Clongowes Wood College: Pioneers in 3D Ireland project

Clongowes Wood has become the first school in Ireland to receive training in Google Earth geomodelling. We were very impressed by the students of Clongowes earlier this week who showed great tenaciousness to stick with two intense days of SketchUp and Google Earth training. We'll be assisting the students in getting their beautiful college campus onto the Google Earth public layer in 2011. Google Boulder are very interested in, and supportive of this project. More details will be published as the project progresses.. A huge thanks to John Hegarty, Clongowes' ultra-dedicated IT teacher for his great efforts in organising this event!

Clongowes Wood College, Kildare

Clongowes Wood was where James Joyce began his education.

Most popular SketchUp plugins – 2010 Update – by [as]

Alex Schreyer has done a very nice job of putting these plugins together. We will be doing a list of some of our favourites, but in the meantime here they are:

Most popular SketchUp plugins – 2010 Update – by [as]

Streetview comes to Ireland!

¡Olé!

Google made our job of modelling Ireland in 3D a whole lot easier! Now if you guys can get hi-res images of the whole country we would love you even more (we love you a lot already)

Logo Competition for Irish Schools

This is a really nice idea. Google is showing an interest in the talents of Irish schoolgoers by sponsoring a competition to design a new version of their logo. 


"The winning student will have their doodle appear on the Google Ireland homepage for 24 hours.   They will also receive a laptop for themselves and one for their teacher, and their school will receive a €10,000 technology grant!"

Last year's winner 

SketchUp Ireland would love to publish work from any entrants (following winner announcement only!)

Why we need to use SketchUp

This cartoon says it all.... Nice work from Alan here..

3D Basecamp 2010 Report

Colorado is like a blurry dream now. What a great time we had, interesting people we met, and what a place. Boulder is a Western town nestled against the foothills of the Rockies.

Basecamp (imho) was an outstanding success. The atmosphere was buzzing from the minute we walked into the Dairy Centre (funny-named theater space) just down the street from the Google Boulder offices. So many SU faithful were gathered in one place in an atmosphere of sharing for three days (and nights)

We introduced a new video from Corb who this was ranting about CAD- "Computeur Aided Dinosaur" as he calls it...asking why are we still using.... Over the top and inconsiderate as always, here it is.... Thanks to Aidan Chopra for playing it! You're a brave man!

SketchUp 8 was announced at Basecamp!- The big features being solids, solid editing features, and more Google Earth Geomodelling enhancements. It looks pretty interesting- New ways of using SketchUp from a building modeller's perspective. Some people aren't happy with the developments but you can't please everyone. The main point is that SketchUp 8 makes SU a considerably more useful tool than previous releases.

Hello and thanks to all the wonderful people we met. Lets hope we did justice to all the people who wanted and deserved to be there but weren't lucky enough.

SketchUp Ireland is Colorado Bound!

We are looking forward so much to Basecamp 2010 that we have adopted Zen deep breathing exercises to calm down. There are so many people we are going to meet over in Boulder that we have only met via telephone, IM and email it's crazy....

Alan and I did meet Aidan Chopra in Dublin in November last year and are very much looking forward to meeting Aidan again. Also really looking forward to meeting fellow Irishman Mike Lucey of SketchUcation and The Daily CatchUp (who only lives two counties away and whom we've never met in person.)

Its going to be "awesome dude" (....as they say in America.... so I believe..) Don't worry, we'll have a report on the proceedings on our return... presuming that we actually manage to catch the plane back from Denver....

Irish Architects' Institute endorses SketchUp Training!

Viewsion are proud to announce that we are now empowered to provide CPD points to RIAI Members and Technicians attending our SketchUp Essentials 1 training sessions. We are running Google SketchUp Essentials 1 in Dublin 28th July, SketchUp AEC Dublin 4th August, Essentials 1 in Cork on 11th August, in Galway on 25th August. Also SketchUp AEC in Cork on 18th August.

We also provide in-house training all around Ireland. We look forward to bringing expert SketchUp training to a venue near you soon...

Official Google SketchUp Blog: SketchUp Pro Case Study: Tropman & Tropman Architects

Official Google SketchUp Blog: SketchUp Pro Case Study: Tropman & Tropman Architects

SketchUp: A Natural BIM Platform

I was hoping to hear Google say it first..... but: 

Google is the best placed company to help create a true Open Standard for BIM*

Why is this?....

• It is obvious that Google doesn't have a problem about sharing this platform with anyone else. SketchUp is free after all...

• SketchUp is already a parametric platform... Check out Dynamic Components

• Interoperability with Google Earth (or any current or future equivalent public platform) is of fundamental importance for any self-respecting BIM package.

• Google is quite good at writing code... ; )

• Other BIM software vendors, (who have some very good products by the way) are operating on antique business and revenue models that seem to ignore the fact that the internet has arrived.

• BIM is in danger of hitting a dead-end without a strong champion to make Open Standards work.

• Google isn't scared of Free Platforms while traditional software vendors are. Just look at Google Apps v Microsoft Office.

• Aspire Architecture is already using SketchUp as a standalone BIM/ CAD tool on successfully completed projects up to €850,000 and is currently working on a €1.5 million project using the same approach.

• Viewsion has written a training course that shows how SketchUp is used for creating Construction Documents.

• There are already platforms available for: Construction Sequencing, Energy Analysis, Acoustic Performance Cost Analysis (Andrew Dwight of Aadbuild) is writing a plugin for cost analysis which we're looking forward to finding out more about.)

• The American Institute of Architects is evidently unimpressed with efforts to create a truly Open BIM Standard thus far.

Google- Its time to take on this challenge.... (please!)

