Fabbing with friends: a WikiHouse for World Maker Faire

When we first heard about WikiHouse, we knew we wanted to build one. When WikiHouse’s co-founder gave an inspiring Ted talk this past May, we were inspired to build one. And when we read the WikiHouse modeling standards (make groups, use layers!), we knew that we just had to build one.

So as we sat down with the WikiHouse team this summer and talked about how we could collaborate for World Maker Faire, our goal was a no-brainer: design and build our own WikiHouse in just over a month.

The SketchUp WikiHouse for World Maker Faire. View more photos of this project here.

Kicking off the project, it was quickly evident that between the SketchUppers and the WikiHouse’rs, there were more than enough architects to go around. Aside from the reality that no one on the team had a CNC router in his garage, we knew we’d need a project partner with tons of CNC experience -- and one who wouldn’t laugh off the idea of hammering together a thousand cut pieces in the middle of Maker Faire.

Enter our friend Bill Young over at ShopBot Tools. We’d been itching to do a project with Bill since he caught us spreading saw dust all over Maker Faire Bay Area earlier this year. Bill’s practical experience with wood selection, tolerances, and project planning are nicely measured by his ability to engrave anything (onto anything) while generally believing that most things are possible. With the right mix of optimism and practicality, we started trading SKP’s back and forth, hashing out the trade-offs in various design concepts.

Concept 1: A custom tarp could be tricky, and would we even hear ourselves over a CNC in one bay?
Concept 2: Using 'Add location,' we noticed the lookout would showcase a cozy stretch city highway.
Concept 3: We were charmed by an iconic design with exposed sections, but this required too much wood and time.
The Constructible Model: Just right with all the right hooks, tabs, and S-joints.

With an ‘as-built’ SketchUp model set and 160 sheets of plywood sitting in Bill’s shop, it was time to derive cutting sheets and turn up the ShopBots. (Note: if you’re looking to prep your own model for CNC, the free WikiHouse plugin for SketchUp turns grouped geometry into neatly laid out cutting sheets).

Soon after we began cutting, it became clear that our two central constraints were time and lumber. Thankfully, our design and tools were well-suited to these pressures. The WikiHouse design standards call for modular elements that could easily be added, subtracted or adapted -- and because WikiHouse uses SketchUp as a platform, making in-progress changes was painless and quick. With a quick pivot for build phasing (agreeing what to cut next based on how much wood and time remained), the sawdust started blowing and the sheets started piling.

Ply piles in progress: only a small accumulation of the full project. See more photos from our cutting phase.

Some 1,150 cut pieces later, we are on our way to New York City after a fantastic month of collaboration between architects in the U.K., software engineers in Colorado, and woodworkers in Virginia. When we reach World Maker Faire, we’ll be joining forces with friends from the SketchUp community to show what open design tools, open design platforms, and a bit of courage can accomplish in just two days.

The right tools for the job: custom cut and engraved wiki-mallets for World Maker Faire.

Didn't make it to World Maker Faire? Follow the build progress.
Want to see more photos of our project to date?
Watch a timelapse of the SketchUp WikiHouse build.

Posted by Mark Harrison on behalf of the SketchUp Team

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A textbook for teaching SketchUp

We’ve spent a lot of time watching students of all ages take to SketchUp. Fearlessly, they dive right in, texturing polygons until they’ve created imaginatively robust landscapes, or even autofolding simple geometric structures into mind-bending helixes. Clearly, discerning kids aren’t waiting for permission to explore and design in 3D. We’ve also seen insightful teachers recognize SketchUp’s potential as a teaching platform, but for them jumping into a whole new way of learning isn’t as straightforward.

This fall, longtime SketchUp author Bonnie Roskes has introduced a comprehensive (and rather large) guidebook for teaching in 3D. For middle and high school teachers as well as college and university instructors, SketchUp 2013 Hands-On: Student Coursebook bundles basic and advanced exercises, along with step-by-step modeling guides and over 50 “DIY” projects that can be assigned as homework or classwork. Bonnie’s book also includes an Instructor Guide with all the solutions to these projects (so teachers can become 3D experts in step with their students).

SketchUp 2013 Hands-on -- a teacher's handbook/encyclopedia for teaching in 3D.

