About 20 months before SketchUp Pro 8 released the Solid Tools, (way back in Dec 2008!), the original BoolTools plugin for SketchUp was released. This tool provided an inexpensive way to perform some basic boolean operations and worked with both SketchUp Make (free) or Pro. After all, the Pro Solid Tools did not exist yet, and no one even knew that SketchUp was considering creating this long-requested feature.
The original BoolTools plugin was indeed useful and helped fill a necessary need in the SketchUp toolset for many years (especially for Make users). However, it definitely had some limitations, especially when it came to dealing with smaller complex objects.
Successful boolean operations depend on high-precision 3D intersections, something that the internal SketchUp geometry engine struggles with at times. Even the Pro Solid Tools struggles with this problem. That’s why so many Solid Tools users have adopted the copy and ‘scale-up’ workflow to prevent their Solid Tool operation from failing.
The Pro Solid Tools has also had some other long-standing limitations that we have improved on with BoolTools. So without further delay, here are the features of BoolTools 2!
Features
- Works with SketchUp Make (Free) or SketchUp Pro (2016 and above)
- Designed with 3D Printing in mind to work with small complex objects (no more scaling workarounds!)
- Works with nested solids!
- Does not create new components! The original component is modified as expected.
- Maintains the Layer and Names of the first object selected
- Union, Difference, Intersection, Trim, Split
- New Single Object Union tool (click a single group or component to union all nested solids inside of it)
- Results in solid 3D printable objects in almost all cases (if the original objects were also solids)
You can get BoolTools 2 at:
