SketchUp revolution – the Weld plugin (+ Shortcut key)

The plug in:

If you are like me, to any degree, and you use SketchUp religiously everyday to convey your designs to your colleagues and clients, than you would be very happy to learn about the new Weld plugin by Rick Wilson (see Smustard.com). This tool allows one to unite any two or more continuous lines into a single polyline.  The polyline, after this process may be further tempered with using a number of other great plug ins, such as the The Bezier Spline plugin created by Fredo6, or the LSS Toolbar by LSS.

The use:

This simply plugin is especially instrumental when importing drawings from AutoCAD, were all imported curves translate into segmented lines. This could be extremely annoying, especially when one attempts to extrude(pull) such curved forms and has to deal with faceted volumes. Now, one can apply the Weld plugin to whole floor and site plans and get a smooth set of drawings.

Shortcut Key:

The only minor shortcoming of the plug in (in the current version v.3.000) is that the “weld” function is nested in the drop-down menu at Plugins>Weld. This is not such a big rout to take, however, I use this function quite often and it would be nice to have a shortcut made for it.

Therefore, to assign a shortcut key to the Weld plugin:

1. In Sketchup, go to Window > Properties  
2. Then, in the the dialogged window, select Shortcuts, and in the Filter Field type in the word “Weld”
3. Select “Plugins/Weld” and type “w” in the “Ass shortcut” field, and click, “+”. Click OK and you are done.

Download and attribution:

Get the Weld plugin here – link , and pay some respect to Rick Wilson for the great work and free distribution.