After 3D Basecamp 2008

Posted by Aidan Chopra, SketchUp Evangelist

It's been five days since 3D Basecamp ended on Friday the 13th (inauspicious as that may have been), and most of us SketchUppers are still catching up on our rest. The event was better than any of us could have dreamed it would be. It was awesome.

If you're wondering what went down, take a look at the Event Program on the 3D Basecamp website. Basically, Basecamp started on Wednesday the 11th with SketchUp Basic Training for beginners in the morning, followed by lunch at Charlie's Cafe and sessions all afternoon. In the evening, we witnessed an inspiring presentation by Cameron Sinclair of Architecture For Humanity, then enjoyed a BBQ dinner, live music and plenty of libations until about ten o'clock. Not bad for the first day.

Thursday debuted with breakfast (food is never very far away at the Googleplex), then followed more sessions, lunch, and yet more sessions until early evening. Folks were left to their own devices for dinner; we figured most would go back to their hotel rooms and pass out.

After breakfast on Friday, some people attended sessions, some hung out in the SketchUp Lab, and the rest took part in a design challenge we concocted with the folks from AFH (you can participate too!) After lunch, everyone convened in a single room to see the challenge participants' presentations and the subsequent handing-out of awards to the winners. By two-thirty, everyone was gone.

If you're interested in seeing pictures and reading stories from folks who attended the event, you've got a few options:

Search for "3d basecamp" on Picasa Web Albums
Search for "3d basecamp" on FlickR
Search for "3d basecamp" on Google Blog Search

Incidentally, we recorded almost all of the goings-on at the event, so stayed tuned for information about where you can go to access videos, session handouts and other information from Basecamp. We're not sure when it will be ready, but we'll be sure to announce its availability on this blog and in the SketchUpdate newsletter.

To everyone who took part: Thanks for helping to make this event one of my happiest memories (so far) of being part of the SketchUp team.

Permalink | Links to this post | 11 comments  

Sportables: a Design Challenge!

Posted by John Bacus, Google SketchUp Product Manager

Last Wednesday's keynote at our 3D Basecamp by Cameron Sinclair (Co-founder, Executive Director and "Eternal Optimist" of Architecture for Humanity) was a real highlight for me. I've been talking to AFH for a long time now, especially about the talented SketchUp folks we have in our user community. We've been trying to come up with something that we can all do together – something that shows how great design work can make a real difference in the lives of ordinary people around the world. To that end, we decided to kick off a new Design Challenge with Architecture for Humanity.


The Challenge (should you choose to accept it) is to design a "Sportable". Sportables are highly-transportable and deployable play spaces that can double as a sustainable infrastructure nodes for the community in which they operate. We're looking particularly at the game of Futsal (like soccer, but played in the streets with a heavier ball and fewer rules) for a site in Capao Redondo, Sao Paolo, Brazil. As AFH says, "Nothing connects kids like the power of play. In areas of great need there is an opportunity to use sports as a catalyst for social change. Where these resources are scarce, we can create community access points to deliver vital services." For those of you who were with us at 3D Basecamp last week, we've already run a one-day charrette on this Challenge. Fifteen teams entered, and by the end of a lightning round of presentations only three teams were left standing. We awarded prizes for these three excellent proposals:

1st Place - "Team Futsal Cart": Meda Ling, Ann Wright, Alan Nevling, Mitchel Stangl, Gary Whyte
2nd Place - "Billboard": Lorin Crandall, Greg Braun, Matthew Ritzman, Kim Fair, Kevin Pierce
3rd Place - "Futsal Unit": Josh Lowe, Lukas Lagerweij, Roberto Ramirez, Cody Meeks, Rich McPherson

But that was just the beginning! The Sportables Challenge is still open to anyone with an idea and a desire to participate, this time with more attractive prizes awarded to the winners. Register for the Open Architecture Network and then enter the competition, but don't wait too long. The Sportables Challenge closes at the end of this month, and I happen to know that there are already fifteen teams working...

Permalink | Links to this post | 10 comments  

Dispatches from 3D Basecamp, No. 1

Posted by Beth Callas, SketchUp 3D Basecamp Team

Coming to you live from the Google SketchUp 3D Basecamp 2008! Nearly 400 SketchUp enthusiasts have descended on our Mountain View campus for two-and-a-half days of 3D modeling abandon. With plenty of SPF on hand, we’re enjoying the 85 degree weather with folks from all over the world. While some attendees breezed in by way of the light rail from San Francisco, others made the trek from as far away as Western Australia. It warms our hearts to be surrounded by users who have been with us since version one, as well as newbies who caught the Push/Pull bug only 6 months ago.

We have an action-packed lineup of sessions ranging from Ruby Scripting to Green Design, led by enthusiastic experts in their fields. Stay tuned, as we’ll continue posting throughout the event.

Permalink | Links to this post | 12 comments  

Vote now for your favorite lip warmer

Posted by Aidan Chopra, SketchUp Evangelist

May is Mustache Month, and our office went all out. Several Boulder Googlers spent the last thirty-one days tending to their sub-nasal follicle gardens, and yesterday, we took their pictures to document the results (click on the image to make it bigger):





Update After a month and a half of voting, it looks like Vicky is the audience favorite, followed by Adam B. and Alex, who is a distant third. Way to go, ladies.

