Urban planning and community development should be a shared activity. Houseal Lavigne Associates, a Chicago-based planning firm has broken down the walls between residents, business owners, elected and appointed officials to create a truly communal design experience.
Houseal Lavigne Associates uses 3D technology to help visualize new developments and create proposals to present to the community. The city planners use Google SketchUp Pro to create 3D models of developments and proposals to help visualize what the buildings will look like on vacant sites. According to Houseal Lavigne, 3D models created using Google SketchUp are the ideal way to make projects come to life. "It helps the community get excited about what type of development might be most suitable for the property,” says Lavigne. “Google SketchUp has become a constant for our firm for 3D modeling and visualization.” Take a look at the HousealLavigne Associates case study to read more and see the actual plans and models.
Chicago planning firm reaches out to the community
Thursday, August 21, 2008 4:30 PM
Just arrived! Podium 1.5 for the Mac
Monday, August 18, 2008 11:29 AM
Our friends over at Cadalog just recently announced the release of Podium 1.5 for Mac OS X. SU Podium is a photo-realistic rendering plug-in for Google SketchUp 6. The Mac version of SU Podium is almost identical to the Windows version in features and performance and both provide one of the simplest ways to create beautiful photo-realistic images of SketchUp models.
SU Podium 1.5 for the Mac runs on Mac OS X (Intel and PowerPC computers) and on both Leopard and Tiger systems. Download a free evaluation version of Podium 1.5 for the Mac (if you own a Windows license, the conversion is free).
Marketing Functionary
Model your Campus Competition in Mexico
Thursday, August 14, 2008 10:26 AM
During the Google 2008 International Model your Campus Competition this past Spring, our Google Mexico City team simultaneously ran a contest with a top Mexican university, ITESM (The Technology Institute of Monterrey), and offered separate prizes for the best models submitted by the ITESM students. In total, ITESM participants designed 111 buildings, representing 22 ITESM campuses. All of the submissions will live in a collection within the Google 3D Warehouse. Read this post on the Official Google Blog to see the winners and their models.
SketchUp goes to Beijing
Friday, August 8, 2008 8:49 AM
The Summer Games are about to start, and chances are, you're not in Beijing to see them. That's alright, though – we've got the next best thing.
Our colleagues over at the Lat Long blog have put together a terrific compendium of everything we're doing to get you as close to the Games as possible. This includes an extensive 3D Warehouse collection of Olympic venues modeled in SketchUp. You can even take a look at them in context with this Google Earth KML. Who needs air travel?
Concept art for gaming and entertainment
Monday, August 4, 2008 5:20 PM
Richard Doble, an artist with the concept art studio Massive Black in San Francisco, uses SketchUp to do some pretty amazing things. Check out his personal blog to see some of them.
Kemp Remillard works at Massive Black, too. His website contains some equally inspirational work – take a look.
Posted by Aidan Chopra, SketchUp Evangelist
Making an element appear on every page in LayOut
Tuesday, July 29, 2008 11:21 AM
As you know, LayOut is a great application for creating presentation documents from your SketchUp models. Using LayOut is relatively simple, but there are a few things about it that aren't obvious. One of these relates to creating elements (such as project titles and logos) that need to appear in the same spot on more than one page. Doing so requires that you understand something called shared layers in LayOut. Elements that you place on shared layers appear on every page that's set to display that shared layer. Here's how it works:
the Layers dialog box- In LayOut, choose Window > Layers from the menu bar to open the Layers dialog box.
- Create a new layer by clicking the "Add a new layer button at the top of the Layers dialog box. It looks like a little plus sign.
- Name your new layer "Multi-Page Elements" or "Same On Every Page", or something like that.
- Make your new layer a shared layer by clicking its "shared" icon. It looks like a little piece of paper, and it appears all the way to the right of the layer name in the Layers dialog box. When a layer is shared, its icon looks like a stack of pages.
- Be sure your new layer is active by clicking to select it (the selected layer has a little pencil icon next to its name) and create or add the element you'd like to appear on every page. Because the layer you're drawing on is now shared, anything on it will appear on all the pages in your document.
But what if there are some pages on which you don't want shared layer content to appear? Here's what you need to do:
the Pages dialog box- Choose Window > Pages from the menu bar to open the Pages dialog box.
