Overview:

I’m embarrassed to admit this, but I only started using Sketchup extensions a few of years ago. It started simply enough–I was modeling landform around a building, and I was getting frustrated selecting hundreds of small line segments. After creating only one landform in 45 minutes, I jumped on the internet to see if anyone could offer up tips or tricks to speed up my process. I did not find any tips, but I did discover the world of extensions. The answer to my frustration wasn’t some native Sketchup function, it was the work of a programmer with the same issues who designed a plugin to solve them. That day, I was introduced to the Weld plugin, and over the past few years, I have collected and tested dozens of extensions that make my life easier as a landscape architect.

Below are my 7 must-have Sketchup plugins for architects and landscape architects. These are the extensions that I pre-load onto every computer in our office. They have saved us countless time, energy, and frustration over the years, and I hope they can elevate your modeling as well.

Installation:

Sketchup has a quick, easy-to-follow guide to installing these extensions that you can find here.

7 Must-Have Sketchup Extensions:

Weld | Smustard

SketchUp has a nasty habit of turning any line or curve into tens or hundreds of segments that you need to individually select if you want to manipulate them. Weld changes this by allowing you to combine many small segments into larger, continuous lines. Perfect for combining lines to create landforms, ramps, and curving staircases.

DropGC | Smustard

Need to pepper a terrain model with a forest of trees? You could select each individually and painstakingly move it down onto the surface–praying that your blue axis snap doesn’t disappear. Or, you can select your trees, select your landform, and drop ALL of the trees in one click with DropGC.

Joint Push Pull | Fredo6

Part of SketchUp’s mass appeal is its ability to get people modeling quickly. Draw a shape, grab the push/pull tool, and you have a recognizable form in seconds. As your skills improve, however, you’ll find yourself wanting more options than the native push/pool tool offers. That’s where Fredo6’s Joint Push Pull comes in. Need to extrude a curved face? No problem. Need to pull out one facet of a circle and extrude it? Yup, you can do that too. A plug-in to never leave home without.

Mirror | TIG

If you’ve ever looked for the native mirror tool in SketchUp, you are not alone. It has to exist, right? It must be next to Offset, or Rectangle, or Scale. Look no more, because Mirror is here. This plugin takes a few minutes to familiarize yourself (even if you have experience with CAD programs), but once you get a feel for the interface, you’ll be mirroring everything in sight.

Make Face | s4u

Have you ever imported a DWG from CAD into SketchUp? The first hour is spent crouched over the mouse, excruciatingly drawing and erasing lines until all of your lines are faces. Instead, save yourself hours by making faces automatically with Make Face. Your linework from CAD still needs to be clean, but you can rapidly diagnose issues in the first two minutes rather than ninety minutes into modeling.

Camera Memory | Eneroth3

My boss asks me to do this all the time: I have two options of a design humming along nicely in two separate SketchUp files. We pick views we want to present in one of the models, and…I realize I have no way of matching these views in the second model. Wait, couldn’t you copy over the other model, line it up with the first option, group it, add it to a new layer, and have the same views? Yes, you could. Or, you could transfer all of your camera views in two clicks with Camera Memory.

Sandbox Tools | SketchUp

While not technically an extension, the Sandbox Tools are a native extension that need to be activated like the rest of the examples above. If you’re a landscape architect or architect, you’ll be using these tools constantly to create landforms, manipulate topography, build terrain models, and grade out a site. In the terrain modeling toolbox, the Sandbox Tools are a Swiss Army Knife.