A perspective view of 3D laser scan data (terrestrial LiDAR imagery) of Mission San Francisco de la Espada, San Antonio, Texas.

As part of the ongoing effort to educate the general public and disseminate information in an interactive environment, CyArk uses millimetrically precise data from heritage sites captured with 3D laser scanners to model the sites in SketchUp Pro. In order to do this, we use two methods:

Method 1: Orthorectified imagery

Our 3D laser scan processing software allows us to export orthorectified images of the data. We begin by exporting a plan of the structure to build a basic block model from. The plan is brought into SketchUp Pro, scaled, geo-located (all of our scan data is geo-located with GPS), and then the model is created from the accurate plan data.

Using orthorectified imagery created from laser scan data to trace out the model in SketchUp Pro.

After we create the block model, we import orthorectified elevation views of the structure. We then trace the outline of the building and “push out” the unwanted parts to create the unique architectural shape. The elevation view is also used to overlay the photo-real texture information.

Method 2: Direct modeling from 3D scan data

We are also able to use the Pointools plugin for SketchUp that allows us to load the 3D laser scan data point cloud directly into SketchUp. This allows even more precise modeling directly over the data. Again, orthorectified images of facades are used to overlay texture information.

A 3D laser scan data point cloud, brought into SketchUp Pro using the Pointools plugin. (Note: This image has been altered to improve visualization of the process.)

After modeling is complete, visitors to the CyArk website and projects interact with them in two ways: CyArk has an online, Java-based web app that allows users to view 3D point clouds directly, or view solid models such as those created in SketchUp Pro or other 3D meshing software.

3D model of Mission San Juan Capistrano, San Antonio, Texas created in SketchUp and viewed in CyArk’s free online 3D Viewer.

The other way that users can interact with 3D models on CyArk’s website is by using the Google Earth plugin, which we’ve integrated into a web page on the site. This provides a navigable 3D environment in which users can see geo-located SketchUp models while interacting and viewing geo-located multimedia items such as architectural CAD drawings, videos, 360-degree panoramic images, photographs, historic imagery and more.

A 3D model of Mission San Jose y San Miguel de Aguayo, San Antonio, Texas created in SketchUp and viewed in Google Earth on the CyArk website. Multimedia items (architectural drawings, videos, panos, historic images, etc.) are geolocated on the Google Earth interface and represented as a variety of type-specific icons that surround the model.

In addition to modeling directly from accurate 3D survey information (as seen here in the San Antonio Missions project and associated iOS mobile app), CyArk and our partners have taken advantage of SketchUp Pro’s easy modeling platform to create historic reconstructions of sites and site features that no longer exist. For example, for a project with Fort Laramie National Historic Site, eight historic reconstructions were created in SketchUp. Users visiting the Google Earth map of the project can choose to see the Fort as it appeared in seven different time phases, as well as a detailed reconstruction of the Post Hospital. All were created from extensive research, historic photographs/sketches, consultation with park experts, and metrically accurate laser scan data of structures, standing ruins, and remaining foundations as the base for the models.

SketchUp Pro provides CyArk the tools to quickly and accurately model historic sites to create interactive 3D environments for members of the public, educators, students and researchers to access online. This aids us in fulfilling a significant part of our mission to share, disseminate and educate.

Thanks for sharing this story, Justin. If you’re interested in getting involved with CyArk, you can find out more about volunteering, becoming a partner or donating to CyArk on the Get Involved web page.

Posted by Chris Cronin, SketchUp Pro Sales Team

Allied Works can design anything, but in our history, we’ve mostly focused on museums, gallery spaces, creative work spaces, and creative educational spaces. We seek those out, but we’re also actively pursuing a lot of different programs as well.

My impression of Allied Works' design workflow has always gone something like this: Brad Cloepfil (the firm's Founding Principal) sits down with an enormous pad of paper and a lump of charcoal. He proceeds to make huge, gestural drawings that are equal parts light study, parti diagram and abstract rendering. A few years later, the building opens. What happens in between?

Let’s talk about the Clyfford Still Museum, given that it’s at the end of its cycle in terms of design and construction. It was a competition. Brad did have a stroke of insight, much like you were saying. Charcoal and pastel are his main generative tools. The project is really about the earth and about the light, so charcoal happened to be perfect. When he came into the office, he had a sketch which was about the intersection of those two things.

Then we have our design team, which sometimes includes people from outside of our office—collaborators like structural engineers and landscape architects. We spend time figuring out what all the parameters are, all the forces that are involved: cultural, civic, economic, experiential (which is huge) and structural. And then the form is derived from the mixture of all of these design elements. We do heavy investigations with material models; we do a lot of concept models to try to tease out the main essence.

Are those physical models or digital models?

In this case, they were physical models. We were trying to understand, through material manipulation and assembly, more about the experience and the form and the message of the project. "Message" is really the only word I can come up with. How is it “of the place"? How does the material itself communicate something about the experience?

Our design work strives towards a unity of space and form—the form itself trying to be a single body that’s understandable as a single body. With the Clyfford Still Museum, this was especially true. It’s kind of an unfolded plane that’s folding back on itself. It’s solid from the outside, but the space writhes and weaves together on the inside. It’s like a nine-square cube; some planes are subtracted, and some planes are moved around, with the goal of making a space that feels continuous.

The way we work on this kind of project is with physical models, which you can see in front of you and turn around, or to work in a digital 3D space that you can work on quickly. The Clyfford Still Museum was the first project where we explored the interior of the building through a digital 3D model study. We primarily used SketchUp Pro, probably because it's so FAST. And everyone participated—from the people who were actually modeling (I was one of those people), to Brad himself looking at the screen and saying Why don’t we just move this here? Let’s look at it from this other position. Let’s move this wall here, etc.

He learned how to navigate the 3D space, and by the end of the project, a lot of our design meetings were just moving through 3D models to make sure that the understanding of the space that we were going for was being supported by all the different orders that were happening in the building: the structural concrete wall order, the order of moveable art partitions, and others. We made sure that we could see through the building the way we wanted to, that everything was supporting the experience we were after.

Would you say that you typically design from the inside out, or is there an idea for an exterior form?

It’s a dialog between the two, but I think the idea for the structure, the idea for the landscape, and the idea for the experience all happen at the same time. In a lot of projects, that ends up feeling like it’s from the inside out. We’re less concerned about the facades than we are about the experience of moving through the building.

3D investigation, representation, and result; SketchUp (top), Maxwell Render (center), and photograph (photo credit: Jeremy Bitterman)

Can you talk a little more about SketchUp's role in Allied Works’ design process?

SketchUp is a tool that we use for design studies and for visualization purposes; also, for making models that end up becoming renderings, or even drawings. We export vector lines and make them into plans or elevations or sections. Sometimes we use it for making diagrams—actually, it’s pretty useful for making diagrams, especially in concept phases or competitions, where you need either a 3D axonometric, or a section cut perspective. I know we used SketchUp to make the model for the animation for the National Music Centre project, and for some extensive renderings that were done for marketing purposes.

ceiling construction diagram; SketchUp

You talk a lot about things like light and materials and the way spaces make people feel—I think I’ve even heard the word “phenomenology” used to refer to how your firm thinks about architecture. Is there anything about SketchUp in particular that makes it useful to you, given the way Allied Works operates?

We’d want any tool we use to help us realize our vision for what the space is going to be like, in terms of its experience. I’d say that materials are key, light is key and the order of the space is key. Of those three, the last one is where SketchUp helps us work. Iterative physical models just seem to take too long to build now that we have a tool that’s much faster.

Another way to think about spatial orders is to think about sculpting space. If you’re sitting inside a network of physical planes that end up making a space, and you can see from where you are to some kernel of space that’s three floors up—and you’re seeing it through an atrium, or a matrix of walls, or something—it can only be done by building a physical model or by using 3D software.

