Live Components in SketchUp 2021

SketchUp 2021 is out fresh this year, and we have already covered its basics. Now we are discussing each of the new features of the immensely popular software in detail; today, we talk about the live components in SketchUp 2021. It is an exciting new feature with seemingly an unending amount of possibilities in future!

What are live components in SketchUp 2021?

Live Components are SketchUp’s answer to parametric modeling and more. When you want objects that change depending on data, there comes Live Components. Using these, your model will be more flexible and your design will be more agile. 

Simply put, live components are ready-made configurable objects found in the 3D Warehouse. You can adjust various properties of a live component either in the Warehouse or in your model in SketchUp 2021. 

For example, a live component can be a bookshelf that lets you adjust its shelf size, inter-shelf spaces, number of shelves, position of special fixtures on the bookshelf.

How did it all start?

A bit of history couldn’t hurt – so here goes how live components came to be. First, they have long been a big part of the user feedback. So, Trimble goes and acquires a NZ company called MatterMachine, and out pops a new modeling platform called Materia. 

And this is what is used to build live components, since they are not simple models but objects that are programmed with modeling logic. That’s what Materia does – it imbues logic (and therefore, life) into dumb models.

Live components were released as part of a new segment of the SketchUp family called the “SketchUp Labs” (in fact, it was the first experiment cooked in this) on October 1, 2020. Then with user feedback, the feature was tweaked and made a part of the SketchUp 2021.