Live Components

The newest addition to the SketchUp ecosystem is Live Components. Live components are configurable components that let you change parameters and see the updates in real-time.

Live components can be thought of as a modern implementation of the dynamic component feature inside SketchUp Pro, but with a whole lot more potential. Dynamic components, if you’re not aware, are special components that have certain parameters and constraints built into their design so that you can make changes to the component through a user interface, or through various tools and interactions. 

But, dynamic components have several bugs and limitations, and the entire feature hasn’t been updated in years.

What are Live Components?

Well, it seems as though we now know why dynamic components haven’t been updated. The SketchUp team announced in the forum the other day that they have launched the very first version of live components, which can be downloaded from the 3D warehouse in SketchUp Free, Shop, or Pro. 

• Official Live Components authored by SketchUp
• Announcement on SketchUp Forum introducing Live Components

Live components are parametric, allowing you to configure the component using various predetermined parameters while seeing the results in real-time. Once you configure the component to your liking, you can download it and import it into SketchUp.

With this initial release, live components are limited to a sample of various components that the SketchUp team has authored, with more to be added in the future. So you’re not able to author your own custom live components at this point. 

However, they’ve stated that they are working on being able to allow SketchUp users to author their own live components, as well as being able to reconfigure live components right inside of SketchUp, instead of having to configure it on the 3D Warehouse. 

SketchUp Labs

You can think of this as a “public beta” release of live components, and it’s actually the first feature to be released in a new branch of SketchUp products and features that will be developed under what’s being called “SketchUp Labs”.

SketchUp Labs is a new program that will enable certain features to be released to the public in order to test new ideas and have SketchUp users provide feedback in order to help prioritize the development of new features. So I imagine live components will remain a SketchUp labs project until it’s considered feature complete, at which point it will no longer be considered experimental.

SketchUp Labs Forum category

Finding Live Component Models

If you want to explore the currently available live components, click this link, or just go to the 3D warehouse inside of SketchUp,

1. Click the search button to go to the results page
2. Expand the advanced section and filter for live components.
3. Click on the models category to see them all.

I don’t recommend searching for a specific term just yet, since there aren’t too many live components available yet, you’re better off simply browsing the ones available. When viewing a live component, you’ll see an interface with sliders and options that you can customize, and you’ll see the model change in real-time.

Below are direct links to ALL 68 of the Live Components available as of 11/12/20. Click the link, then click Configure to configure the component.

I also did a thorough review of all of these initial live components to try and figure out what kind of controls we might have once we’re able to author our own live components. Check out the video below to see what I discovered. These are going to be much more powerful than dynamic components!

An Aquisition

What’s interesting about live components is that they are built on an entirely different modeling platform called Materia, that Trimble now owns through its acquisition of a company called MatterMachine. Although the website no longer works, it seems as though Mattermachine had built a web-based 3D product configurator, and Trimble is now using that engine to power the live component features.

There’s an interesting interview of the founder of the company from back in 2014, which is pretty interesting if you’d like to check that out, but there are some screenshots of the software, which gives a little insight into how the authoring interface might look.

Personally, I’m really excited to see this feature develop. It really seems like it’s going to fulfill the mission dynamic components set out to fulfill so long ago. The one thing that I’m really looking forward to is the ability to make global edits among common live components.

Global Edits

So imagine you have a bunch of cabinets derived from a live component. Naturally, many of them will be different sizes or will have different doors or drawer configurations. And because of that, they will all need to be unique components, that way if you change the width of one of them, it doesn’t change the width of all the rest of the cabinets. 

However, there are several parameters or characteristics that remain shared among all the cabinets. For instance, what if you wanted to change the color of all the cabinets? What if you wanted to change the door style? Well, with unique components, you’d have to manually go through each one and individually update the color or the doors. 

But, if we had the ability to make global edits to live components that would be a game changer. And the good news is not only are global edits on the road map, but Bryce even confirmed that they are looking at it even more broadly, by allowing different live components to be changed when they share a common attribute.

This is even more exciting. So I interpret that as meaning, if you have a table, and a cabinet, they both might have an attribute called height. So you’d be able to select both of those live components, and change the height parameter, and they would both update, even though they are not derived from the same live component.

I’m really looking forward to Live Components and what it might mean for the future of SketchUp. Great new feature!