The reason we use SketchUp is because we can do so many iterations so quickly. Our design process is very iteration-heavy. On the CSM, we iterated through the configuration of the walls and floor planes and roof plane to make it feel, at the same time, like a complex spatial organism and a single body. Getting those two things to come together is quite difficult. We probably made a thousand models of basically the same thing.

Are you serious? A thousand?

Yeah, but not full-fledged models—study models. We also use the Scenes feature to orchestrate animations of moving through the space. Because it’s not actually about single points of perspective; it’s about the experience of actually moving through the space — people don’t just stand still. I’ll click from scene to scene and we’ll review how the space unfolds as you’re moving through it. It’s like having a small physical model and turning it around in your hands, but with SketchUp, you actually get to be inside the thing.

What other design tools do you use? How does SketchUp Pro interact with the rest of your toolkit, and how does that interaction support your design process?

Extensive hand drawing, hand sketching, just to get details out. A lot of photo collage, primarily in Photoshop. A lot of concept modeling, which is different from spatial modeling. Our concept models are not white foamcore models; they’re the kind of models that you can only make in a wood shop, or through metal casting, concrete casting, or glass casting. We had a guy make a model where he hammered spikes of glass into this huge chunk of wood. He actually figured out how to do it without breaking the glass, which was ridiculous. Those are the tools we use at the beginning of our process.

Then we use Vectorworks, our drafting software, and Illustrator, and Photoshop, and SketchUp Pro to do diagramming and planning work in our programming and planning phases. When we get into schematic design, it’s basically the same toolset, and even on into design development. We end up doing generative design all the way through the end of CDs.

In some cases, we build concept models even for details. We use SketchUp Pro and Maxwell to visualize how details will look in the space, and how lighting will work. We work extensively—especially on our museum projects—with lighting designers. We’ve worked a lot with Arup Lighting Design. In the past, we’ve built 1 inch = 1 foot physical models that Arup would use for lighting analysis. These days, we’re more likely to build 3D models in SketchUp Pro to give them. They give us back rainbow-colored model renderings that tells us where the light is going to be hot and where it’s not.

What’s your workflow from SketchUp to Vectorworks look like?

Depending on the project, we export vector graphics from SketchUp Pro and import them into VW to use as a baseline for the drawings. With the CSM, we had a model that was 100% accurate to the drawings. People on the team ended up using the model to design the details before they did the drawings.

So your SketchUp model reflects what was actually built?

Almost. I think that during the construction administration phase, they didn’t keep it up—as always, there were some slight modifications made during construction. We used the 100% CD model for coordination with the mechanical engineers. I don’t know if they used SketchUp themselves or converted the model into something else, but I know it was very helpful for them. Like in a lot of our projects, the mechanical space is really tight, so coordination was tough. Having a 3D model was key.

1st floor plan, gallery floor plan, section; Vectorworks

Is there a feature specific to the Pro version of SketchUp that you find particularly valuable?

Going through the list of Pro features, it’s obvious to me that we couldn’t make do with just the free version—primarily for the communication between different software packages. We’re always moving back and forth between SketchUp Pro and Vectorworks using DXFs or DWGs; going back and forth between SketchUp Pro and Rhino using 3DS, and sending MXS files to Maxwell Render Suite.

We also love the Solid modeling in SketchUp Pro 8. We’re doing a lot of furniture work now, and we use SketchUp Pro to do that modeling. For the current version of the furniture we’re working on, it has a lot to do with the idea of carving out of a solid body. So we model the solid body, we model the shape of the “carve”, and we subtract one from the other. Before the Solid tools in SketchUp Pro 8, we would have had to make both of those forms, intersect the two to generate the necessary edges, and delete the extraneous faces. Now I don’t have to do all that. Solid tools are definitely a big thumbs-up for me.

Clyfford Still Museum furniture studies; SketchUp, Maxwell Render

If we told you tomorrow that you couldn’t use SketchUp, what would happen to your design process? How would you work?

I guess someone would just have to get a lot faster on some other kind of software. None of the other programs we use are as fast; we’d be taking a step backward in terms of the speed at which we can produce design iterations and models for visualizations. It would be tough. Please don’t do that.

Posted by Aidan Chopra, SketchUp Evangelist

As part of our commitment to providing low to no cost software to schools, the Google SketchUp Pro K-12 Statewide License Grant has been issued to 50 recipients worldwide. These include 39 U.S. states, 6 Canadian provinces, 2 Australian states, and all of New Zealand.

We’re proud to announce the most recent recipient: Ireland. All Irish primary and secondary schools will now have access to SketchUp Pro at no charge. Joining Ireland in this latest batch of new Pro recipients are:

• Nevada
• Montana
• Florida,
• Wyoming
• Hawaii
• Arizona
• Alaska
• North Dakota
• Tennesee
• British Columbia
• Nova Scotia
• Alberta
• Saskatchewan
• New South Wales
• Tasmania

If you're a primary or secondary educator, you can check out details on our Google SketchUp Pro K-12 License Grant program site. It includes links to valuable training resources, technical support information, a group forum, case studies, and a map of states, provinces and counties which have already enrolled. If your locality isn't one of them, ask your state technology director (or international equivalent) to apply. License grant recipients don't pay a cent for SketchUp Pro.

Posted by Allyson McDuffie, Google SketchUp for Education Program Manager

The National Turner Virtual Design and Construction (VDC) team has developed several SketchUp plugins in Ruby to bring existing and evolving VDC processes into the simple, efficient and visual environment of SketchUp Pro.

A proprietary plugin for steel modeling and tracking was created to accelerate the use of Building Information Modeling (BIM) at the World Trade Center Transportation Hub. The tool was written to batch convert single line framing plans into 3D steel sizes, using a standard library of parts. This tool was expanded to report steel takeoffs and is now used throughout Turner to support estimating and pre-construction services.

By developing our own tools on top of the intuitive interface of SketchUp Pro, we continue to increase operational efficiencies. The place steel plugin is a great example of how streamlining the modeling process by reviewing the process of modeling steel, standardizing the modeling of stock pieces, and integrating that database information into SketchUp Pro reduces redundancy as well as dimensional errors in steel sizing.

Working with several Turner offices including, New York City and Seattle, a takeoff plugin was developed to support Turner’s current approach to “Control Quantity Models” and “Gross Square Foot” takeoffs. This tool allows SketchUp models to be built for different purposes. For example, using client or business unit standards, we still achieve consistent and accurate takeoffs of square footage, count, length and volumes (using SketchUp Pro’s Solid Tools).

Design information is still in its infancy and rapidly changing. Supporting Turner’s evolving estimating expertise, a plugin was developed to accelerate the takeoff process for conceptual estimates. This plugin allows for rapid creation of space and room plans, as well as the detailed takeoff information that is required for estimates.

These two takeoff plugins work together to seamlessly streamline the quantity takeoff process developed by estimators in SketchUp Pro. At Turner, we look at opportunities to develop existing processes & workflows using new tools.

In this way, we aren’t teaching new workflows based on new tools as they come along (a very disruptive process for any business). Rather, we’re able to leverage the skill sets and broad knowledge bases of our VDC team to build streamlined versions of existing workflows into new tools.

In the third (and last) installment of the series, we’ll explore how Turner is using SketchUp Pro in a unique and innovative way: for safety training.

Posted by Gopal Shah, SketchUp Marketing

Curviloft lets you do three basic operations; which one you use depends on what you’re trying to accomplish. For the sake of brevity (and simplicity), I’m going to focus on only the first operation in this post: Loft By Spline.

The Basics

Let’s say you have two profiles that you want to connect together. The example below is super-simple: It’s a circle directly above a square. Here, I want to connect the two with a shape that goes directly between them. Curviloft’s Loft By Spline tool was made for just this kind of thing.

I start with two flat profiles (shapes) positioned one above the other.

