Google SketchUp sold to Trimble

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 […] Read more..

Project #22 in the Daddy Handbook: A Catapult

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 […] Read more..

My Students Model Amherst College in 3D

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

Turner Construction uses my Ruby Code Editor Plugin!

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 […] Read more..

Creating an RBZ Plugin for SketchUp

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: […] Read more..

Maintenance update (M2) for SketchUp 8 released

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 […] Read more..

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My presentations at the Google Geo User Summit 2011 United States

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 […] Read more..