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Update: June 2014 This article was written right before Google sold SketchUp to Trimble. Since then the instructions has changed slightly. In May 2013 which included the which allow you to browse and discover extensions directly from within SketchUp. For the extensions hosted on Extension Warehouse there is no need to manually install or uninstall files. This article is now for historical purposes and useful only to legacy extensions or if you need to install extensions in an older SketchUp version. There are, plugins available for SketchUp offering powerful features and enhancements allowing the users to customize SketchUp to their needs. However, there is no single repository or store for obtaining these plugins.

You have to locate the various community-driven sites yourself. There is also no one-click installation for these plugins. Some times they come as a single.rb file, some times as a.zip archive, on rare occasions they come with an installer. Installing can be a bit of trial and error. Extracting the.zip archives correctly isn’t even straight forward. Different extracting packages will behave differently – some times creating extra folders or even ignoring the folder hierarchy in the.zip archive all together. Then there is the matter of where to install it, this is particular troublesome under OSX where a user can easily mistake similarly looking locations for the correct one if the user isn’t paying attention.

The Easy Way – RBZ Packages As of Google introduced a new feature which made the process easier. They introduced a new file format for distributing plugins, or “extensions” as they prefer to call them, in the shape of.rbz packages. Technically a.rbz file is nothing more than a renamed.zip file. Unfortunately this method of distribution hasn’t gained widespread usage yet.

However, if you have a plugin distributed as.zip you can in many cases just rename it to.rbz and use the Install Extension feature in SketchUp. But beware that there could be plugins that need special actions in order to install correctly so always read the instructions first! The Simpler Way? In an attempt to make the process easier, with less clicks and more compatible with legacy distribution I wrote a small utility:. It allows for installation of single.rb files as well as legacy.zip packages and the newer.rbz format. Available from Plugins » Install – a place that requires less clicks than the native Window » Preferences » Extensions.

You still need to be using SU8 M2 in order to use this utility to install.zip and.rbz packages. It lets you browse and select the plugin package you want to install and it will be installed to the correct location and also automatically loaded, avoiding the need to restart SketchUp in most cases. The caveats are that under Windows the path where the file is located cannot contain any characters outside the ASCII range, this is due to a limitation of SketchUp’s version of Ruby (1.8).

Another bug in the SketchUp API is that one cannot present a file dialogue that filters for multiple file types, which is why there is a menu item for each file format. When Internet Explorer 10 is released it will be possible to create a cross browser solution where one can drag the plugin package files onto a webdialog drop-pad in SketchUp, making for a very easy installation. The Old Fashioned Manual Way This is where many, especially those new to SketchUp plugins, run into problems.

Users of SketchUp versions prior to version 8 M2 must use this method. Single.rb Files If the plugin you downloaded consisted only of a single.rb file you only need to copy it to. Under Windows this folder is located where SketchUp itself is installed. On Windows 7 64bit the default location for SketchUp 8’s plugin folder is: Note: these paths are out of date. Refer to the.

/Library/Application Support/Google SketchUp 8/SketchUp/Plugins Note that this path is under the root HD location and not the user folder! It is also not inside the SketchUp application package.

Both of these locations are something that OSX users often mistakenly pick first time they try to install a plugin. ZIP Packages One frequent problem is that different decompression software extracts.zip files differently. Some extract additional wrapping folders, some ignore the original folder structure completely.

To be sure that you do thing right, follow this check list when extracting:. Extract to a temporary location first, not directly into your plugins folder. This way you can verify the extracted content first. Ensure your extraction utility preserves folder structures.

Read the plugin’s description from where you downloaded it and check if it describes which files goes where. Normally a.zip package contains a.rb file and a folder – the folder containing additional support files for the plugin. The files you place in your plugins folder should be this.rb file and the supporting folder. If your extraction software added a folder that wraps these files, usually with the same name as the.zip file, you should make sure you don’t move that wrapping folder. Instead find that.rb file and supporting folder and move those. SketchUp needs to find that.rb file directly in the plugins folders. But remember to always check the description for a plugin because there are exceptions to the rule.

My library for instance does not place a.rb file in the plugins folder, it only has a TTLib2 folder. It is important not to get confused and put all the.rb files in that folder into the roof of Plugins. Should you encounter problems when installing, contact the author and describe exactly what doesn’t work (What did you expect should happen – and what happened?) along with any error messages you might have encountered. The error messages are very important feedback when debugging an issue – never ignore them! When you copy files to the plugins folder under Windows ensure that you have administrator rights as you might otherwise run into issues.

Vista tends to place files in a hidden where things appear upon first glance to be in order. But it usually cause problems, and you should move the files into the correct folder with admin rights. When you talk about a “Simple Plugin Installer” above, is this an. Exe file or something that I need to download and intstall into SketchUP 8?

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I’m trying to download and install the plugin from Skelion and am having the same issues as many other – with the.rbs file needing to be an.rbz. And changing the.zip folder extension to.rbz is just creating a unrecognizable file. I don’t understand why you wouldn’t just create a.rbz file to begin with if that’s what you need to work in SketchUp, but then I’m not a software engineer. Can you offer any help?

I know they have never been part of the free version. What would be in it for Trimble you ask?

Not much, I realize that, aside from my appreciation as I stated before. The reason I made my request is that I have no intention to buy the Pro version, just for the solid tools. Yes, Pro is an appealling package but just not for me. I am no more than an enthusiast amateur user, so Style Builder and Lay Out are more or less useless to me.

I am only interested in the drawing features of SketchUp itself. And the Solid Tools definetely are some powerfull tools that could really safe some of my precious time while I am using SketchUp. As I said, I have no intention whatsoever to pay a great deal of money just to unlock the solid tools.

I have already tried the free third party plug-ins that are supposed to act like the solid tools, but they just don’t seem to work. I would not hold my breath waiting for the solid tools to be given out free. As your experience with the available plugins shows, it is quite difficult to get this kind of tool to work within SketchUp and the developers surely spent a lot of effort on them (and despite this there are still some glitches from time to time). Even Google, who started the idea of a free version with the goal of populating Google Earth with lots of free buildings, didn’t give the solid tools away for free. You should be grateful for getting as much of SketchUp for free as you do! Fwiw, SolidTools don’t do anything that can’t be done in suMake via intersecting&deleting solidTools simply automates the process and allows you to work faster in a boolean workflow.

So, it’s not like you’re lacking capabilities by lacking solidTools you just go slower (unlike, say,.dwg import whose capability is absent from make and any workarounds you may find will be dependent on 3rd parties) so with solid tools, you gotta look at it more this way: either pay with your money to speed things up -or- pay with your time to keep your money. I agree with Tomatenketchup, I there is no harm in asking and hopping.

And he is right about solid tools there are most likely more useful to the maker movement rather then pro’s. I use lay outs all the time for work but that’s in chief architect. I think it would be good idea for sketch up would sell the tools separately I would pay, maybe some thing like $30-$50.

They do save a lot of time. Another work around I found to work well was exporting ever thing to STL and using MS 3d Builder to do my subtracting.

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And it works well also 3d builder givers you more basic shapes some ting I find my self importing anyway. Also jeff what’s suMake? Sounds like you mean that we do it manually and not that’s its a plugin.

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Just checking.