With nothing selected, I activate Loft By Spline and click once on each shape. Because there are only two, it doesn’t matter which shape I click first. If there were more than two, I’d click in the order that I want to connect them, starting at either end. When both profiles are numbered, I click the green checkmark in the Curviloft toolbar (see below). This brings me into Preview mode, where I can see what I’m about to end up with.

The Curviloft toolbar is complicated; there’s no getting around it. The good news is that you don’t have to understand what all the controls do in order to use the tool. In Preview mode, you can just click things to see what happens. There's no shame in experimentation.

The Curviloft toolbar is a doozy, but you can (and should) click buttons to see what happens. Every case is different, and some settings look better than others.

When you perform a Loft by Spline operation with Curviloft, the tool is generating two different kinds of geometry which it later combines. Intermediate profiles (left) are "in-between" 2D shapes spaced between the profiles you start out with. Splines (right) are lines that connect adjacent profiles together. They can be straight or curvy, depending on the settings you choose.

I like to fiddle with the Spline Method settings first (see below). This is where you control the shape of the vertical lines (splines) that connect the two profiles—in this case, the circle and the square. The three options that I find give the most interesting results are “Junction by connected lines”, “Bezier curves – Respect tangency (Method 2)” and “Junction by Orthogonal Bezier Curves”. By all means, try the other buttons, too; there’s gold in them thar hills.

Playing with the Vertex Matching controls also yields some useful options (see below). Here, you’re telling Curviloft how to decide which points on the perimeter of each profile should connect to one another. In this case, the circle has 24 endpoints and the circle only has four. The tool does its best to figure out the intermediate geometry, but the Vertex Matching settings let you provide guidance. For me, the most interesting button is the one on the far right; often, deselecting “Orientate contours to their best-fit box” seems to produce better results. Click it a few times to see what happens.

When you’re satisfied, hit Enter on your keyboard (or click the green checkmark on the toolbar) to finish generating the result.

While you’re still in Preview mode, clicking on black part of your preview object opens yet another set of controls. The Properties of the Edited Junction window shows you more information about the connections in the operation you’re doing. My favorite widgets here have to do with twisting; they let you rotate either of your profiles (in this case, the circle and the square) by 15 or 90 degree increments. The result is an insanely cool twisting effect. Click the little right and left arrows and you’ll see what I mean. Addictive, no?

Loft by Spline works great on profiles that aren’t lined up perfectly, too. Below, I’ve moved and rotated the circle.

Again, trying different Spline Method settings produces pretty wildly different results.

I've written about a couple of Fredo6's other terrific plugins in the past. RoundCorner gives you the ability to quickly and easily create rounds and fillets on almost any shape. FredoScale is a toolkit for stretching, bending, twisting and otherwise deforming your models in incredibly useful ways.

Posted by Aidan Chopra, SketchUp Evangelist

But how to turn your SketchUp habit (and job cranking out toilet stall details) into days full of armor design and wandering through bad neighborhoods looking for interesting photo-textures to shoot?

Google SketchUp for Game Design is Robin de Jongh’s newest book; he also wrote SketchUp 7.1 for Architectural Visualization. It presumes that you’re a SketchUp beginner, but then quickly gets on to the good stuff:

• Finding good resources for photo-textures
• Using Meshlab to convert your models in useable 3D game assets
• Working with the Unity 3D game engine (which is widespread, free-or-low-cost middleware for designing game levels)
• Creating high-quality textures for games
• Adapting your models for use in video games
• Authoring custom levels
• Modeling low-poly game assets (including cars) and selling them online

Robin’s writing is accessible and easy to follow. He packs a lot of information into each page, but manages to keep the tone friendly and even funny at times. While the book’s in black and white, color versions of the images are available from the publisher’s website.

Posted by Aidan Chopra, SketchUp Evangelist

3DOn ARchitecture is an augmented reality app for architects. It allows you to upload your SketchUp models and view them on an iPhone or an iPad in three different modes. Preview mode lets you overlay your model onto a photograph of your site. Walk mode lets you explore your model inside and out, and On-site mode lets you view your model in situ—in real time.

3DOn ARchitecture can be downloaded for iPhone (3GS or later) or iPad. For more information, you can visit the 3DOn website or follow the 3DOn team on Twitter.



Posted by Chris Cronin, SketchUp Sales Team

Please tell us a little bit about yourself.

Well, I am Sam Jankis, industrial engineer and co-developer of Skelion, although my partner is the real code developer of the plugin: Juan Pons is a Spanish engineer and programmer. Skelion was born in July 2011 after two years of development. It is a plugin for Google SketchUp that allows you to, among other things, insert solar panels on surfaces automatically.

Why did you build Skelion?

Skelion was developed to automate the design of solar systems using Google SketchUp. The goal was to do all the design work we were doing, but automatically. Now we can do with four clicks what we were doing in four hours. Skelion reduced considerably our average time expended on doing layouts and energy production reports of solar systems, and allowed us to multiply by four the preliminary studies we could do.

How does it work?

Basically, you select a surface where you want to insert solar panels and click on the solar cell logo. A menu appears that asks you about tilt and orientation for the panels, the type of panel, and a shading range for a given day. Photovoltaic panels can be selected from our database or you can create your own, and they can be placed in portrait or landscape orientation. After that, the plugin automatically inserts the solar panels on your selected surface. It also works with irregular surfaces. For more information, take a look at our video tutorials.


What are your goals for the plugin?

The goal for Skelion is to become a standard design tool in the solar industry. We believe that as soon as solar designers get familiar with the plugin they are going to love it—as we do.


How can SketchUp modelers try Skelion?

They can download the plugin from our download page. The Free version includes the most powerful feature: the automatic insertion of solar panels. With the Pro version, you get some interesting and useful features such as energy reports.



Posted by Chris Cronin, SketchUp Sales Team

When i started modeling six years ago, I really liked the fact that you have the possibility to publish on Google Earth and then millions of persons can see YOUR building.That really pushed me to do better and better. It really frustrated me for a while not to be able to place photo textures on faces.

The first thing I do when I’m geo-modeling is to choose a location with a Google Earth snapshot, then I trace the contour of the building in SketchUp. The third thing I do is to place the axes of the model. Next, I make a group, push/pull up my footprint, then I use Street View to check the approximate height of the building I’m working on.

Farine Five Roses is my favorite model because of the sign on top which is a unique feature in Google Earth and in Montreal's Old Port also.

I'd like to make Montreal and its surrounding areas more visible to the rest of the world and let people who are using Google Earth be able to use Street View to see my buildings.

I think the Google team have developed such nice and free tools for 3D that anyone with absolutely no experience can become a good modeler.

Posted by Greg Wirt, SketchUp Team

And that’s exactly the concept behind Laurent Brixius’ brilliant new book Google SketchUp Workshop. Translated from the original “Créer avec SketchUp” (originally published a few years ago in French) this full-color volume presents sixteen beautifully illustrated case studies authored by expert SketchUp users from a multitude of different disciplines. Each one includes high-level workflows, tips and techniques for using SketchUp in a different field of design. Architecture, urban design, engineering, process plant design, woodworking, theater set design and architectural graphics are all represented.

Our friends over at SketchUpArtists.org conducted a nice interview with Laurent (the book’s editor) before the English edition came out. An architect, architectural 3D artist and author from Belgium, he’s done an amazing job of assembling a collection of projects that are pure inspiration. This is a book that belongs on the shelf of every SketchUp aficionado.

Aidan Chopra, SketchUp Evangelist

Our new Acceptance Criteria have been completely rewritten with the goal of making them clearer and easier to follow. Issues relating to photo textures, permanence of structures, splitting, and entourage have proven to be the most common areas of confusion in the past:

Photo Textures

Our new minimum requirement for photo textures is more lenient than it’s been in the past. Photo textures are only required on upward facing surfaces of the model and on the main facade. We encourage you to photo texture the entire model, but we also understand that it may be difficult to get accurate imagery on every side of some buildings. Any remaining, non-photo-textured faces in your model should be painted with realistic-looking textures that match the color and look of the building in real life.

