Make 3D Models Easily With Google SketchUp And Awaken Your Creative Gene
Written on September 19, 2009 by Kay
Introducing Google SketchUp
If you know nil about CAD creation but would like to quickly throw together 3D modeling objects for fun, then Google SketchUp may be right up your alley. Google SketchUp is a quick and nimble 3D modeling program that you can use to construct a virtual neighborhood to drop into Google Maps, or to get a feeling about how your new kitchen, complete with new cabinets, will look like after it’s completed. One of the cool features of Google SketchUp is that it allows you to publish your 3D masterpieces on-line for public consumption, and you can grab any public model out there and drop it directly into your design for some added spice. If you’re a professional CAD aficionado then SketchUp might feel a little bare-bones for your needs, but this modeling application from Google is great if you just want to dabble in 3D design for fun.
SketchUp’s GUI gets out of your way, so you can get designing asap. Most users pick up the basics of SketchUp within minutes of using it. A central canvas is joined by a tool-bar that houses the most commonly used icons needed to create your model; the rest of SketchUp’s features can be accessed from the main menu bar on top. This sparse interface setup allows you to maximize your drawing real estate, but if you’re used to Photoshop’s or Illustrator’s many floating docks, you can float your tool-bars (Construction, Camera, Drawing, et al.) as well, a very convenient feature.
The ease-of-use is one of Google’s SketchUp’s strong points; right out-of-the-box it’s easy to grasp. Drag your mouse’s pointer around to render circles, rectangles, or any other shape your design requires, then take hold of the Push/Pull tool to inflate your shapes from 2D to 3D. Not only is SketchUp very easy to work with, but it’s also very smart, as it’s able to guess what you mean to draw. For example, drawing lines with the pencil tool will cause SketchUp to venture a guess about where you intend the endpoints of the lines to meet, joining them together for you; most of the time SketchUp’s educated guesses are correct.
The Paint Bucket lets you color in your models from a pool of more than 100 swatches (glass, metal, vegetation, etc), which enables you to realistically color in a brick wall, concrete, and other textures. Shadow effects can also be applied to give a sky or a structure that casts a shadow a real-life semblance. After you’re finished with your 3D model, you can then display it transparently to get a better view of its internals, or you can take a rotating tour of it to see it from all angles, inspecting its geometry within seconds, a feat that’s next to impossible to do in the real world. Above, I mentioned that Google SketchUp is intelligent enough to guess when to snap together your end points, well, it’s also smart enough to guess your other intentions. For instance, import a piece of 2D artwork inside of your house design, and SketchUp will position it in perspective, allowing you to mount it on a wall in your design, as it it were a picture to hang, a very cool and clever feature.
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The beauty of Google SketchUp is in the community. Once you’ve finished creating your model, SketchUp gives you the option of publishing to Google’s 3D Warehouse, a repository that affords users unlimited storage for their models. You can then grab other users’ models and place them directly into your models so you don’t have to reinvent the wheel each time. What’s more, Google SketchUp can integrate with Google Earth, allowing you to drop your 3D model inside Earth’s satellite photos and e-mail them to your friends.
If you need help using SketchUp, Google offers tutorial videos and a detailed knowledge base populated with the most commonly asked questions. Google SketchUp is free, but professional users may want to upgrade to the pay version for more powerful features, which is priced at a steep $500 USD. Google SketchUp’s ease-of-use, plethora of design tools, and clean interface makes this application an ideal solution to 3D modeling.
Hi, I enjoyed this review and am glad to see the positive reception for SketchUp as it is a great tool. One important correction is that SketchUp, as well as being a fun drawing tool is also a heavy-duty piece of software and as a professional architect I have ditched CAD completely to produce all my construction drawings using SketchUp Pro (SU Pro includes LayOut, a presentation tool for SketchUp that works with scales, notes, etc. to produce super-powered CAD drawings in colour.)
The $500 price, though I would be just as happy as anyone else if it were lower, needs to be put in context: The kind of software that it takes to produce what I am producing in SketchUp costs about $8,000- thats before you add training and annual licensing fees. (No, I didn’t make a mistake: that’s $8,000!) Compare $8,000 to $500….
I represent http://www.viewsion.ie, a SketchUp training company and we are the only company in the world to show architects and engineers how to use SketchUp to produce the drawings as mentioned above. My architecture practise is http://www.aspirearchitecture.com and it is entirely SketchUp-powered. Viewsion saves people lots of time and money… check us out!