*Its not too late for AutoDesk, Graphisoft, Bentley, Nemetschek and others to get on board... If you have the best platform (like you say you have) then you shouldn't be afraid of opening it up... 

Bonnie Roske's Blog

Bonnie Roskes is an admirable SketchUp contributor who concentrates on education in SketchUp. Her latest blog post is on the "Weld" plugin is one of our favorite, most useful tools.

Bonnie Lassie

Bonnie provides resource packs for schools that want to leverage the power of SketchUp for all kinds of applications.

SketchUp Trainings 3: Fredoscale

Well Charles Edouard does it again. More training from the Master Grouch. This short and sweet video illustrates one impressive aspect of the Fredoscale Plugin- a truly excellent piece of software.



Charles has asked us to encourage you to forward this video to your friends on twitter, facebook, buzz, etc. Please just humor the guy... He's really intense and it would help calm his nerves. Thanks.

Le SketchUp Trainings Deux: Decreasing Model Size

Charles Edouard gives feedback about a student's model that keeps crashing. Charles provides no-holds-barred, but precise feedback about what the problem was with the model and "'ow to fix eet".



Thanks for all the great feedback on Charles' first offering. Please come back for more!

Le Corbusier teaches SketchUp

Many of you will already know Charles Edouard. You will have seen many of his works in architecture school. Few have had the distinct pleasure of meeting him. Viewsion is very proud to bring you rare recordings by the very man 'imself.

With no further ado, here is Charles Edouard with some thoughts about SketchUp....


Complaints please to info@viewsion.ie

Enjoy!

Bing Maps: Wow

Bing Maps is making some really incredible advances with augmented reality. Check out this video by Blaise Aguera y Arcas at TED Talks.

(Thanks to Niall Martin of Compu b in Cork City for sending the link)



Before you check out this next video on "Photosynth" make sure you have newspapers spread out around the room to clean up after your mind explodes...



Some people question the usefulness of this technology.. That fact is even more mind-boggling.. This technology could make Google Earth modelling easier by allowing photos to be synthesised... Some lessons there for Google... ;)

Keeping your model on the straight and narrow.

Have you ever been frustrated with SketchUp enough to call it all sorts of names you couldn't repeat in polite company? Go on, admit it... We've all been there.

One of the biggest problems people come across is when you are doing a model that needs to be straight, right angled (orthogonal) like a building or product etc. It is so easy to draw a line out of place and end up with a model that looks right but the push-pull tool just won't work for you. SketchUp is quite unforgiving when the lines are not straight or co-planar.

A great way of pre-empting this problem is to use the "colour by axis" line setting in the Styles browser.

From SketchUp Tips

Save this setting in a Style (call it "axis" style and save this in your drawing template- better again, save this style into a scene called "axis" that has the "include in animation" button switched off.... This turns the scene button into a kind of reset button for the axis.)

SketchUp for Construction Drawings

A few weeks ago, we achieved geek world fame by being featured on SketchUpdate blog in relation to construction drawings in SketchUp. Now we have uploaded the second of two videos about the topic. This second one illustrates more the technique of creating construction information in the SketchUp model.



We hope to start getting more active with useful and interesting videos this year. Stay tuned!..

Open Architecture Training Resources Comes to the InterWeb

Nicole Adams of Construction Management Degree sent us a link to their "50 Excellent Open Courses For Architecture Enthusiasts" blog entry. What an eye opener, with MIT Open Courses For Architecture Enthusiasts, which includes an "Introduction to Building Technology"

This is just the kind of thing we need to happen more and more- opening up of information to students and the public. Good job!

MIT Open Course Ware

Problems Explaining Scale

It can often be difficult to explain scale to clients. This Father Ted clip does the job.



Sheer brilliance...

Are Builders showing Architects how to do their job?

Kimon G. Onuma, AIA has written a very interesting article about how architects as a profession are in danger of making themselves more irrelevant by ignoring the very real development of Building Information Modelling (BIM) as the new paradigm for delivering buildings. Kimon argues that the opportunity is there now to take the initiative to regain control of the building process. Some of the things that need to be done to take on this challenge:

• Take control of the emerging technologies- i.e  tell the technologies "This is what I want from you." rather than asking them "What can I have? (like we did for years with CAD)
• Not waiting for the software companies to feed us with new technologies.
• Leveraging the new technologies to organise the various parties involved in the building process .(before those parties organise the architects.)

Master Builder: William Burges Architect of St. Finbarre's Cathedral, Cork

Kimon rightly argues in my view, that BIM is not about depending on one piece of software or another or even treating the smart 3D digital model as the definition of BIM, but its about grappling with the various Information Technologies as they are now and how they will be in the future so that we are in step with them. He finishes with a blackly humorous quotation by Stuart Brand: “Once a new technology rolls over you, if you're not part of the steamroller, you're part of the road. “

Common Mistakes in SketchUp

This site has some great little tutorials about avoiding problems in SketchUp especially with the early stages (I must admit to having learned some new stuff from this also, but that's to be expected really.) Also included are some tutorials about creating a football and others. Thanks to J-man for this!

Paracloud Gem Software: Awesome and Groovy

Few things can be referred to as "awesome" and "groovy" at the same time. Gem Paracloud, a 3D multi-component generator is just such a product. Viewsion spoke with Eyal Nir, founder last week and he took us through a test-drive of the software. The possibilities that Gem produces are endless: from artwork and jewellery (yes, jewellery) to building cladding systems to lattice structures.




Gem exports neatly to SketchUp and other formats such as Maya, 3DSmax, Rhino and any CAD supporting OBJ, STL and DXF. There is a free trial download available