Wow! We received some amazing entries for the Google SketchUp 2009 International Student Bridge Modeling Competition. Higher education students from over 65 countries registered for the competition, 42 collections were created in the Google 3D Warehouse, and 77 bridges were modeled from all over the world. The types of bridges range from historical to pedestrian, rail and highway - and they were all certainly impressive. Check out our winners page for details and comments from our illustrious panel of judges.
The winners are:
1st Place
Jason Wong
School of Architecture and Construction Management, Washington State University, US
2nd Place
Tobias Merk
School of Design, Hochschule Augsburg - University of Applied Sciences, Germany
3rd Place
Nicholas Falbo
Nohad A. Toulan School of Urban Studies & Planning, Portland State University, US
The results are in, and they are beautiful
Thursday, July 9, 2009 9:55 AM
Keyboard tricks and shortcuts in LayOut
Wednesday, July 8, 2009 2:30 PM
Just like in Google SketchUp, there are keyboard modifiers that let you control how LayOut functions while you are creating your LayOut designs. Below are a few that you may not know about.
Copying a selection
Similar to SketchUp, you can Copy/Move a selection by holding down CTRL (Option on a Mac) while moving an object.
Nudging items on a page
Using the arrow keys on your keyboard allows you to move your selections up, down, right and left in precise increments. The distance of each "nudge" is determined by your document's unit settings:
- Metric: move in increments of 0.5 mm
- English (inches and feet): move in increments of 1/64"
- Points: move in increments of 1 pt
- Metric: move in increments of 5 mm
- English (inches and feet): move in increments of 1/4"
- Points: move in increments of 10 pt
Scaling a selectionHolding down Shift while resizing a selection window allows you to scale your selection proportionately. If you use Shift in conjunction with Alt (Command on a Mac), your selection scales proportionately about its center.
Modifying lines, arcs & curves
You can edit the shape and direction of lines and arcs by double-clicking to edit them. While in edit mode, you can add control points and convert lines into Bézier curves by holding down CTRL when you click them:
Double-click on line segments or arcs to edit them.
While editing, click while holding down CTRL (Option on a Mac) to add control points.
While editing, left click-drag on a control point while holding down CTRL (Option on a Mac) to add Bézier handles, and to convert a line into a Bézier curve.
Sampling Styles
Tapping S allows you to sample the style of an existing object and apply it to a selection:
- Select the items you want to change.
- Tap S on your keyboard and click any entity to sample its style properties. Bingo! Your selection automatically takes on the new style. This works on any object on the page, including shapes, text and labels.
- Click once to place your first point.
- Tap S and click to sample another object on the page.
- Finish whatever element you're drawing. It should have all the style properties of the object you sampled in Step 2.
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Featured Modeler: John from Dursley, England
Wednesday, July 1, 2009 3:35 PM
John is a retired British architect whose passion for photography and knowledge of his town's architectural history helped shape his beautiful 3D models of Dursley, Gloucestershire in England.
"The alignment of the buildings on Castle Street is a bit on the skew," he said, "but that makes sense if you know there used to be an actual castle in that location. The castle had a moat that the streets were laid out around."
John started using Google Earth and Google SketchUp around the same time. His brother was introduced to SketchUp at a lecture on SketchUp by his SeniorNet group. John's local library had an Internet cafe and, on his brother's recommendation, he took a look at Google Earth. "I was absolutely staggered. And decided I had to put Dursley on the map. There's another chap who does great stuff in Gloucester City called Andrew. He helped me out when I was first getting used to the process, in dealing with stuff like zed-flashing (z-fighting), where two overlapped textures have a flashing problem."
As John explains, an architectural background and access to information on the history of a specific site are both critical to his process for creating a realistic representation of Dursley.
"What's remarkable to me about 3D buildings in Google Earth is that they can combine in a live model all of the detail that is otherwise only available from different books and records. There is a resource in the UK called Buildings of England that describes with great precision the development of different local architectures. That helps me, but so does my knowledge of standard architectural practices that haven't changed all that much through the recent centuries."
John also draws a good deal of understanding about a structure based on the form of its roof as seen in the Google Earth satellite imagery. He is also keen on architectural photography (check out John's photo site).
"Knowing how roofs are built helps you: most roof surfaces have a similar slope and extend beyond the building footprint, but more important, the roof surfaces tell the story of how the walls are arranged. Add to that the fact that string courses have been used right through the centuries, work with some solid photos, and, Bob's your Uncle, you can be successful."
As for inferring building heights, John relies on his photos and makes "jolly well sure" the doors are 2.1 meters high on the textured model.
"You really need to understand how components and move/array can help you in SketchUp. Architecture has always had repeating elements. Once you have created one Victorian chimney, for example, it's likely you can use it for multiple sites. Really the key for repeatable success is to get the hang of working with SketchUp's grid system, setting your point of origin, aligning Red and Green axes to your site, and then drawing on axis. Getting on axis is like turning on the ignition before trying to drive your car."
"I really see a great educational benefit in having architecture available in Google Earth. The models are an encapsulation of so much history, architectural geometry and knowledge. They are especially important for the area of my focus, 'Listed Buildings', what you call Historical Register in the States. There really is no other way to truly capture all the detail of a building so clearly and concisely. " Check out John's site on Dursley.
