayOut, it also appeared unnecessary (although not unusual) that it was implemented as a separate program – as opposed to a new child window (or tab) in the main application. In any case, it was very anticipated by the community. This would indicate that the release was a bit hurried. Since this release is a major new version, it is somewhat surprising that the main new feature, the LayOut add-on is supplied only as a “beta” version. You can view the entire list of new features (and improvements on the official New Features page. Other than that, the user interface hasn’t changed much. Views can then – as before – be arranged in a series, the only difference is that the old “Tourguide” now is called “ Animation“. Pretty cool! All new line styles are amazingly realistic. With this feature, the current view can with one click be transformed into a blueprint, a conté sketch on paper, or even a classic white-lines-on-black-background (Auto-)CAD presentation. This is a very useful feature as anyone who ever exported SketchUp views to AutoCAD can attest.Īnother major new feature are the Styles, which allow for quickly changing the appearance (colors, line styles) of views. SketchUp models can be linked to LayOut and plots get updated when the original model changes. There’s also a new external application (in the professional version only) called LayOut that helps in creating plottable sheets (or PDF presentations) with full layout and line-control. As is customary with this kind of software, it didn’t remove the old version but did a parallel install.Ī major new feature is a photo-(perspective-)matching tool in SketchUp that simplifies placement of a model into a photographed scene or (more important for Google Earth users) to apply photos as a texture onto any object.

But I got it and everything installed just fine. The Google sign-up servers slowed down significantly and my browser page didn’t reload for minutes.

Sketchy view in SketchUp 6 using one of the provided styles.ĭownloading it yesterday ten minutes after the announcement e-mail arrived was a test of patience. Upgrades (at least for US customers) are free and there’s a nifty wizard to accomplish a smooth upgrade.

It is here! After a bit of a wait, Google (formerly software) released SketchUp 6 – again in a free-for-all and a professional version.

Cool sketchy styles for sketchup