Permalink | Links to this post | 8 comments  

Setting your field of view

Posted by Aidan Chopra, SketchUp Evangelist

Ever been inside your SketchUp model and wished you could see a wider-angle view? All you have to do is set your field of view (FOV):

1. Select the Zoom tool by pressing Z on your keyboard.
2. Type in an angle (in degrees) that represents how wide you'd like your view to be, and press Enter — this is your field of view. For a 45 degree FOV, you'd type 45deg. The larger the angle, the more you'll be able to see. SketchUp's default FOV is 35 degrees, but 60 degrees is much handier for interior views.

For a basic illustration of this concept, have a look at this SketchUp model in the 3D Warehouse.

If you're into photography, you might like to know that you can also express your FOV as a focal length, in mm. For example, you'd enter a 28mm focal length by typing 28mm (instead of deg after the number). Keep in mind that smaller numbers (like 18mm) yield wider fields of view, while larger numbers (like 300mm) result in very narrow ones.

Permalink | Links to this post | 9 comments  

Connecting the library to the rest of the school

Posted by Susan Willard, SketchUp Engineer

A while ago, I was asked to participate in a SketchUp workshop for 4th, 5th, and 6th graders at my niece's elementary school in Manchester By The Sea, Massachusetts. The students used SketchUp to design a 30 foot x 100 foot addition to their school, with the aim of attaching the library structure to the rest of the building. They could either start from scratch or from a model of the existing structures that their teacher, Mr. Clark, had created. It was really interesting to see what these kids came up with. And I got to be the "cool aunt" for a day!

Here are some of their impressive results:

Carly S, 5th grade

Devon M. and Bailey G, 5th grade

Maya H, 5th grade

Tatum H, 6th grade

Tucker E, 5th grade

Permalink | Links to this post | 3 comments  

Show 'em how green you are

Posted by Aidan Chopra, SketchUp Evangelist

Tasha was cruising along the information superhighway when she happened upon a design competition that readers of this blog might find interesting: It's called "How Green Are You?", and it's being co-sponsored by Dwell and the AIA. They're looking for examples of "green or sustainable" architecture that they can feature on the Contest Entries section of Dwell's website.

In case you missed it, we ran an informal little "green" competition of our own last October — check out the winning submissions if you're so inclined.

Permalink | Links to this post | 1 comments  

For Earth Day, some of us planted trees

Posted by Simone Nicolo, QA Engineer & Friend of Nature

A whole bunch of us headed over to Sawhill Ponds (just East of Boulder) to help out Volunteers for Outdoor Colorado with a project we conceived and created together. We spent the afternoon clearing an acre of invasive thistles and planting more that 350 cottonwood trees along the banks of one of the ponds. All told, about 40 Googlers from the Boulder and Denver offices (joined by friends and family, and members of Americorps) celebrated Earth Day by pitching in.

The ponds themselves are the result of gravel mining; since that ceased about 30 years ago, the pits that were left filled up with groundwater. These days, the area is a wetland habitat for many species of wildlife. The cottonwood trees that we planted, once grown, will provide shade that will help keep the water cool. This is turn will reduce the growth of things like non-native Eurasian water milfoil and green algae, and discourage the growth of invasive plant species that need full sunlight to thrive.

In the photos above, you can see that it looks like we were planting sticks. We were — sort of. Cottonwood trees can be planted by burying cut branches from mature trees that have been placed in water to develop roots. Who knew?

Permalink | Links to this post | 5 comments  

Even more 3D in Google Earth

Posted by Bruce Polderman, Product Manager


Just in case you hadn't heard, we released Google Earth 4.3 a few weeks ago. The new version includes (among other things) tens of thousands of photo-textured 3D models of buildings, bridges and other structures. We've improved performance, so thoroughly-modeled cities like San Francisco and Munich "pop" into view much faster than they did in the previous version of Google Earth -- you really need to see it for yourself.

Many of you have created 3D building models for Google Earth and published them to the 3D Warehouse. Google Earth 4.3 includes the best of these models, plus additional ones that we created and even more that were contributed to Google by cities and towns around the world.

Read my post on the Google Lat Long blog to find out more about 3D cities in Google Earth, and watch this video to learn about all the cool new features in the latest version. If you haven't already done so, be sure to download Google Earth 4.3 and give it a whirl.

Permalink | Links to this post | 3 comments  

Breathe life into your models with Antics

Posted by Steve Dapkus, Market Development Guy

Antics is user-friendly 3D animation software for pre-visualization, machinima, education, simulation, training and a host of other things. It lets you create movies with models that you can animate to move around inside your scenes; you can even "film" the action with an infinite number of cameras that you set up. Antics is super-cool, and (like SketchUp) comes in both "free" and "pro" flavors. You can download both at the Antics website.

Even cooler (from my perspective) is the fact that the latest version of Antics features an embedded Google 3D Warehouse browser that can serve up a steady stream of models for your movies. Antics also supports direct import of SketchUp files in .skp format, which means you can build stuff in SketchUp and animate it in Antics. This Tips & Tricks forum on their website provides more information, and the following video provides a taste of what you can do.

Permalink | Links to this post | 6 comments