Permanent Structures

Beginning today, only permanent structures will be accepted. As we constantly refresh our satellite imagery, temporarily-positioned entities like vehicles and people don’t belong in Google Earth’s 3D Buildings layer.

Model Splitting

From now on, all submitted models should contain only one structure each. Each structure should be uploaded as a separate model file. This includes properties that have multiple buildings on them such as a house and a shed or garage. If buildings are all connected in a city block, they should be split into separate models based on building type, function or address. When our review team is assessing connected block models for splitting issues, we will look at the facade and roof textures to see if there are changes in material that signify where a split should have occurred.

Entourage

In addition to splitting buildings, we are now requiring all models of trees and other permanent entourage (such as signs, light posts and benches) to be uploaded separately from the buildings with which they may be associated. This ensures that when another building is uploaded in the same location, we are only judging the quality of the new building model versus the original. It’s a shame to have to remove good tree models just because they’re attached to a building model when a better building model is submitted that doesn’t contain trees.

Also, multiple, related trees and other entourage objects can be grouped into a single model as long as they are located in a relatively concentrated area. This means a single model can contain all the trees for a block or a park, but it shouldn’t contain all the trees for multiple blocks or an entire city. Remember that only permanent entourage is acceptable—cars and pedestrians move around, and thus don’t belong in Google Earth’s 3D Buildings layer.

Other improvements

One other big improvement we’ve made is the addition of tips and suggestions to each of the thirteen individual Acceptance Criteria. If a model you submit isn’t accepted, you’ll receive an email notification (opt into these emails via your preferences) that includes a direct link to concrete information about how you can improve it before you re-submit.

What about models that have already been accepted?

To help make this transition easier, we won’t be going through all the models we’ve already accepted in order to remove ones that fail to meet the new Acceptance Criteria. If your model has already been accepted, it will stay in the 3D Buildings layer until and unless it is sent through the evaluation process again. There are four actions which can cause a model to re-enter this process:

1. You make an edit to your model and re-upload it to the 3D Warehouse, replacing the previous version.
2. Someone else submits a model in the same location as your model.
3. Periodic terrain and aerial imagery updates cause your model to go through our automated alignment process.
4. Someone clicks the “Report a problem” link for your model in Google Earth.
   

It’s still a bit of a subjective process

Keep in mind that judging 3D models is still a difficult task and is prone to subjectivity. All submitted models are reviewed by real human beings who take time to ensure that they meet our standards. Because human beings sometimes make mistakes, we have a way for you to appeal negative judgements. If, after reviewing the Acceptance Criteria, you feel we’ve made the wrong decision, use the “Tell us why we’re wrong” link (at the bottom of the model’s 3D Warehouse page) to ask us to take another look. You’re encouraged to include links to photos of the actual building or other online resources to will help us to understand your point of view.

We know how much time and love goes into making beautiful 3D models for Google Earth, and we greatly appreciate all the effort you put into your work. Here’s hoping that the changes we’ve made will make for a smoother, more enjoyable geo-modeling process for everyone.

Posted by Jordan Van Wyk, 3D Modeling Specialist

Selecting a piece of text (when your ruler is visible) reveals drop-down menus for Paragraph Style, Alignment and Spacing, as well as preset settings for bulleted and numbered lists. Windows users can access list formatting controls in the Text Style dialog box.

Compared to the last tip I wrote, this one was quick, eh?

Posted by Aidan Chopra, SketchUp Evangelist

If you're a K-12 educator, you can check out details on our Google SketchUp Pro K-12 License Grant program site. It includes links to valuable training resources, technical support information, a group forum, case studies, and a map of states, provinces and counties which have already enrolled. If your locality isn't one of them, ask your state technology director (or international equivalent) to apply. License grant recipients don't pay a cent for SketchUp Pro.


View Google SketchUp Pro K-12 Statewide License Grants in a larger map

Posted by Allyson McDuffie, SketchUp for Education Program Manager

• In plan, doors are generally shown in the open position.
• In elevation, doors appear closed.
• When cut through in section, doors disappear altogether.

In plan, doors appear open to show their swing. In the above image, the swing arcs, section cut graphics and arrows were added in LayOut.

In elevation, doors appear closed. Otherwise, you'd be able to see through them, which would be visually confusing. The scale figure and the dashed lines to indicate the hinge position were added in LayOut.

In sectional views, doors which are cut through don't appear at all. All that is visible of the doorway in the above section is the edges of the wall beyond the cut. Doors which appear in elevation (like the one on the left) are shown closed.

If I’m modeling a building and I leave the doors open, they’ll look correct in plan but not in other views. If I close them, the plans will look wrong. Clearly, I need two sets of doors—one open, one closed—and I need to manage which set is visible in each view. Layers, Scenes and nested components to the rescue!

The idea here is to create a door component that includes two sub-components: one that’s an open door, and one that’s a closed door. Mine looks something like this:

A door component which includes both open and closed door sub-components, each on its own layer. In the image above, "Color By Layer" is turned on to better illustrate the setup. The Outliner dialog box shows the nesting relationship of the three door components.

Creating a combination door component

Start by modeling both doors and turning them into a set of nested components:

Step 1
Create the hole into which you want to insert a door.

Make the hole exactly the same size as the door you're planning to model.

Step 2
Model a door in the closed position. Keep it simple; a rectangle is fine for now.

Fill the doorway opening with a simple face. Make it flush with the side of the wall into which the door will open.

Step 3
Select only the door geometry and turn it into a component. Give it a meaningful name that describes its size, orientation and position like “Door-36-L-Closed”.

Turn your simple door into a component by selecting its geometry and right-clicking to open a context menu.

Give your door component a meaningful name; "36" indicates the width and "L" indicates the left-hand hinge position. Make sure the "Replace selection with component" checkbox is selected before you click Create.

Step 4
If you like, add detail (like a thickness) to the door you just modeled.

Extruding the single face into a 3D object will make it read better in plan. Resist the temptation to add doorknobs, detailed woodwork or anything else that isn't in keeping with your model's current level of detail.

Step 5
Model the same door in the open position. Be sure not to duplicate the component instance you made in the previous step — the whole point of this exercise is to have two, separate components.

Model the same door again, this time in the open position. For accuracy, line up the edges where the hinges would be on a real door.

Step 6
Turn the open door into a new component. Call it something like “Door-36-L-Open”.

Make the open door into another component and name it accordingly.

Step 7
Select the open and closed door components and make a new component that includes both. A good name for this component might be “Door-36-L-Main”.

Select both door components (open and closed) and make them into a new component.

Using Layers to control component visibility

The next step is to put each sub-component on a separate layer:

Step 1
Choose Window>Layers to open the Layers Manager.

Step 2
Create a new layer called “Doors-Open”.

Step 3
Create another layer called “Doors-Closed”.

Use the Layers Manager to create two new layers.

Step 4
Choose Window>Entity Info to open the Entity Info dialog box.

Step 5
Start editing your Main door component (the one that includes both sub-components) by double-clicking it with the Select tool.

Step 6
Select the closed door sub-component and move it to the “Doors-Closed” layer using the Layer drop-down menu in the Entity Info dialog box.

Move the Closed Door sub-component to the "Doors-Closed" layer using the Entity Info dialog box.

Step 7
Select the open door component and move it to the “Doors-Open” layer.

Put the Open Door sub-component on its own layer, too.

Step 8
Click elsewhere on your screen to stop editing the Main door component.

Make sure the Main Door component (which includes both sub-components) is on LayerO. If you're really advanced, I suppose you could even have a layer dedicated to these "combo" door components. Tread lightly, though—layers can be tricky to work with.

Setting up Scenes to control layer visibility

After you’ve placed doors wherever you need them in your model, you can control which set is visible by creating (or updating) scenes that show only one “Doors” layer at a time. It’s pretty straightforward, really:

Step 1
Activate the scene that corresponds to a plan view of your model. If you don’t have one yet, just create a new scene called “Plan” and worry about getting the camera position in order later.

