@Last Software on Wednesday announced that it’s shipping SketchUp 4.0, a new version of the company’s 3D design software for Mac OS X and Windows. The software was released as a soft launch some weeks ago, but Wednesday marks the new version’s official release, at Macworld Conference & Expo in Boston.
Major new features in SketchUp 4 include “Follow Me,” which enables users to push or pull a surface along a path. “Texture Tweaker” allows users to stretch and otherwise manipulate any texture or photo along any continuous surface. “Face Me” makes 2D models of people and landscaping elements appear to be 3D, and makes them face the direction of viewer regardless of the orientation of the model. “The Intersector” is a boolean model generate that allow users to create complex intersected images quickly and easily. Also new in this release is an interface for Ruby, a scripting language that can be used to automate tasks, which @Last describes as similar to the lisp language used in the popular 3D engineering tool Autocad.
SketchUp 4.0, which won a Macworld Best of Show award this week, costs US$475 to purchase as a download or $495 on CD. Upgrades for existing customers cost $95 per license. Copies of SketchUp purchased on or after April 1, 2004 are available for free through October 15, 2004. System requirements call for Mac OS X 10.3 or higher, G4/400MHz or faster, 128MB RAM, 20MB hard disk space and QuickTime 5.0 or later.