So I Entered a Cookie Contest....

Every year around this time, we're part a group of about 25 families that head out for a few days to beautiful Cacapon State Park in West Virginia. And every year there's some sort of dessert contest: cheesecake, brownies, pies. This year the contest was cookies.

I never enter these things because there are some serious bakers in our group and the competition is too stiff. But this year I thought I'd at least give it a shot, with help from my 3D printer.

Here's the park's logo, found on their website:

I imported the above image into SketchUp, and did some tracing, mostly using the 2 Point Arc tool.  I put the whole thing inside an oval-shaped border, and came up with this initial model. The letters are 4 mm tall, and the cutout border is 10 mm high.

And at the last minute I remembered that the impression will be a mirror image, so I used the Scale tool to flip the letters the other way.

 I printed this out on my Afinia H-Series printer, which took about an hour. I didn't bother removing the raft (the supports at the bottom of the cutter) since that part of the cutter wouldn't touch any dough.

 

I tried using this cutter with sugar cookie dough. Two problems: One, it's very hard to extricate the cutter from sticky dough, and little bits of dough get stuck between the letters. (Non-stick spray helped with this.) And the next problem is that even for those pre-baked cookies that looked good on the baking sheet, once they heated up, the dough flattened out a bit and the letters became too faint to read. Oh well. We had some great-tasting, blob-shaped cookie rejects. (Good thing I have five kids - none of these rejects remained after 10 minutes.)

So thanks to Google, I discovered that the best cookie for impressions is shortbread - there's no leavening agents so nothing rises or spreads. (I guess that should have been obvious.) I found this amazingly simple recipe from King Arthur Flour, adding a bit of lemon extract (yum!). I also used salted Plugra butter - I tried a few iterations with different brands and this was by far the best. Who'd have thought butter quality would make such an enormous difference. (I guess serious bakers know this stuff.)

So I tried the cutter again. Again, too hard to get the cutter away from the dough. Then the light bulb popped on over my head and I realized the cookies needed two cutters - one for the oval shape, one for the letters. So I split up the SketchUp model into two separate parts.

And here are the two parts printed (with their rafts still attached):

Each cookie was made in two steps: cut the oval shape, then imprint on top. With just a bit of water at the top of the dough, the dough almost never stuck to the letters.

Here are some of the final results - some turned out better (smoother) than others, but all are pretty easy to read.

They tasted amazing (in my humble opinion), and though they didn't win, I did garner a few votes. But everyone said I'd get the tech award, if there was one. And there's always next year....

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If You Use an Old Version of SketchUp....

.... you might want to consider upgrading. SketchUp is changing the way older software versions access outside applications, namely Google Earth and the 3D Warehouse.

You can read details here.

If you use SketchUp 2014 or 2015, there are no changes.

If you use SketchUp 8 or 2013, you won't be able to access the 3D Warehouse using the Get Models tool, or through the Components window. Though you can always download models from the 3D Warehouse website, then import them into your SketchUp model. If you use geolocation features, you won't have access to Google Earth features, including street view photos.

If you don't mind a bit of hacking, you can make manual changes to your sketchup.dat file, which will restore some functionality to older versions, once the "break" occurs on June 1. Instructions are here - they're not too complicated.






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New Video: SketchUp for Interior Design

It's been embarrassingly long since I last posted - but at least I've been productive! Today I created a new video, after a long video hiatus. The topic is SketchUp for Interior Design, and the video shows how to import furniture and accessories into a 3D space (our newly renovated basement!), as well as how to explore two different ways of arranging objects in the space.




The techniques shown in this video are from my book Modeling with SketchUp for Interior Design.

Soon I'll be creating a shorter version for SketchUp's YouTube channel, but please enjoy the long version!



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LayOut 2015 Book is Here!

I've done a lot of book updating recently, with the release of SketchUp 2015, and the accompanying LayOut application. If you have SketchUp Pro then you have LayOut as well - the awesome presentation tool that helps you showcase your SketchUp models. Basically, LayOut is SketchUp's presentation tool - bring in a SketchUp model, show different views and sections, apply dimensions, create templates and title blocks - everything you need to wow a client.

And now, you've got a book that shows you all you need to know to use LayOut to the fullest. As always, I use step-by-step, hands-on exercises that will get you using the program, not just reading about it. Work through each project, and you'll become an expert in just 220 pages!

My last LayOut release was in 2013 (sorry, I skipped over 2014), and the 2015 version has lots of improvements and new content - it's about 45 pages longer.

Here's a PDF with the table of contents and some sample pages.

Some highlights:

• A quick intro chapter, resulting in a two-page presentation with several views of a chair
• How to use SketchUp scenes and layers to prepare LayOut views 
• How to use section planes (for both slicing and hiding objects)
• How to use LayOut layers for working drawings
• Creating standard SketchUp and LayOut files for streamlined presentations
• All kinds of dimensions, text blocks, and labels
• Creating templates and title blocks, complete with auto-text (dates, page numbers, etc.)
• How to render your SketchUp view
• How to edit SketchUp edges and faces in LayOut
• How to create all sorts of shapes in LayOut
• Clipping: both in LayOut (trimming around a shape) and in SketchUp (controlling what appears in a SketchUp scene
• Applying patterns, hatching, materials to faces in LayOut
• "Smart" labels - identifying attributes of components, dynamic components, and classified (BIM) components

If you have SketchUp Pro and haven't tried LayOut yet, you're missing out. This deceptively simple program can create knock-your-socks-off presentations.  Get the book to see how it's all done!




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Ukelele!

Check out this SketchUp model of a ukelele by Stuart, a high school junior:

(The table is great also but was downloaded from the 3D Warehouse.)

Stuart's teacher, Peter Kalajian of Maine's Watershed School, had this to say about the project:

I work with really fine and interested students at the high school level at a small (28 student) high school in Camden, Maine. We spent an entire semester (5 hours per week) working on this project after about a month of going through your book. I brought the uke to class, so students had to share it to do all the measurements. The idea was to stick with one hard project for the entire semester, collaborate on solutions, and generally stay very focused during class.

Stuart had done some work with SketchUp before, so he got the furthest along. Out of a class of 9 all but two made complete models, some without strings. In general it was a great class.