As a result of his impressive work, John's models have been highlighted in the press. "The BBC was out to see what I was up to for a profile and so were the local papers." So why does he do it? According to John, he and his fellow modelers model their cities in 3D so that the world can experience the places they hold so dear. "What motivates both Andrew and myself is the same kind of interest in our home town or city. Combine that with architecture, history, and a means of sharing it with the world you can see why I get so excited. My brother thinks I should publish a coffee table book called, 'Dursley from All Angles' using screenshots of my models; I just might."
Design a better bus stop
Monday, June 29, 2009 4:15 PM
Last week, one of the organizers of Next Stop Design wrote to tell us about their website. In their own words, Next Stop Design is "an experiment in 'crowdsourcing' the best ideas and designs to build a better bus stop". The website lets anyone submit a design in any medium (even pencil and paper are A-OK), and also encourages folks to try SketchUp if they're game for trying out 3D modeling. Check out some of the entries; they're neat.
University of Utah Teepee by hopkinpA reminder (while we're on the subject of online design submissions): We launched the Design IT: Shelter Competition a couple of weeks ago. The last day to submit is in August, but don't let the absence of a looming deadline deter you from getting started -- good ideas sometimes happen before 3 am.
Posted by Aidan Chopra, SketchUp Evangelist
More 3D cities in Europe
Friday, June 26, 2009 11:38 AM
Warsaw, Prague and Oslo have joined the growing list of phototextured cities in the 3D Buildings layer of Google Earth. Like other major cities these 3D models are predominantly autogenerated, yet they also contain a number of Google SketchUp models generated by the user community. While the autogenerated models are good quality, user-generated models are often better because ground-based photos can produce a higher quality model than ones generated using aerial imagery.
Oslo
WarsawThese new cities join other major European cities viewable in 3D, including Munich, Hamburg, Berlin and Zurich to name a few. If you've never visited these cities in-person, have some fun flying around and exploring them virtually.
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Summer Road Trip!
Wednesday, June 24, 2009 10:00 AM
Are you planning a U.S. National Park tour this summer or a road trip with family and friends? If so, you might find yourself stopping by the new Blue Ridge Parkway Visitor Center, which serves the area from the Shenandoah National Park in Virginia to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in Tennessee - designed by architecture firm Lord, Aeck & Sargent.
The team at LAS also designed the new Discovery Center and Ben Brady Lakeside Pavilion at the Chattahoochee Nature Center. Both the Visitor Center and the Discovery Center are targeting LEED Gold certification.
Thanks to Vikram Sami from Lord, Aeck & Sargent for submitting these case studies!
See the steps to model for Google Earth
Wednesday, June 17, 2009 8:55 AM
If you've wondered what the process really looks like for getting a 3D model into Google Earth, you should check out this new video (also included below). You'll see a building created from scratch in SketchUp, pushed up for review, and placed in Google Earth for all to see. It's soup to nuts. The building is very simple and the reference photos are great for modeling (if I do say so myself).
This video provides step-by-step directions describing how to use photographs, Google SketchUp, Google Earth, and the Google 3D Warehouse to create and upload a model for consideration in Google Earth's 3D Building layer. Check it out when you have a chance.
Take your 3D with you
Tuesday, June 16, 2009 4:40 PM
We've released a new feature in the Google 3D Warehouse that enables anyone to embed an interactive view of any 3D Warehouse model on a webpage or blog. Here's an example of how it looks on our blog:
Here's how it works:
You've probably seen these two buttons on a model's details page:
The "Link" button shows you the URL for the current page. The "Include" button expands to look like this:
If you've ever embedded a YouTube video on a web page, this should be familiar to you. You'll select the type of embed (a static image, a 3D view, or a view using the Google Earth plugin), copy the HTML, and paste it into your site. This Help Center article contains more details.
Taking it further with LayOut clip masks
Friday, June 12, 2009 12:25 AM
A few weeks ago, one of our developers posted about using clip masks to crop photos and models in LayOut. In this post, I'm going to take this one step further and show you how you can use clip masks with Google SketchUp models to create cutaway views and vignettes.
- To stack identical model windows, use the copy - paste method. The pasted model will be placed in the exact page location as the first model and on top.
- When creating cut away views or vignettes, use LayOut Layers to organize the stacked models.
- Place the "base" model on an underlying layer.
- "Copy" the model.
- Lock the layer and turn off the visibility so that this instance of the model does not interfere with the design of the clip mask.
- Activate a layer above the locked layer. This is where you will create your clip mask.
- Select the "Paste" function. This will place a model instance used in your clip mask.
- Maintaining this model in place, create your clip mask.
- After you have created your clip mask, turn on the base layer visibility.
- Finished!
- If you want the shape of the clip mask to follow line work in the model, you can change the model rendering to Vector. This will allow you to snap to and trace along the model's edges and endpoints. You can then switch it back to Raster mode and set the clip mask.
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Land of the Rising Sun in 3D
Wednesday, June 10, 2009 8:30 PM
Earlier this week we released tens of thousands of new 3D buildings in Japan. Major Japanese cities such as Tokyo, Osaka, Kobe and Kyoto have joined the growing list of cities and towns prominently displayed in Google Earth's 3D buildings layer.
The highlights of these cities are our user-contributed SketchUp models that were submitted via the Google 3D Warehouse for publication in Google Earth.
Check out this temple in Ancient Kyoto:
Or, this one by a modeler named Seagate:
If you're thinking about contributing to any region of the world, from anywhere on the planet, we've recently improved and simplified the overall process for model submission and acceptance. So, give it a try...it's a ton of fun. For those of you already with us, keep em' coming. Your world is looking great!