Right now, both the Doors Closed and Doors Open layers are visible. We only want the open doors to appear in the above plan.

Step 2
In the Layers Manager, hide the “Doors Closed” layer.

Uncheck the Doors Closed layer to make its contents invisible.

Step 3
Right-click the “Plan” scene tab and choose Update.

When the doors look the way you want them to, right-click the relevant scene tab and choose Update.

Step 4
Repeat the above three steps for any other planimetric scenes in your model.

Step 5
Go through the above process again for any scenes where doors should appear closed.

In the above elevation view, I want only the Doors Closed layer to be visible.

Dealing with doorways in section

What about doors that are cut through by section cuts? They shouldn’t appear at all. The solution here is simple: Just hide the offending door components and update your scene.

Doors which are cut through in sectional views shouldn't appear at all. Those which appear in elevation (like the one on the left) should appear closed.

Simply hiding door components you don't want to see (then updating the corresponding scene) is the easiest way to deal with this conundrum.

One more thing: I've added the above example model to the 3D Warehouse so you can download it and do some of your own experimenting. You can find it here (click the 3D Warehouse logo to go to the model in the 3DWH):



Posted by Aidan Chopra, SketchUp Evangelist

SketchUp Pro has been a big help to us in the New England Aquarium Design Department. The Aquarium was founded in 1969 and attracts over 1.3 million visitors a year to our waterfront location. Recently the Aquarium’s capital improvement plan called for a complete renovation of our changing exhibits space, and we decided to part with the Aquarium’s traditional design aesthetic and embark on a new path.

Families touching the rays in our new shark and ray touch tank exhibit

The newly completed exhibit we designed in SketchUp Pro is called The Trust Family Foundation Shark and Ray Touch Tank. It features sharks and rays in a mangrove-themed tank surrounded by shallow edges and viewing windows, allowing visitors to experience a close encounter with these animals.

The exhibit presents these incredible species in a way that highlights their importance in a healthy ocean ecosystem. It also emphasizes the value of conserving essential coastal habitats, such as mangroves and lagoons. During evening hours the new space is also used as an event venue for private functions.

View from the entrance of the shark and ray touch tank. On top is our design phase
rendering; below is an opening day photograph.

The Aquarium provides unique challenges for designers. We have a variety of internal clients with different needs, and we need a modeling program that works quickly and accurately to convey our ideas. SketchUp’s quick modeling capabilities provided me the extra time needed to explore multiple design options on this project.

SketchUp also enabled our design team to give everyone at the Aquarium a sense of the new exhibit’s aesthetics quickly and easily. In addition to quickly creating renderings, we imported actual material samples into our models. This allowed staff and visitors to get a sense of scale and of how significant the interaction with animals would be.

View from inside the exhibit towards the Lagoon and Cassiopeia tanks. Above is
our design phase rendering; below is an opening day photograph.

Our traditional design aesthetic for the Main Building is to make the visitor feel like they are submerged underwater, looking through portals to all the fish. The new exhibit needed to be airy and bright, allowing visitors to feel that they are no longer submerged but at the beach level interacting with the animals. To achieve this we revealed the once covered up skylights and installed a significant amount of energy efficient lighting. With natural and artificial lighting we simulated the feeling of wading around a beach touching sharks and rays.

View of The Trust Family Foundation Shark and Ray Touch Tank Gift Shop. The top image is our design phase rendering; below it is an opening day photograph.

This “no surprises” methodology allowed us to receive design input from different departments quickly. Given our very tight schedule and lack of resources, it proved to be most helpful. We’re excited to continue to use SketchUp Pro on future projects and renovations at the New England Aquarium.

Posted by Chris Cronin, SketchUp Sales Team

• Cologne, Germany
• The Hague, Netherlands
• Berkeley, California

See the new buildings for yourself using Google Earth’s “3D Buildings” or by using Google Maps with Earth View.

Happy touring!

Posted by Catherine Moats, 3D Data Specialist

The problem I was trying to solve was this: SketchUp’s Section Plane Tool cuts away parts of a model to show sectional views, but it doesn’t “fill in” the spaces between wall surfaces, floor slabs and other areas that are intended to be solid in a design. Often, architects will blacken or hatch these interstitial areas to help their drawings read better. This filling-in is called poché, and SketchUp simply doesn’t offer an automatic way to do it.

By default, SketchUp thickens section cut lines, but the spaces between the faces aren't filled in (above).

Sometimes, it's useful to show section cuts with solid shading.

I wanted the SketchUp file I was preparing to look "pochéd" no matter where it was sliced. Furthermore, I wanted that poché to carry over when the model was inserted into LayOut.

I started by using the Section Plane Tool to cut a section through the model (as seen below). I oriented my view to be perpendicular to the section cut by right-clicking the section plane object and choosing Align View. Since I wanted this to be a true, scalable orthographic view, I turned off perspective (Camera > Parallel Projection). Finally, I created a new scene; doing so made navigation easier, and was necessary for creating a viewport in LayOut later on.

An overall view of the model

After adding a Section Plane, I right-clicked and chose Align View.

This is the right view of the model (above), but true orthographic projections don't include perspective.

Choosing Camera > Parallel Projection from the menu bar turned off the perspective.

Now for some work with Styles: As this would be a black and white, sectional view, I chose to apply the HiddenLine style from the "Default Styles" collection that ships with every copy of SketchUp. This style uses thickened edges to indicate cut-through faces, but (as I mentioned earlier) it doesn’t fill in the areas between them. Perhaps more annoyingly, edges which exist beyond the section cut still show up in cut-through areas (see below). This is visually distracting and not at all acceptable for professional work. If I’d turned in drawings that looked like this in architecture school, my professor would’ve made me run laps around the studio.

Applying the HiddenLine style turns the model black and white, but there are problems.

Edges which exist beyond the plane of the section cut are plainly visible. This isn't desirable.

Revelation #1: Monochrome is the answer

This helpful post from last year gave me the idea to use the Monochrome face style to automatically turn the “fronts” of my faces white and the “backs”, black. See the following image for a visual explanation of what I did.

I selected the Monochrome face style and chose white and black for the default front and back face colors.

The above settings work well, except where faces are "inside-out".

Hmm. It was clear that I had a little cleanup work to do; some of my faces were oriented so that the back-side was facing out (above). To make it easier to see what I was doing, I changed the Back Color to something lighter than black, then spent a few minutes turning the offending faces right-side-out by right-clicking them and choosing Reverse Faces. I ended up turning off Section Plane object visibility (View > Section Planes) to make faces easier to select.

Temporarily changing the default Back color to yellow made it easier to see what I was doing.

I spent a few minutes reversing the offending faces.

When I was done, I set the Back color back to black.

Revelation #2: Slim down section cuts

My next problem was easy to solve. The thickened-edge effect that makes section cuts stand out looked too heavy when combined with my newly-pochéd in-between areas, so I made them thinner. You’ll find this setting in the Modeling tab of the Styles dialog box (see below).

The default section cut thickness setting of "3" looks too heavy when combined with poché.

A setting of "1" looks much better.

Revelation #3: Hide Section Planes

While I was in this section of the Styles dialog box, I made sure Section Plane objects would never be visible when my style-in-the-making was applied. I deselected the Section Planes checkbox.

Uncheck the Section Planes checkbox while you're in this section of the Styles dialog box.

Revelation #4: Eliminate roundness shading

The next challenge I faced was a little trickier. In the following image, notice the shading gradient that defines the curvature on the underside of the Eames lounge? On a true, linework-only drawing, this shading wouldn’t be visible.

The shading in the above image looks nice, but it isn't appropriate for the drawing type I'm trying to create.

