The New Trimble Site Contractor extension: Design, layout, construct

The Trimble Site Contractor extension for SketchUp.

SketchUp is an amazing tool for intuitively designing and visualizing in three-dimensional space. It’s used in many different trades from architecture to 3D printing, and also the construction industry. Our parent company, Trimble, knows a thing or two about the construction industry and is renowned for applying innovative technologies to help improve project efficiency and reduce overall cost.

Today we’re excited to announce a new extension from our Trimble colleagues in Civil Engineering and Construction: the Trimble Site Contractor extension.

Design in SketchUp.Layout in SCS900.Construct in GCS900.

This extension enables contractors to design constructible models in SketchUp and export data into Trimble’s field-ready technologies such as SCS900 and GCS900.SCS900 enables a contractor to position a 3D design in the field with GPS technology and GCS900 provides on-screen guidance in the cab of the machine to construct with greater accuracy and speed equating to increased productivity.

Since it’s often not their specialty, many contractors outsource 3D design work to third parties, an expensive and time-intensive process. This extension allows contractors to work with 3D data from construction documents, or to create their own 3D data sets for use in the field: a win-win for everyone in the design-construct world.

No interest in construction? The Trimble Site Contractor extension has ancillary uses outside of the construction industry too. Consider landscape architecture. Wouldn’t it be awesome to import a Google Maps image of a customer’s property and precisely design in SketchUp? Then take it a step further and place that design on the property and know exactly where the features belong? This is all possible with SketchUp, the Trimble Site Contractor extension and SCS900, allowing for big productivity and visualization advantages.

The Trimble Site Contractor Extension is free and can be found on the Extension Warehouse. You’ll need two things to get started: a computer (Mac or Windows) and aSketchUp Pro 2016 license. For all things related to SCS900 and GCS900, please check out the Trimble Civil Engineering and Construction website.