Ever been inside your SketchUp model and wished you could see a wider-angle view? All you have to do is set your field of view (FOV):
Select the Zoom tool by pressing Z on your keyboard.
Type in an angle (in degrees) that represents how wide you’d like your view to be, and press Enter — this is your field of view. For a 45 degree FOV, you’d type 45deg. The larger the angle, the more you’ll be able to see. SketchUp’s default FOV is 35 degrees, but 60 degrees is much handier for interior views.
If you’re into photography, you might like to know that you can also express your FOV as a focal length, in mm. For example, you’d enter a 28mm focal length by typing 28mm (instead of deg after the number). Keep in mind that smaller numbers (like 18mm) yield wider fields of view, while larger numbers (like 300mm) result in very narrow ones.
A while ago, I was asked to participate in a SketchUp workshop for 4th, 5th, and 6th graders at my niece’s elementary school in Manchester By The Sea, Massachusetts. The students used SketchUp to design a 30 foot x 100 foot addition to their school, with the aim of attaching the library structure to the rest of the building. They could either start from scratch or from a model of the existing structures that their teacher, Mr. Clark, had created. It was really interesting to see what these kids came up with. And I got to be the “cool aunt” for a day!
Tasha was cruising along the information superhighway when she happened upon a design competition that readers of this blog might find interesting: It’s called “How Green Are You?”, and it’s being co-sponsored by Dwell and the AIA. They’re looking for examples of “green or sustainable” architecture that they can feature on the Contest Entries section of Dwell’s website.
In case you missed it, we ran an informal little “green” competition of our own last October — check out the winning submissions if you’re so inclined.
Posted by Simone Nicolo, QA Engineer & Friend of Nature
A whole bunch of us headed over to Sawhill Ponds (just East of Boulder) to help out Volunteers for Outdoor Colorado with a project we conceived and created together. We spent the afternoon clearing an acre of invasive thistles and planting more that 350 cottonwood trees along the banks of one of the ponds. All told, about 40 Googlers from the Boulder and Denver offices (joined by friends and family, and members of Americorps) celebrated Earth Day by pitching in.
The ponds themselves are the result of gravel mining; since that ceased about 30 years ago, the pits that were left filled up with groundwater. These days, the area is a wetland habitat for many species of wildlife. The cottonwood trees that we planted, once grown, will provide shade that will help keep the water cool. This is turn will reduce the growth of things like non-native Eurasian water milfoil and green algae, and discourage the growth of invasive plant species that need full sunlight to thrive.
In the photos above, you can see that it looks like we were planting sticks. We were — sort of. Cottonwood trees can be planted by burying cut branches from mature trees that have been placed in water to develop roots. Who knew?
Just in case you hadn’t heard, we released Google Earth 4.3 a few weeks ago. The new version includes (among other things) tens of thousands of photo-textured 3D models of buildings, bridges and other structures. We’ve improved performance, so thoroughly-modeled cities like San Francisco and Munich “pop” into view much faster than they did in the previous version of Google Earth — you really need to see it for yourself.
Many of you have created 3D building models for Google Earth and published them to the 3D Warehouse. Google Earth 4.3 includes the best of these models, plus additional ones that we created and even more that were contributed to Google by cities and towns around the world.
Antics is user-friendly 3D animation software for pre-visualization, machinima, education, simulation, training and a host of other things. It lets you create movies with models that you can animate to move around inside your scenes; you can even “film” the action with an infinite number of cameras that you set up. Antics is super-cool, and (like SketchUp) comes in both “free” and “pro” flavors. You can download both at the Antics website.
Even cooler (from my perspective) is the fact that the latest version of Antics features an embedded Google 3D Warehouse browser that can serve up a steady stream of models for your movies. Antics also supports direct import of SketchUp files in .skp format, which means you can build stuff in SketchUp and animate it in Antics. This Tips & Tricks forum on their website provides more information, and the following video provides a taste of what you can do.
If you’re brand new to SketchUp, one of the first thing you’ll notice is that your “walls” are paper-thin. Consider what happens when you build the following:
Deleting the top face (step 3) of a form you’ve push/pulled into existence results in super-thin, single-surface walls. That’s fine if you’re building Japanese shōji, but for many applications, you’ll want to model your walls with a thickness. The easiest way to go about doing this is to use the Offset tool. You can activate it by choosing Tools > Offset from the menu bar or by clicking on its tool icon. If you haven’t set up your own keyboard shortcuts yet, you can switch to the Offset tool by pressing F on your keyboard.
Here’s how to use Offset to create walls that look thick:
Start with any face in your SketchUp model.
Activate the Offset tool (choose one of the methods listed above for doing so).
Click once on your face (the one in your model).
Move your mouse (don’t drag) toward the center of your face.
Click again when the offset edges you’re creating are the right distance from the original perimeter of your face.
If you want to be precise, type an offset distance (such as 6in or 15cm) on your keyboard and press Enter (This Help Center article has more information about entering precise dimensions in SketchUp, as does this video).
Switch to the Push/Pull tool by pressing P on your keyboard.
Click between the two sets of edges on your face to push/pull it into a 3D form.
Click again to stop push/pulling.
Want to learn more about Offset? Check out this video.
SketchUpdate 