I am an educator, interested in installing SketchUp Pro in our interior design computer lab. I am new to SketchUp and am looking for insight as to what else should we have installed with it? Any extensions that would be helpful? Our intention is to use SketchUp primarily for rendering and modeling purposes. Would Pro by itself work, or do you really need extensions? Any professionals have insights as to what they would like to see interns have skills in with SketchUp? Thanks in advance for any insights you may have!
Hello. For rendering purposes you need to have rendering plugins. There are hundreds of them, simple ones, hard ones, expensive ones and cheap ones. I’m a Designer by profession and my favourite remains V-Ray, in my opinion it’s the best one. Gallery here
Podium is another favourite but its disadvantage is that it doesn’t have a live material preview feature which is a real pain in the back and you have to play a guessing game, each time you want to assign a material. Still, it’s interior renders are great. Have a look at their gallery here.
Regarding plugins for the actual modelling workflow, there are (again) hundreds of useful plugins. A quick search through my computer brings up about 30-35 of them. Attaching a screenshot here, because writing down all the names and linking each one to their Internet addresses, would take an hour.
The interesting thing about SketchUp (core modeling) plugins is that you don’t necessarily know you need to have a certain one until the time comes when you need it.
The Extension Warehouse is the home to the plugins and you can search what you need there (or ask here in the Community).
SketchUcation is another great plugin-devoted forum-website.
Excellent! Thank you!
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