SketchUp 2013 Hands-on covers all of SketchUp’s tools and features with illustrated, step-by-step instructions. Need to challenge the more advanced modelers in class? Bonnie also provides an add-on guide to 35 popular SketchUp extensions.

SketchUp 2013 Hands-on clocks in at 505 pages, so there is a handy PDF version (that is much less expensive) and a better choice for students using the book on laptops or tablets. Bonnie can set you up with an evaluation PDF, or help coordinate discounts for bookstore or group orders: just send her a note. Bonnie has been writing about SketchUp for about a decade now, so we can vouch for both her books and her enthusiasm for helping teachers use 3D to connect and engage with students.

Posted by Allyson McDuffie, SketchUp for Education

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Teaching Dynamic Components to the web: a SketchUp summer research project

Hey there. My name is Brandon, and this summer I interned at SketchUp.

I attend the Colorado School of Mines and, as you might guess, I study computer science. Regardless of your major at Mines, all students are required to take a class on drafting. When I was offered a position on the SketchUp team this past spring, I was hesitant to believe I could accomplish anything in three short months. After all, it took me an entire semester to learn another 3D modeling program (which will remain nameless). Thankfully, SketchUp is as easy to use today as it was when I first opened it in middle school.

One of SketchUp’s most powerful feature sets are dynamic components, groups of geometry that have advanced functionality. To use a dynamic component today, you’d download one from the 3D Warehouse (or create it from scratch) and open it in SketchUp before you can change its parametric options. My summer research project was to investigate the feasibility of configuring those parameters from within a browser, before downloading the component to your computer. Another way of looking at it: can we teach a web browser to customize a dynamic component?

Here I am presenting a prototype of my research project to the SketchUp developer team

Last year, we unveiled the SketchUp Showcase which featured the prototype of a web-based model viewer that lets you to rotate and view models in a browser without having to install any additional software. It’s still a prototype, but this viewer offered me a basic way to display a dynamic component online, and then redraw it as parameters changed.

I spent a great deal of time making sure that when an input parameter changed, the browser displayed component transformed just as it would inside SketchUp. To pull this off, I thoroughly investigated how dynamic components work. This involved hours of playing inside SketchUp on my own and bugging numerous engineers for help. Reading through the source code didn’t hurt, either. This allowed me to properly rewrite the dynamic component functionality in JavaScript so that the behavior in a web browser would be consistent for users.

A screenshot of my research project in action: the configurator changes the material in a NanaWall dynamic component, then the component is re-drawn in a web browser

Proving that a web application could configure a SketchUp model was only one part of my research. I also had to investigate how to teach a web browser what a dynamic component is in the first place. You see, what our viewer prototype reads and displays is the geometry contained within a SketchUp file. But dynamic components are more than just geometry; they contain attributes like variable values and formulas.

To close this gap, I used SketchUp’s Ruby API to create an extension that exports the component along with its dynamic properties wrapped up in a separate JavaScipt object. The browser is then able to reunite the geometry from the exported file to its JavaScript counterpart, so the component can be parametrically manipulated. In a way, the extension acts like a moving truck. All the geometry gets packed and sent in one file, while all the attribute data gets sent in another. Everything ends up in the same place, albeit in pieces, and everything works just the same after being reassembled.

My extension exports a dynamic component to the web, packaging its dynamic properties separately so that they can be read by web browsers

This idea of using technologies that require no additional software fits pretty well with SketchUp’s development philosophy, and my research this summer hints at the potential of a SketchUp configurator for the web. For example, components could be viewed and modified on mobile devices, allowing people to share and collaborate more effectively. 3D Warehouse users might be able to manipulate components online, allowing them to find the right modeling asset even faster. Reporting tools could be built in to model viewers, allowing real-time cost analysis, helping designers keep projects on budget and on track.

There were many other highlights from my summer at SketchUp: helping launch SketchUp 2013, learning a ton about LayOut from architects and designers at the AIA National Convention in Denver, and mastering high-tech hardware configurations via our office espresso machine and 3D printer. All in all, I feel pretty lucky to have joined Trimble, and I’m curious to see what’s next from the minds behind SketchUp.

Posted by Brandon Rodriguez, SketchUp Web Intern

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