As announced today, Google has sold their widely popular 3D modeling application, SketchUp, to Trimble, a company that focuses on GPS- and heavy-construction hardware and software (for example, the steel and concrete BIM software Tekla belongs to Trimble). This is a very interesting and at least on the surface quite appropriate move. After all, SketchUp [...]

Because she saw one at her school’s science fair, last week our youngest daughter asked me to help her build a catapult. Feeling intrigued by the idea of putting together something that shoots something else but not wanting to go overboard (you never know what kids do with these), I came up with this design. As [...]

BCT Students in my BCT 420 and ECO 697SB classes just finished modeling 30+ buildings at Amherst College in 3D. Once approved by Google, those will appear in the official “3D Buildings” layer in Google Earth. Follow the link below to watch a video or download the KMZ file for Google Earth: http://blogs.umass.edu/bct420-schreyer/student-work/amherst-college-in-3d

I just noticed something familiar in the images in Google’s latest blog post on the Turner Construction SketchUp Pro casestudy: That window in the right side of the screen is of course my Ruby Code Editor plugin! Great to see it put to such good use. Google’s post shows nicely how Turner uses SketchUp Pro [...]

The following is a cross-post from my other site http://sketchupplugins.com. When you are done creating your new plugin, feel free to add it to the index on http://sketchupplugins.com. It’s free and easy. Learn Plugin Developement There are many tutorials, resources and forums available online that will help you get started. Use the following list as a springboard: [...]

If you are using SketchUp, then it’s time for you to soon browse over to Google’s website and download the latest version (v.8 M2). Although this release is not a new version but rather a maintenance release (hence the “M2″), there are a few new features and a bunch of bugfixes. So what’s new and [...]

When I went to the 2011 Google Geo User Summit United States in Mountain View, CA this July, I had the chance to present two projects that I have worked on in the recent past here at the University of Massachusetts. “Building a 3D World” The first presentation was on our campus modeling project in [...]

While I am semi-comfortably seated on my United Airlines flight and traversing all three North-American time zones on my way back to Massachusetts, it’s time to recap what happened at the 2011 Google Geo User Summit United States over the last two and a half days*. Overall summary: Wow, was that ever great fun!!! If [...]

Please upgrade your browser One of the greatest benefits of having a 3D modeler like SketchUp is that creating and sharing explorable representations of real-world objects is extremely easy. It was therefore just a matter of time before Osama bin Laden’s hideout in Abbottabad appeared on Google Earth. So before the real building gets taken [...]

Please upgrade your browser SketchUp QR from Alexander Schreyer on Vimeo. As you may have noticed, I have been experimenting with QR codes lately. There’s just so much fun you can have with these little black-and-white icons. For your Friday enjoyment, here is a list of where I have used them so far: 3D QR [...]