This shading is an automatic result of SketchUp’s built-in rendering engine. It’s usually very useful, but I wanted to get rid of it. After messing around for a few late-night minutes, I figured out how. The key is to do two things:

• Turn on “Use sun for shading”. This tells SketchUp to use its shadow engine to render faces, even if shadows are turned off (which they probably should be).
• Move the Dark slider all the way to the right. A setting of 100 for Dark means that shadows basically aren’t visible. This eliminates all curve shading in your model.

Turning on "Use sun for shading" and setting the Dark value to 100 effectively eliminates roundness shading.

Having removed the shading, I'm left with pure black and white linework.

In keeping with my earlier discovery of the benefits of setting my Profile thickness to “1” (instead of “0”), I did so. This allowed curved, multi-faceted surfaces to appear outlined without making the boundaries of every group and component in my model look too thick. The images below show the before and after. Much better.

With Profiles turned off altogether, some rounded objects aren't visible.

Control Profile settings in the Edge section of the Styles dialog box.

With Profiles turned on and set to "1", rounded shapes like the lamp on the left are clearly visible.

One more thing

I wanted a nice, thick base for my house to sit on, so I modeled one. Since the base was hollow, the poché trick worked here as well.

I added a thick base to the model.

When everything was set, I created a new style and called it "Section Cut". With this style applied, things looked just the way I wanted them to, no matter where I cut through my model.

Short section through the same building

The poché trick works just as well on plan sections.

Judges from i.materialise and the SketchUp team will pick first, second and third-place winners. First prize gets his or her design 3D printed on a Zcorp multicolor printer and a SketchUp Pro 8 license. Perhaps even more interestingly, the engineers and product development people at i.materialise will work with the first-place winner to try to make the winning design a commercial reality.

Check out the official competition page for more details. The deadline for entries is July 14th, 2011. Good luck!

Posted by Aidan Chopra, SketchUp Evangelist

• Buenos Aires, Argentina
• Córdoba, Argentina
• Mar Del Plata, Argentina
• Mendoza, Argentina
• Rosario, Argentina
• Ottawa, Canada

...but that’s not all! To help these cities get modeled, we’re having the first ever modeling competition for Building Maker. Starting tomorrow -- June 15th, 2011 -- you can create models in these six cities to win prizes in two different categories: Best Model and Most Models. The first place prize is a GPS-enabled digital camera; second place is a Building Maker shirt; and third is a Google travel mug. Have fun!


Posted by Nicole Drobeck, Geo Community Program Manager

The first thing to realize is that there are basically two types of personal fabrication (at least when it comes to SketchUp.) The technologies are completely different and each is appropriate for specific kinds of objects. Which one you choose depends entirely on what you’re trying to make.

2D CNC Fabrication

2D CNC Fabrication is all about cutting parts out of flat sheets of material. These flat pieces are then manually assembled into a 3D object by means of slots, fasteners or glue. The challenge lies in designing the “kit of parts” such that everything fits together. You’re actually making two models: one to design the final assembly (Image 1) and one that lays out all the pieces for cutting (Image 2).

Image 1: Build the first model to design the final assembly of parts and pieces. This is John Bacus’ design for the SKPRbot that we’re giving away at Maker Faire this weekend.

Image 2: Your second model lays out the pieces on a flat cut sheet. Since cost is directly related to the amount of material you use, you’ll save money by designing efficiently. The cut sheets on the right are just Top views of the model on the left (with Perspective turned off.)

Image 3: A rendering of a completed SKPRbot. This one’s been cut out of several different-colored sheets of translucent acrylic.

The cost of CNC-made stuff is generally a function of two things: material type and material quantity. Because of this, it behooves you to design your “cut sheets” as efficiently as possible. Squeeze parts together to save money. The materials available to you are many; wood, metal, cardboard and plastic are all options.

One more thing about CNC: There are lots of ways to cut things out. Some machines use lasers, some use water and some use metal bits like the ones you find on a router. Knowing which cutting technology you’ll be using is important because lasers, water and metal bits have different kerfs, or cutting widths (Image 4, below). Obviously, that’s something to keep in mind as you’re designing your cut sheets.

Image 4: Kerf is the width of the cut left by whatever tool is doing the cutting. Lasers have negligible kerfs; CNC routers have more significant ones.

If you’re planning to buy your own CNC hardware, I’d recommend having a look at ShopBot. Their machines are of the “metal router bits” variety; their focus is predominantly on woodworking.

If, on the other hand, you’d prefer to work with a service provider who can cut out your project and ship you the parts, you’d do well to peruse Ponoko’s website. It’s well-designed, beginner-friendly and affordable. To send a 2D cut sheet file to Ponoko, you’ll need to export an EPS file using Google SketchUp Pro. Beyond that, their 2D Design Tips page is super-helpful.

Additive Manufacturing

Additive manufacturing (or 3D printing, as less fancy people call it) involves squirting material onto a platform. Starting at the bottom and working up, layers are “printed” on top of each other until a 3D object is formed. Different 3D printing machines use plastic, resin, powder (which is hardened into a solid) and even metal. Printed objects can be monochrome or multi-colored.

Image 5: No matter how you’re 3D printing, the first step is to make a “solid” model. Skip down a few paragraphs to learn more about what this means.

Image 6: 3D printers build up layers of material in order to create 3D objects. Temporarily floating elements sometimes need sprues or other forms of support, but these aren’t show in the pictures above.

Image 7: A rendering of a solid-printed SKPRbot. This one is monochromatic because it’s made from a single material, but 3D prints can also be multicolored if you use the right machine.

In general, the cost of additive manufacturing is based on the physical size of the thing you’re trying to print. Most machines top out at objects that are about the size of a lampshade. Choosing fancy materials (like stainless steel) can be pricey, but palm-sized objects printed in resin or plastic are surprisingly economical.

Some machines can even produce interconnected, moving parts by printing a second type of material where voids occur. After the whole thing is made, the second material (it’s often wax) is melted away, leaving just the main components. This is a great way to prototype close-fitting connections like ball-and-socket joints and threaded parts.

The biggest gotcha when it comes to modeling 3D printables with SketchUp has to do with solidity. Every printed object is made out of solid material, whereas every SketchUp model is completely hollow. What’s a devoted SketchUpper to do?

The answer is to create a model which can be considered solid. A solid model (as far as SketchUp’s concerned) is completely enclosed; if you filled it with water and shook it, none would leak out. Happily, one of the features we added to SketchUp 8 is a solidity-checker. The Entity Info dialog box tells you if a group or component is solid. (See Image 5, above.) You can read more about this (and about the Solid Tools in SketchUp Pro 8) in this post from last year.

Buying your own professional-quality 3D printer will set you back about as much as buying a nice car. If that’s a problem for you (it is for me) there are hobbyist machines that you can buy and assemble yourself. They’re all offshoots of the RepRap project, but the best-known and most commercial units are sold by MakerBot Industries. For less than $1500, you can have a personal fabrication facility in your dining room. A huge community of enthusiasts are exploring SketchUp (and other software) workflows online. These are exciting times, to be sure.

Image 8: The Thing-O-Matic from MakerBot industries costs all of $1299. Blue bunny not included.

For the less DIY-inclined among us, there are plenty of great 3D printing service providers who can handle the messy business of actual output. All you do is upload a 3D model and wait for your object to arrive in the mail. Ponoko (mentioned above in the CNC category) is an option; their SketchUp workflow is simple and straightforward.

Another great service provider is i.materialise. With equipment capable of 3D printing human-sized objects and years of experience rapid prototyping things like artificial heart valves, this company is very, very capable. Even better, their SketchUp plugin makes 3D printing as painless as possible.

Update: Also check out www.shapeways.com if you're looking for a 3D printing service provider. Shapeways likes SketchUp, too : )

In the next few weeks, we’ll follow up on this post with specific examples and step-by-step workflows for various personal fabrication methods. Stay tuned!

