RpTools
The RpTools Component Placement Tools' are used to place and edit SketchUp components which makes it easier to work with components and perform other powerful functions.
Keywords:
RpTools are also part of 3D Design Studio .
- Components: Select, Place, Move, Copy, Rotate, Mirror, Stretch, Aim...
- 2D Plotting Edge line colors and thickness, 2D Text
- Rooms - create a room for quick placement of components
Contents
RpTools Toolbar
These are the standard icons on the tool bar, to edit these, or add other icons use
Customize Toolbar
Standard toolbar icons
- - Start Dialog - Options and Help for RpTools.
- - Place Material - Place materials on surfaces.
- - Material Styles - save and reload all material settings.
- - Select and Place Component - Select SketchUp components from an Explorer like list.
- - Move Wizard - move a component (or any selected entities) along an axis.
- - Copy Wizard - copy a component (or any selected entities) along an axis.
- - Mirror Wizard - mirror a component (or any selected entities) along an axis.
- - Rotate Wizard - rotate a component (or any selected entities) around an axis.
- - Stretch Wizard - stretch a component (or any selected entities) along an axis.
- - Aim component - align a component's axis to point at something else in the model.
- - Alpha Channel - Adds an image with transparent areas.
- - Proxy Components - Create low poly components to speed up your SketchUp model.
- - Shapes - Wizards to create standard 3D objects.
Place Material
Place Material uses an Explorer type tree to select materials and place them directly on faces without having to open components and groups for edit.
The tool “drills” into the model to determine which face, (or component or group), to change to place the material.
Select and Place Component
Select and Place Component is a tool in RpTools which selects components from your SketchUp libraries using a convenient and powerful explorer tree.
You can use the view buttons above the component image to change the preview view, or the use mouse to spin and orbit the component by dragging on the image.
When using the Place button, you can rotate the component during placement with the arrow keys.
See:
Select and Place Component
Getting Started
First, download and install SpaceDesign.
To get started, select one or more objects in your model, and try the various Manipulation Icons.
Each Icon will load a dialog which can be used to move, rotate, or make other changes to the selected objects in your model.
Editing and Manipulation wizards
Move Wizard
Move Wizard for SpaceDesign . The Move Wizard is useful for more exact positioning. In this example, we want to move an component exactly 3' along the red axis.
Notes:
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Copy Wizard
Copy Wizard for RpTools
Make a copy of a component 3' along the red axis Notes:
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Mirror Wizard
Mirror Wizard for RpTools Mirror works like Copy, except that the geometry is mirrored around an axis. Note:Mirroring is only in the Red.Green plane not in the Blue Axis. (Useful for mirroring "handed" furniture components.)
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Rotate Wizard
Rotate Wizard for RpTools.
Ready to rotate selected item
Notes:
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Stretch Wizard
Stretch Wizard for RpTools
There are 3 tabs available for stretching. Dimensions
Percentage
Incremental
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Aim component
Aim, or point, a component by pointing one of its axes at another location in the model.
Aim Axis - select the axis of the component to align.
Then move the mouse cursor to snap to a locatable item in SketchUp to aim the component at that item.
Other Tools
Alpha Channel
Alpha channel adds an alpha channel to a raster image, (to defined parts of the image which are transparent). The alpha channel image can then be used as a SketchUp Image, a SketchUp material, or for other uses (e.g. as a toolbar icon).
See:
Alpha Channel
Proxy Components
Proxy Components are used to replace components which have a high poly count with a low poly version.
The low poly version can be used while creating your model, setting up views and then you can switch to the high poly version when creating renderings. Models with LOW-POLY, Proxy Components, are much faster to work with, although the quality of the image is lower while the LOW-POLY layers are selected.
For SketchUp renderings, you can turn on the HI-POLY layers, save the image, and then restore the LOW_POLY layers.
Photorealistic renderers such as IRender nXt will automatically extract and use the HI-POLY layers without having to take the time to turn them on and off inside of SketchUp.
See: Proxy Components
Alpha Images
You can replace a component with a component of the same name with both LO-POLY and HI-POLY geometry stored in separate layers.
- Tools to create or manipulate alpha channel images.
Alpha channel images contain a channel, in addition to red, green and blue for color, which defines places where the image is transparent.
This is used to create transparent, 2D components in SketchUp, or to paste renderings or other images on top of a background.
- See: Alpha Images
More Functions
- See also: Other RpTools Functions
Shape Wizards
Shapes is a set of Wizards of RpTools to create simple 3D Shapes.
See:
Shapes
Downloads and Installation
We offer a free 30-day trial for any of our products. These are fully functional versions, with no watermarks added to indicate that it is a trial version.
Follow the links on the Downloads Page to download the latest version.