Slicer – Google Sketchup Plugin

Slicer3 is a new plugin for Google Sketchup from TIG.  It allows you to slice an object into pieces that can be cut and re-assembled into the part drawn in Sketchup.  This would be great for a laser cutter.

In high school I did several architectural models and cutting the terrain was fun (for a while), but always very time consuming.  This tool would have saved me many hours of cutting and one nasty cut to my index finger.

Here are some images from the Google Sketchup blog that show some terrain being sliced in 3 different ways.

I decided to try a simpler example.  This is a little project box, that I might cut out of Acrylic or foam board.  If you subtract the time spend on screen shots and writing the steps, it probably took about 3 minutes to do.  Here was my process.

Draw your part. I drew a simple #” x 4” box without a top.

You need to make the item into a group or component. I made my box into a group. Make sure you select it before running the slicer script

Run the slicer Script.Set the parameters. I used ¼” (.0208 feet) for both my spacing and thickness.

There are few more prompts about how you want the pieces to be laid out, but that is it.

Programmer note:

Google Sketchup uses Ruby as its plugin programming language.  I am a big fan of object oriented programming languages, and  Ruby is a beautiful example.  It takes the best ideas from a lot of languages (Perl, Smalltalk, Eiffel, Ada, and Lisp) and puts them together perfectly.  Even integers are objects so you can do things like this.

4.times{“4 is an object!”}

X = 4.plus 7

It is also scripted, dynamic and reflexive (code can modify itself at run time).

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2 Responses to “Slicer – Google Sketchup Plugin”


  1. Matt

    I had no idea that sketchup could be used for so much! Thanks you.

  2. muhammad

    hello.
    how i can download slicemodeler plugin free.
    thanks.

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