http://somethinglearned.com/ en-us 40 something learned comments <p>A few years back, while I was building my house, I downloaded a demo copy of <a href="http://sketchup.google.com/">Sketchup</a> to help visualize how everything would look. It&#8217;s a <strong>fantastic</strong> tool for 3D design, one of those rare pieces of software that just makes sense.</p> <p>Unfortunately it&#8217;s also software that costs about $500 <span class="caps">USD</span> and as much as I wanted to, I simply couldn&#8217;t justify the expense. My love affair with Sketchup was doomed to be just a few short weeks as the demo period quickly slipped away.</p> <p>Sketchup did leave me with a legacy though: Ruby. It ships with a ruby interpreter and has hooks to extend the software with Ruby scripts. Had I not seen the Ruby/Sketchup integration I probably wouldn&#8217;t have given Rails a second look when I stumbled across it a year and a half (gosh!) ago.</p> <p>Okay, that&#8217;s enough nostalgia. The real point here isn&#8217;t whether I owe a debt of gratitude to a 3D modeling program for more than a year of fun, full-time work with Rails&#8230;</p> <p>The real point here is that Google bought Sketchup <strong>and</strong> they are releasing cut-down free versions. I think that&#8217;s pretty big news and I have absolutely no idea how I missed it.</p> <p>They&#8217;ve already released the <a href="http://sketchup.google.com/">free version</a> for PC and apparently a free version for <span class="caps">OS X</span> is in the works as well.</p> <p>I am <em>so</em> chuffed about this. It&#8217;s going to make designing my kids&#8217; backyard playstructure a breeze.</p> Sun, 28 May 2006 21:16:40 EDT <a href="/articles/2006/05/28/living-under-a-rock-google-and-sketchup">Living under a rock? Google and Sketchup</a> <a href="/articles/2006/05/28/living-under-a-rock-google-and-sketchup">Living under a rock? Google and Sketchup</a>