Posted by Aidan Chopra, SketchUp Evangelist

The Town of Banff realizes the power of location and how it can benefit our residents and visitors alike. By contributing our town-wide 3D building outlines to Google’s Cities in 3D program, we’re able to visualize the town in a way that just can't be conveyed using traditional media.

Banff, Alberta in Google Earth, visualized with contributed gray building data

Visitors can fly right down to street level; turning buildings on and off gives them the ability to choose lodgings that offer amazing views of Banff National Park and the majestic Rocky Mountains. It also allows people who aren't familiar with the layout of the town to get a feel for the streets and services before they arrive. We have Banff's Roam transit system tied into Google Earth so visitors can see what's located around each stop -- and even when the next bus is scheduled to arrive!

Starting with gray extrusions often motivates geo-modelers to replace prominent buildings with full-fledged 3D models made in SketchUp.

3D building modelling also allows town planners and decision makers the ability to do some basic streetscape analysis and use the 3D capabilities in important project presentations such as the Town of Banff Signage and Wayfinding project. We are slowly applying facades to building shapes. Examples include the Town Hall and the Canada Post office. The feedback we've received from the few buildings we've completed have been very positive!

You can submit your town or city’s models for inclusion in Google Earth. Read about the Cities in 3D program to learn all about it.

Posted by Brandon Feltman, SketchUp Sales Team

White outline shows current coverage area; blue indicates previous boundary.

Learn all about Google Building Maker (the coolest dedicated geo-modeling tool around) and give it a whirl when you’re ready. 116 cities so far!

Posted by Nicole Drobeck and Aidan Chopra, Google Community Outreachers

Colored markers in Building Maker indicate the "modeled status" of buildings on the map.

When you’re looking at a city in Building Maker, you’ll notice hundreds of colored blue and gray markers. These markers indicate the “modeled status” of the buildings on the map. Round dots show models by other people; placemarks show models you’ve made. Here’s what the colors mean:

• Blue markers: Models which have been accepted and are live in Google Earth
• Cyan markers: Models which are awaiting review by us
• Gray markers: Models which have not been accepted

Feel free to tattoo this on your arm to help you remember what the symbols mean.

Buildings which haven’t been accepted (indicated by gray markers) fall into one of two categories. The first includes those which we’ve reviewed and decided not to include because they don’t meet the acceptance criteria for buildings in Google Earth. These gray markers also indicate geo-located models which are in draft (not marked “complete and ready for review”). If you’re geo-modeling a city with Building Maker, look for buildings with gray markers or no markers.

Fun fact: Internally, we refer to the little, round dots as “measles.” Since infectious diseases generally carry a negative connotation, we decided to call them “markers” instead. You’re free to call them anything you like.

Posted by Mason Thrall, Building Maker Team

Retired software engineer Peter Olsen discovered SketchUp shortly after it was acquired by Google in 2006. He published his first model to Google Earth’s “3D Buildings” layer in July 2008. Two and a half years later, he has 68 buildings in Google Earth—some as far away as Italy and Peru.

Peter is a Sydneysider, so it’s not surprising that he focused his initial geo-modeling activity in his home town. He’s modeled several of the city’s most visible buildings and structures, including Luna Park, the Anzac Bridge, Pyrmont Bridge and the Sydney monorail.

In addition to the 3D model, he also created a fully animated version of the Luna Park Ferris Wheel (seen above) complete with moving shadow, using a technique pioneered by Barnabu in his London Eye animation.

Peter noticed that many of Australia’s special places had not been modeled, so he expanded his reach by modeling Australia's unique underground Parliament House building in Canberra, Australia's capital city.

Like any artist, Peter continued to perfect his skills by tackling more complex geometric structures. Peter says:

“I never lost my interest in architecture and throughout my years in computing I dreamed of the day when a program would be invented that would allow the construction and manipulation of a 3D model of a building. The capability was naturally developed eventually, in the form of very expensive CAD programs. Imagine my absolute delight when I stumbled across a brilliant free program called Sketchup. My years of dreaming had suddenly become a reality.”

In 2010, he modeled one of the most challenging places on earth: Machu Picchu.

Many geo-modelers estimate building heights and other details from photographs. Not Peter. He takes great pride in the accuracy of his work as his description in the Machu Picchu model indicates: “The model contains every building, terrace and staircase and is accurate to less than 10cm (4") over most of the site.” Peter insists that he likes his “models to be absolutely accurate reproductions, not just approximate representations.”

During email discussions about some of Peter's Sydney models, I jokingly mentioned that the Google Sydney building had yet to be modelled. Four hours later he forwarded a reasonably accurate model of the building based on a few scant photos of the recently-completed building that he found on the web.

I appreciated his efforts and and invited Peter to lunch at the Google office. After lunch Peter spent 6 hours painstakingly measuring and photographing every nook and cranny of the building (I guess he liked the food!). A week or so later he forwarded his latest work of art, which has since been incorporated into the 3D buildings layer. Peter says that his “sense of amazement at the results that can be achieved with SketchUp has not diminished since the day I started work on my first model.”

Google Sydney would like to thank Peter for putting our beautiful office on the map!

Posted by Bruce Polderman, Product Manager

The City of Poznań announced the results for its competition last week. The goal of the organizers (as outlined on the competition web site) was to model specific buildings on the old imperial route through the city. The route contains lots of heritage buildings that the city is eager to promote, including royal palaces, opera houses, the old market area, and other historic buildings.

The competition poster for Poznań's geo-modeling competition

The Poznan competition was uncharacteristically short – November 22 through December 19 – interested parties had to act fast. Word of the competition quickly spread to others in the geo-modeling community. Entrants possessed a range of experience, but (not surprisingly) several experienced geo-modelers participated. These included Marcin Kruk (nevermor) and Supermodelers Filip Michałowski (Athinaios) and Tomasz Szular (tomcioZG).

The city hasn’t indicated how many entries were received, but it recently announced the winners. Entries were received from as far away as the United States. The competition was supported by the local Google office, who provided prizes to the winners in addition to the cash prizes that were awarded by the city.

Church of St. Anthony of Padua (Kościół św. Antoniego z Padwy) by Zuzanna Kurzawa

Local geo-modeler tomcioZG had this to say about the competition: “I'm happy with this contest and glad that someone in Poland is trying to organize something like this. I only wish the duration were longer – I submitted my last model seven minutes before the end of the competition!”

He went on to say: “I know that this competition was to determine interest, and I think City Hall should be pleased with the result. I checked all the models and they are made really well. After the competition I spoke with an employee of Poznań City Hall, who told me that if all goes well, they will hold this year a new contest.”

The city is still in the process of publishing the models to the 3D Warehouse. Some of the results can be found in this collection.

Posted by Bruce Polderman, Product Manager

Shaderlight, an awfully-impressive (and relatively new) offering from ArtVPS, is one such rendering tool. Its interface is clean and straighforward, there’s a free version available and the video tutorials are easy to follow and comprehensive. It’s currently only available for Windows, but I’m told that a Mac version is in the works. Here are some tasty sample renderings to whet your appetite:

Boat interior rendering by Sully114

Rendering by Daniel Tal

Kitchen rendering by Eric Schimelpfenig

Villa interior rendering by Sully14

In the interest of fairness to all of our rendering friends, our plugins page lists some of the other tools you can investigate if photo-realism is your bag.

Update: The target launch date for Shaderlight for Mac is early March.

Posted by Aidan Chopra, SketchUp Evangelist

The first event was a general geo-modeling presentation for students and teachers at the University of Makati, which was part of the school’s “Technology Week”. The second event was a presentation to the Google Technology Users Group of the Philippines on geo-modeling and becoming a Geo 3D developer.

Me (Nicole) onstage presenting the basics of geo-modeling

Bruce Polderman answering questions about certification for Geo 3D developers

Next, we held two full-day workshops at the university: one for educators and trainers and one for students. These workshops focused on developing basic modeling skills by means of an introduction to SketchUp, but we taught aspects of photography, photo editing, and other techniques specific to geo-modeling as well.