- Click any page's "show/hide shared layers" icon (it looks like a little stack of papers) to set that page to show – or not show – elements which are on shared layers. When the icon looks "blacked out", that page won't show the contents of shared layers.
Thinking in Pictures
Saturday, July 26, 2008 2:23 PM
A number of us from the Boulder and Kirkland Google offices recently attended the Autism Society of America's 2008 National Conference in Orlando, Florida. What a great experience!
On the first day of the conference, we gave a presentation about Project Spectrum (program that introduces people on the autism spectrum to Google SketchUp) to the ASA Chapter Presidents.
The rest of our time was spent in the exhibit hall introducing SketchUp to the conference attendees, including parents, educators and people with autism. One attendee, Cole, created a java-fied remodel of the University of Alaska Museum of the North. I think he's still waiting to hear whether or not it was approved!
Our fellow Coloradan, Temple Grandin, delivered the keynote speech. Temple touched on two themes we think are at the core of Project Spectrum: taking advantage of special gifts, like visual and spatial skills, and using those gifts to develop a life skill or career. 
A special thanks goes out to our vendors, Sparks and Eagle Management, for building our Project Spectrum booth and providing set-up and tear-down services at no charge. It's wonderful to see others excited by our program, and it helped to make this a great event.
Design your Dwelling (and maybe win a trip to San Francisco)
Tuesday, July 15, 2008 4:26 PM
Posted by Tasha Danko, Marketing Functionary
It's my pleasure to announce the launch of the Design Your Dwelling Competition. We're co-hosting this design challenge with Dwell Magazine, a stylish and modern publication that focuses on good design as a means to better living. We're asking SketchUp users – and readers of Dwell – to think about what it means to feel "at home in the modern world" (the Dwell mantra). We challenge you to think about your idea of a comfortable and sustainable dwelling, and to share it with the world.
The building site has already been selected by the Dwell editors; it's in San Francisco, overlooking the Golden Gate bridge. If the judges consider your entry to be the best, you'll win a weekend trip to San Francisco to attend the Dwell/AIA home tours and be treated to lunch by the editors of Dwell magazine and the SketchUp team. If you need an excuse to spend some time having fun in SketchUp, this could be just what you're looking for. Be sure to submit your dream dwelling by August 31, 2008.
Visit the competition website for all the rules, prize information, design parameters and submission guidelines. Good luck, and we look forward to seeing your submissions.
SketchUp books for kids
Monday, July 14, 2008 11:35 AM
Posted by Tasha Danko, Marketing Functionary
Our long-time friend Bonnie Roskes, who's written books on SketchUp, is now writing SketchUp books for kids (which only makes sense, since she has a bunch of kids herself). Children learn SketchUp pretty quickly, but there isn’t much educational material out there just for them. Bonnie’s new “ModelMetricks” series includes 11 books with lots of fun and colorful projects that kids will love. Parents and teachers love them, too - how often do kids log quality hours on the computer? Bonnie’s site also has some free kids’ activities – great for keeping your kids off the streets during summer vacation.
For you K-12 educators out there (or if you happen to know any), Bonnie also has a Free Teacher Guide. It's full of suggested SketchUp projects for all ages in a variety of subjects. They make it easy for you to introduce SketchUp to your classes.
The camera adds ten pounds
Friday, July 11, 2008 12:39 AM
Posted by Aidan Chopra, SketchUp Evangelist
As people who already know what SketchUp is, I doubt anything in the video we made recently will be groundbreaking news. Nonetheless, we're proud of it, and we thought you might be interested.
Some notes before you watch it: This was my first time "acting" in a non-training video – I know I won't be winning an Oscar anytime soon. Also (in the interest of full disclosure), I did design the DVD coffee table in real life, but my good buddy and coworker Tyson Kartchner built it in his garage. This is a good thing, as power tools and I don't always get along.
The table will soon be residing in a member of the SketchUp team's dwelling, but if you'd like to build something like it, I've posted the model to the 3D Warehouse.
I used SketchUp to design the "set" for the video, and LayOut to create the storyboard we used to plan it out and shoot it. As you can see, we stuck to it pretty closely:
(click the image to see it bigger)
