Developer @Last Software announced on Wednesday that it will present a sneak preview of SketchUp 4.0 in its booth at the AIA National Convention and Expo, to be held June 10-12 in Chicago. The latest version of the company’s 3D design tool adds several new features, including Follow Me, which pushes or pulls a surface along a path to create stair railings and similar items; Texture Tweaker, which you can use to stretch a texture or photo across any continuous surface; Face Me, which makes 2D people and landscape elements always face the camera and appear 3D; and more.
An @Last spokesperson told MacCentral that SketchUp 4.0 is in Beta testing and should ship “in early July.” Pricing will be US$495 for the full version ($475 if you want to download it from the @Last Web site) and $95 for the upgrade, with version 3.x owners who made the purchase after April getting the new edition for free. System requirements call for Mac OS X v10.2 or higher, a G4 processor running 400MHz or faster (800MHz recommended), 128MB RAM (256MB recommended) and 20MB free hard drive space.