SketchUp 7.1 has landed!

Yayyy!!! A new version! Software updates are always exciting… New features are to be explored, new capabilities exploited for as-yet unknown projects. Contrary to Autodesk’s religious update schedule, Google has been only somewhat regular in providing updates. But alas, announced by today’s blog post by John Bacus, SketchUp’s project manager, the new version of SketchUp […] Read more..

Hot 3D (SketchUp) models

Oh, dear – maybe the title goes a bit too far. It’s not about what you may think this is about… This really is about combining temperature and virtual 3D models of buildings. Click on the image below to get an idea of what I mean. For this project I took a lot of thermography […] Read more..

SketchUp to Revit to Solar Study

Expanding on yesterday’s post, I wanted to try out how I could take a building shell model that I originally created in SketchUp, take it into Revit 2010 and run a solar analysis on it using Autodesk’s new Solar Radiation Technology Preview for Revit Architecture and Revit MEP (download it from Autodesk Labs). And guess […] Read more..

SketchUp does MTV (or rather MuchMusic)…

Just when I thought using SketchUp for presentations was a clever idea someone came along and really stepped it up a notch… Dave Righton from the Canadian one-man-band Roche Limit just produced an entire music video using the software. Amazing work and pretty good timing given that SketchUp lacks the timeline editor of some other […] Read more..

Revit design whitepaper and new 3D Warehouse rules

Two interesting news items: CASE architects have developed an interesting whitepaper for Autodesk that illustrates nicely the conceptual design process in Revit 2010. In this paper, a highrise development is taken from the conceptual stage through some Ecotect solar analysis all the way to facade panelization using the new Revit tools. You can download the […] Read more..

Shells and tension structures

Shells and tension structures (cable nets or fabrics) are beautiful structural elements that provide a very lightweight organic shape with a visually clear structural language. When it comes to creating these, however, specialized tools are required since the underlying math is anything but trivial. If you want to work with shells or tension structures, try […] Read more..

Interactive 3D Visualization of Building Envelope Systems Using Infrared Thermography and SketchUp

This project explored the application of the visualization capabilities of Infrared Thermography in conjunction with three-dimensional models of buildings. Three-dimensional modeling is a powerful tool for visualizing and representing building conditions that is used by architects, builders, and contractors. Also, a three-dimensional model is better understandable than a more abstract two-dimensional representation (like a floor plan or an image).