BuildEdge for SketchUp

There among the AEC software giants whose towering booths are metaphors for the huge buildings they will help create, was Aaron Dietzen in a 10'x10' space showing off a little gem of an application that does nothing more than make one of those giants (SketchUp) just a little easier to use. Make that a lot easier to use if you are extending walls, making roofs, adding windows and so on.

BuildEdge makes a roof on a SketchUp model in no time flat.

Aaron shows me how BuildEdge is able to move a wall in SketchUp by dragging it. The adjoining walls stay with the walls that move. This is because BuildEdge treats walls as enitites whereas with SketchUp, walls are merely lines and surfaces. You may be used to that with your AEC software, but SketchUp users were having to reconnect the wall manually. Every change involved some clean up.

As architects are all about billable hours, a few minutes saved from a couple of wall moves would more than pay for BuildEdge -- it costs a mere $29! But there's more. BuildEdge brings more from heavy duty architectural software into the SketchUp user realm. Making roofs is a cinch with BuildEdge. Aaron shows me a house with 8 walls and BAM! A roof grows pops up on it. It looks nice -- several peaks, edges, shingles. Sure, I've seen that being done in Revit and ArchiCAD, but Sketchup users had to create that manually. It would have taken me hours. Also, windows dimensioned from an edge keep their distance.

But can it change the pitch of this part of the roof? Aaron does it in a wink. Before I can ask to change a sloped roof to a gable, he does it for me.

Seriously, why isn't every SketchUp user doing building using BuildEdge?

BuildEdge is a plug in for SketchUp. Commands are accessed from a small menu window after you install the program. It works with the free SketchUp and the professional version.

There is a trial version with limited capability avaialble on th BuildEdge site. Yeah, it doesn't do windows.

For more information, go to http://www.buildedge.com/