Free Sketchup plugins for download

Oct 2008

By David Basulto — Filed under: Software ,Sustainability , Sketchup

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Sketchup is, by far, the easiest tool for modeling. Google acquired this software in order to crowd-source the 3D modeling of the earth, since anyone can use it to model their house, school or favourite building. But being simple and fast doesn’t mean it lacks on features.

You can enable several options available on the free standard version, or go pro for more. Also, you can extend it via plugins. Below, two plugins I have found very useful, and also available for free.

The first one is Soap Skin & Bubbles, a plugin designed by german engineer Josef Leibinger, designed to help you in the study of mechanically and pneumatically strained surfaces. The author has also been developing a plugin for tensile structures, but it hasn’t been released yet. But you can still play around with tensile structures on this plugin. You can download Soap Skin & Bubbles for free on their website, and also watch a video tutorial on The Sketchup Show.

The second plugin was developed by Integrated Enviromental Solutions, which lets you assign important sustainable design information like location, building and room type, construction types and HVAC systems to your Sketchup model. From there you can do energy, carbon, daylight and solar analysis, or take this model with all this info to your favourite BIM software. It also allows you to More info and download a the IES Sketchup plugin website. Complete video tutorial on YouTube.

Two very helpful tools for your design pocess, with the ease of use of Sketchup.

Please share with us any other Sketchup plugins you find useful on the comments below.

About David Basulto: Graduate Architect. Co Founder and Executive Editor of ArchDaily.com. Architecture geek.

Cite:
Basulto , David . "Free Sketchup plugins for download" 01 Oct 2008. ArchDaily. Accessed 08 Feb 2012. <http://www.archdaily.com/7012>

Comments (36)
Tweets (2)
Links to this entry (2)

Peter says:

Nice plugins. Too bad the Soap Skin & Bubbles plugin only works with the pro version, but I’m sure going to try the IES one.

One more plugin I like, which is not free, but they have a free trial, is IRenders plugin. It allows you to very easily and quickly add lights and materials to the scene and render it. No need to export to other applications.

http://wiki.renderplus.com/index.php?title=IRender_nXt

# October 2, 2008 at 03:40

aldo says:

dwef

# August 13, 2010 at 07:38

studio says:

good plugin, it let sketch up program getting more flexible in terms of modeling

# October 2, 2008 at 11:27

Abdelatif says:

Soap Skin & Bubbles is a realy nice video and plugin thanks…!

# October 7, 2008 at 11:13

GohCH says:

hi,
I’d like to introduce 1001bit tools
Which is a collection of plugins dedicated for architectural works.
1001bit tools are sharewares with 30 day free trial.
Free license for students and academic use.
Thanks & cheers!

# March 22, 2009 at 07:26

sivamani says:

# May 4, 2009 at 03:34

Billy says:

Soap skin and bubbles worked just fine on my non-pro version of sketchup 6. Also, I must rercommend the sketchyphysics plugin.

# May 13, 2009 at 01:56

andy says:

i need so much

# May 14, 2009 at 17:26

Mark V says:

Kerkythea is a free render program for pc ,mac, and linux versions with quite nice results.

# June 14, 2009 at 15:54

Eric says:

Kerkythea is AWESOME and FREE.
I found that getting a little familiar with the materiel editor is required, but the result speak for themselves!

# May 14, 2010 at 21:26

serene says:

i tried kerkythea lots of time for rendering my sketchup model.. but i cant even view properly in the screen.. wenever i load some model in kerkythea i dont knw wer it goes in the black screen..i feed up with this software.. can u pls guide me..

# March 31, 2011 at 13:30

Hardy Pike says:

no, but kerkythea forum pages can. kerky is top of the line among free rendering software. however, the ancient RTFM rule applies… ;)

# April 1, 2011 at 05:25

ELVIN AGUSTIN says:

FREE DOWNLOAD

# July 6, 2009 at 05:32

briwantio says:

bess

# May 7, 2010 at 14:05

Theodore says:

Is it really free. I can not find the download links!!!!

# August 10, 2009 at 23:02

charlie balbuena says:

it is beautifull

# August 17, 2009 at 22:19

Christine says:

I saw it mentioned before, but I too use the Kerkythea plugin- a rendering program that allows you to import a scene from Sketchup. you then can change how your image will look using Kerkythea’s settings. For example, the glass material from Sketchup can be altered in Kerkythea to look transparent, diffused, gold-tinted, hard light, opaque, etc.

# August 21, 2009 at 13:23

oyyows says:

gooddddddddddddddddddddd

# September 24, 2009 at 23:22

A. Nonnie Moose says:

I went on the website for the SS&B plugin, downloaded the .zip file… but, when I tried to open it, it said that the file is invalid or corrupted.

Any fixable reasons for that, or am I screwed?

# November 17, 2009 at 20:18

ahmed says:

thanx

# December 8, 2009 at 14:31

Noshad says:

nothing

# February 24, 2010 at 13:17

andre prast says:

Free Sketchup plugins for download | ArchDaily http://bit.ly/dBFIue

# May 31, 2010 at 21:20

yosi3dp@yahoo.co.id says:

kasi aku software vray-nya donk please aq tunggu yaaaa kirim aja ke yosi3dp@yahoo.co.id. thank’s sobatsss

# October 19, 2011 at 11:26

karim says:

thnxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

# June 28, 2010 at 18:51

zulkifal says:

good

# July 20, 2010 at 07:54

nada says:

# November 9, 2010 at 22:24

Albert D Hart says:

We have created a new, free Plugin for SketchUp called RpImageMaker. We would appreciate if you could mention it in your newsletters or Blogs.

Here is the page describing it:

http://www.renderplus.com/wk/RpImageFilters_w.htm

Thanks,

# February 26, 2011 at 17:03

Actually the name of te Plugin is RpImageFilters

# February 27, 2011 at 00:39

NGUYEN TRI DUNG says:

jjj

# April 8, 2011 at 00:16

spider says:

i neeeeeeeeeeeeed this

# June 29, 2011 at 08:24

bbuter says:

thx. this awesome

# August 21, 2011 at 04:51

free download zone says:

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# November 6, 2011 at 03:14

louie says:

thanks for all the information

# December 2, 2011 at 07:52

nasrin says:

please tell me where can i download the plugin?
thanks

# December 3, 2011 at 06:48

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# January 21, 2012 at 21:36

tewakul says: