The other day I had to do a quick office design in Sketchup. Its not the most exciting design, but I had to put it together to decide where blocking and electrical were going to go. After I put the design together, I realized that with the wood floors, and the spartan walls the office would probably have a significant echo to it. I decided to quell potential echo, I could put some interesting looking carpet on the wall, and on the floor.

You could fairly easily make your own carpet in Sketchup, either using built in textures, or your nearest digital camera to create a new one. But what's easier then just typing in "Carpet" into your 3D warehouse search and downloading one?

Oh, and don't worry, I was thinking a cool looking carpet, not some crazy shag carpet like this one:

Below is the carpet I selected. I was able to find this in Sketchup, right in the 3D Warehouse. Design Within Reach has a lot of carpets on the 3D warehouse already. Its easy to browse through them, select the one you want based on size and pattern, and then place it right in your model. The nice part is that these models are made properly, so they automatically "stick" to the floor so that you don't have to mess about with rotating them and placing them in place.

So in a few clicks, I was able to find my carpet. Not only did I find one, this one actually exists. The model is the correct dimensions so I can see if it fits. If my customer wants to purchase this carpet because they saw it in my design, I can simply right click on it, and browse its options to see a link to the products website. This particular model actually has pricing right in it!

So there you go, just another reason that Sketchup can not only save you time on the design end, but also on your research as well.