My assignment is to model on of the two “aura” sculptures by zaha hadid.
What (free!) plugins for SketchUp could be useful for this?
Blender
Somewhat similar…
Otherwise, you could use Vertex Tools, SUbD, and QuadFace Tools in SketchUp.
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I don’t know how to use Blender unfortunately haha. But I’ll try the plugins
Do you have some tutorial recommendations for the plugins?
YouTube search
Oh wow! Can you explain what you did?
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Did you search YouTube for tutorials for those plugins? Did you watch them, did you learn how to work with them?
In short, you create the approximate shape using as few quads (using lines/rectangles/cubes) as possible, and then subdivide them to obtain an organic shape.
But if you haven’t learned to model with quads and subdivs yet, this ‘assignment’ is too advanced.
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I’m in Türkiye for an exchange semester and YouTube is currently banned here.
That is why I’m asking here. Thank you for the rough tutorial though.
This site explains well the basics about quad modeling.
Have you tried using a VPN to be able to watch YouTube videos?
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After you find a way to follow tutorials to learn how to work with those extensions, look for some blueprints of those objects and create a wire version first, then add quads and so on, to finally subdivide them.
Look at mihai.s post
make a cube following each segment of the line you made. Chris Fullmer has a plugin to create a square perpendicular to a point, this may help to get started.
a plugin would be helpful! which one is it? 
depending on the shape of the line, you could probably also start with a follow-me using a square?
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I saw that
instead of drawing a circle as face, you can either use a rectangle (from the middle) or a low-poly polygon (with 4 sides)
haha yes, i realized as i sent it 
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Chris made one called perpendicular face tool. Or like ateliernab suggested, you can draw a square and use the “Follow Me” tool. If you have a segment that is aligned to one of the 3 normal planes will help. And start a square perpendicular to the point (vertices). You can toggle plane locks using the arrow keys so the square is on the correct plane.
I’m a little curious. If this is a class project, was the assignment to use only native tools? Also, this is a very detail oriented project, the questions you are asking seem to imply you are fairly new to SketchUp. You are in the correct place to find brilliant help. You may also google youtube video for SquareOne where each tool in SketchUp is explicitly discussed. Good luck
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I’m not new to SketchUp but I never had to model such absurd shapes. I do Interior Design so it’s usually buildings and interior spaces which is much different.
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