For industrial designers or jewelers, the plugin excels at creating chains. Model a single chain link component. Copy and rotate the second link slightly. Right-click the original, click "Play it again...", then keep clicking the new links to watch a chain form organically before your eyes.
Simulating a conveyor belt moving boxes. The Workflow:
The plugin doesn’t just remember the tool you used; it remembers the relative distance and direction you moved your mouse. It is a form of relative automation that feels closer to using macros in Excel or Actions in Photoshop than standard CAD software.
Unlike the native Array function (Move + Ctrl + Type Nx or / ), which creates linear copies, Play it Again captures the transformation state of an object. play it again sketchup plugin
Let's put theory into practice. Justin Geis, a prominent SketchUp educator, published a tutorial demonstrating how to use Memory Copy to model a spiral-shaped high trestle bridge. Here is the gist of that workflow:
"Play it Again" plugin in SketchUp (technically titled Memory Copy
When designing a building with unique window openings, you might need to select a face, offset it by a specific dimension, push/pull it inward to create a frame, and then push/pull the center pane to create the glass. Instead of doing this for fifty different windows, you record it once with PlayItAgain and run the macro on the remaining glass faces. 2. Custom Furniture and Joinery For industrial designers or jewelers, the plugin excels
At its core, "Play it Again" is a macro recorder for SketchUp. It captures a set of commands you perform on one object and allows you to "paste" those commands onto other objects. Instead of clicking through menus five times for every piece of furniture in a room, you perform the actions once, record them, and apply them to everything else with a single click.
Imagine arranging a restaurant layout with dozens of tables and chairs. If the client decides all chairs need to be pulled back 6 inches and rotated slightly toward the bar, doing this manually for 50 chairs is a nightmare. With this plugin, you fix one chair, select the rest, and replay the action instantly. Urban Planning and Landscaping
Are you looking to solve a with this plugin? Right-click the original, click "Play it again
Record short macros (3–5 actions). Chain them by hand or loop them. Long macros almost always fail due to inference mismatches.
SketchUp has native animation tools, but they are limited to camera transitions between Scenes. If you want a building to stay still while a crane lifts a steel beam, native SketchUp cannot do it.
: When working with site models, users often need to apply uniform changes (like height adjustments or rotations) to a variety of disparate groups. Play It Again bridges the gap between manual editing and the "Component" system (where all instances change together), allowing for uniform changes across different types of groups. Why It Matters
Pro Tip: If you are using SketchUp 2022 or later, you may need to enable "Legacy Extensions" in the Preferences menu.