Teachers' workshop at the University of Makati

Group photo with the teachers

Students' workshop at the University of Makati

Group photo with the students

Concurrently, COMDDAP was hosting the Manila Expo 2010. There, they had a designated area where visitors could learn about Google Earth and explore the virtual globe both on a standard computer AND on a super-cool interactive touch-sensitive projection white board.

Now THAT'S a touch screen!

Take a look at this photo album for more pictures of our visit to the Philippines.

Posted by Nicole Drobeck, Geo Community Program Manager

Let’s roll back the clock a little bit before I explain the fix. In the spring of 2001, we introduced real-time volumetric shadow rendering in SketchUp 1.1. At the time, only video games were really doing this sort of rendering, and it was pretty exciting to see shadows cast from a model that you made yourself. When I got my first demo, I declared them to be the most “Undeniably Sexy” thing that I had seen all week. It was shortly after that that I left my day job to join @Last Software – SketchUp was clearly something that I had to be a part of.

Awesome though shadows were in most cases, there was a fatal flaw. When the camera passed inside a shadow volume, there were places where the rendering algorithm just plain fell flat on its face – leading to flashy, jagged and just plain wrong-looking shadows from some points of view. Unfortunately, there wasn’t any obvious way around that problem.

In the SketchUp 3 and 4 release cycles (launched in July of 2004), we worked on this problem some more and found a new algorithm that looked promising. Unfortunately, we found that this algorithm, while usually better when the camera was inside the shadow volume, failed even more spectacularly than our original algorithm in other common uses. Admitting temporary defeat, we pulled the new algorithm out and went back to the drawing board again.

As I’ve often said when asked about “the shadow bug”, the only way we’d be able to fix it is if we came up with a clever new algorithm. As luck will have it, one of our engineers (the same guy who implemented the original shadow rendering ten years ago) never quite gave up on the problem. And a few weeks ago, he figured out a new solution. Just like that. I’m proud to say we’ve (finally) fixed shadow rendering for all those cases where the camera was inside the shadow volume and included it as a part of today’s maintenance release. Need a visual? Here’s a video that shows the our new and improved shadow rendering at work:



There’s lots of other good bug fixes in M1, and it is both free and recommended for all users. Here's how to make sure you have the latest version of SketchUp 8:

Windows: Choose Help > Check for Update
Mac: Choose SketchUp > Check Web for Update

Posted by John Bacus, SketchUp Product Manager

Here's an overly-dramatic video that shows the Shadow Bug fix in living color.

The newest version of SketchUp 8 (free and Pro) is available today in English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Korean, Japanese, Traditional Chinese and Brazilian Portuguese. Stay tuned for Russian, Dutch and Simplified Chinese; they’re coming soon.

Here's how to get the latest version of SketchUp 8:

Windows: Choose Help > Check for Update

Mac: Choose SketchUp > Check Web for Update

Please feel free to express your own euphoria in the form of a haiku in this post's comments thread.

Udpate: Added Korean to the list of available languages.

Posted by Aidan Chopra, SketchUp Evangelist

We’ve blogged about Hartford High before – and even found his work as an educator deserving of an official case-study video. Mike and five of his students presented at our Google Geo Teacher Institute last summer; since then, all of those students have gone off to college with a serious tool set of skills learned in Mike’s class.

This year, high school senior Michael Bateman created a video about his teacher’s class (above). In it, he and others explain why their project is so valuable in relation to typical high school classroom coursework.

There’s no doubt that engaging students can be difficult; it’s fun to see why Michael and his peers are so jazzed about this class. I’m also envious of his mad videography skills. Nice work, Mike and Michael.

Posted by Allyson McDuffie, Google Geo EDU Team

In the 3D modeling sense, AR involves combining a live video stream with a 3D model to create the illusion that the model is a physical object in the real world. All you need is a webcam (the ones that are built in to many laptops work just fine), a 3D model (SketchUp takes care of that), a printed-out paper "target" and a piece of AR software that can put everything together. This video shows AR in action:



And here’s an illustration that shows the setup:

A simple Augmented Reality setup for SketchUp, using an external monitor to show the video output. Note that a second monitor isn't necessary for using this plugin.

Thanks to an Italian outfit called Inglobe Technologies, SketchUp users have been able to ride the AR wave for a while now. They've just released version 2 of their AR-media Plugin for Google SketchUp. Three great things about this shiny, happy piece of tech:

• It's available for both Windows and Mac OSX.
• It's available in three flavors: Free (Personal Learning Edition), Professional Lite and Professional.
• I was able to use it, which means that it can't be that hard to figure out.

Start out by grabbing the Quick Start Guide; you'll find the relevant links about halfway down the plugin's webpage. Follow Steps 2 and 3 to download and install the software; the free Personal Learning Edition will let you see how everything works without spending any money. After that, achieve instant gratification (my favorite kind) by skipping ahead to Step 6 in the Quick Start Guide: "Creating your first Augmented Reality Scene".

Here’s a video that shows off the new features in ARmedia Plugin 2.0:

Please use this post's Comments thread to discuss the ways you think AR might benefit you.

Posted by Aidan Chopra, SketchUp Evangelist

Most SketchUp modelers who design things for a living spend their time somewhere between the second and third dimensions. Models are 3D, but construction (or fabrication) requires 2D documents. Often, those 2D drawings are too complex to use LayOut in SketchUp Pro to make; LayOut isn't a dedicated drafting tool, after all.

A SketchUp model imported into DoubleCAD XT Pro

DoubleCAD XT is (as its name implies) most certainly a full-featured CAD tool. It's more affordable than AutoCAD LT, and it "holds hands" with SketchUp better than any other CAD system on the market. Among other things, DoubleCAD XT:

• exports COLLADA files which you can open in SketchUp
• imports .SKP files natively
• imports and recognizes SketchUp layers
• generates viewports from scenes in your models
• converts components into DoubleCAD blocks automatically

If you're a Windows user who routinely creates 2D documents, you owe it to yourself to give DoubleCAD a whirl. The no-cost version (did I forget to mention that DoubleCAD XT is free?) is extremely capable, and the Pro version adds lots, lots more for US$695.

Posted by Aidan Chopra, SketchUp Evangelist

Why do you geo-model, and when did you start?

I specialize in Interior and Space design. When I was young it was my dream to become an architect, so I wasn't able to fulfill my dreams. With SketchUp I was able to see that dream come true, and because of that, I started building geo-models for Google Earth. It’s a passion that I will continue in the foreseeable future.

My first model passed through Google’s review process and appeared in Google Earth’s 3D Buildings layer in 2008. The feeling of excitement when I see my models in Google Earth remains today. Maybe this is the Google Earth and SketchUp charm. I think all modelers share this kind of feeling.

Do you have specific modeling goals?

Yes. It’s my hope that more people in Taiwan will participate in geo-modeling. We could create a community where we work collaboratively to build geo-models of Taiwan to appear on Google Earth.

What model are you most proud of?

I have many models that I am proud of, such as: Tiananmen Square, the Forbidden City in China... etc. but I have to say, i'm most proud of the Taipei 101, because it represents a major landmark in Taiwan, and Taipei 101 exterior contains a deep and strong oriental meaning. That was the whole reason I wanted to take on that project.

What is your favorite model created by someone else?

That’s a tough question to answer because I admire many modelers including Enrico Dalbosco, José Manuel, Zeljko Zdravkovic, Filip Michalowski, Tomasz Szular, TANTUNNY, and others. If I had to choose, I’d have to say that my favorite modeler is Peter Gipuzkoa. He's working hard to turn Spain into 3D, and it is because of him, 3 years ago, that I set out to do the same for Taiwan.

My goal is have more buildings of Taiwan to be seen by everyone around the world. In the last few years Peter has taught me a lot about modeling, and helped me produce better models using SketchUp. I think this is what they mean by a "global village."

Posted by Bruce Polderman, Product Manager