The Wild Wild 3D West

One of the things that makes Sketchup such a fast modeling tool is the 3D Warehouse. The 3D Warehouse is an online repository where anyone can upload and share their 3D models with anyone in the world. This makes Sketchup an even faster modeler, because sometimes it's just quicker to download a model then make it yourself!

Right now the 3D Warehouse is like the wild wild west. Anyone can post content to the 3D warehouse. From large companies to Hot Pocket fueled basement dwelling teenagers. This makes what you can find in the 3D warehouse a bit of a mixed bag. Here is some photographic evidence of the problem. (Note that my kitchen IS drawn to scale here)

This was the top hit for the search "Plate"

This was the top hit for the search "knife"

This was the top hit for the search "coffee maker"

As you can see, a LOT of these models aren't drawn to scale. That doesn't mean they aren't usuable though! A simple use of the scale tool will solve that.

Now, what you have seen so far are amateur efforts at creating models. Honestly, there are some great amateur attempts out there. The biggest mistake made is not drawing things to scale. Using the scale tool fixes this really quickly. If you can get over that, there is a lot of great stuff out there.

But what about real products, ones that are guaranteed to work, and are models of actual things that you might specify? Well a lot of companies have stepped up and created some wonderful models that I use on a daily basis.

Here are some links to some notables (in no particular order)

Brizo Faucets

These are great models. Contained in each model is a wealth of information. See this post to learn more.

Kraftmaid Cabinetry

This is a great collection of cabinets. What's nice is not only do they make the individual cabinet models, they also make available displays and other designers projects for download. It may look a little overwhelming when you first see this collection, but it's full of great models that you can download and explore. Use them for inspiration on your next project!

Jenn Air

I don't sell appliances, so unless I am trying to find the exact model a customer has, I use these. Why do I use these? This is the biggest collection of models of appliances on the 3D warehouse. They all match each other, and they are organized very well. Jenn Air is trying to get designer "Mind Share" by making these models really easy to use, and its worked!

I maintain a list of products that I think are great models. These are ones that I use frequently. Click here to see all of my collections.

If you are signed into Google when you go to these, you can add my collections to your collections. What's nice about this is that when I update my collections yours will be updated too. Not only do you not have to model, but you can let me maintain your collections as well!

Happy Sketching!

Sinks of Steel on Kitchens.com!

I spend a fair amount of my time on social media. With this, comes reading a log of blogs. I even occasionally take a spin by Kitchens.com to see what is happening there.

The other day, Kitchens.com unveiled a new initiative: To feature designs, and styles that real people can actually afford! I think this is great, and I think that the styles that they have come with are quite good!

Aside from liking these kitchens, and the idea that they are affordable, my keen eye spotted something: These are all Sketchup models! Since I am a big Sketchup and kitchen design geek, I am always sourcing components from Sketchup's 3D warehouse. In fact, you can see my frequently used products here.

I picked these three images specifically because of the sinks. A while back, I created some stainless steel sink models that I shared in an old blog post.

If you look closely, you can see these sinks are featured in these models!

Now, obviously, these pictures aren't straight out of Sketchup, they are rendered using a 3rd party post processor. I contacted Kitchens.com via Twitter and they responded that these were in fact all Sketchup models, and that the rendering had been done in 3D Studio Max.

Brizo in NYC at Fashion Week

A few weeks ago, Brizo generously invited a group of prominent kitchen and bath bloggers out to New York city for a design challenge and a Brizo learning session. (At least Brizo said we were "prominent"!)

After taking some classes on Brizo product, the room full of us was each tasked with coming up with a design pitch for a bathroom in the giant space we were given.  This space was GIANT!  It doesn't look that bad in the pictures, but the ceilings were 156" tall, so that should give you an idea of the scale of this bathroom.  Coincidently, this bathroom does exist in real life.

Underneath Park Avenue, in a conference room we were each given ten minutes to come with a pitch for a bathroom idea.  We were then given one minute to stand up and present our ideas in front of the room.  Some of us just had idea's, other folks did some great sketches.

Not a bad sketch for ten minutes huh?  I wish I could take credit for it.  Mine looked more like the doodles of someone who was just trying to run the pen out of ink.  After we presented our ideas, the top four were selected.  We broke into a team for each idea and proceeded to hash out our plan.  The eventual goal after an hour was too get our designs into the Sketchup model for judging later.

Everyone got into their designs, the hour flew by.  We were granted extra time, as apparently fashion shows don't ever start on time.  The Jason Wu show we were supposed to see after the contest was no exception.

So after the designs were submitted, most of us took off via Brizo limo for the Showtime house.  The Showtime house is a penthouse high above New York City that is filled with rooms that are designed by famous designers.  They were all themed after a Showtime television show.  I got a few pictures, but the website has much better ones!  Check out the website for a full tour.

So between the fashion show, and the after party, our Sketchup models were cleaned up and readied for judging.

From what I understand there is going to be some sort of official announcement from Brizo on the winners, so I won't spoil the fun for them.  Of the four, which one would you have picked?

A table, the dynamic way

Hey folks, I just wanted to share this little gem I found in the 3D Warehouse with you...

A lot of times in kitchen design, the kitchen table plays a big part in the design.  I find myself often placing one in my designs. They are pain to draw, and its hard sometimes to find the right size one on the 3D Warehouse.

No more though!  With the advent of Dynamic Components, we can use one table for whatever we need in terms of size!

If you search for "dc table google" in the 3D Warehouse you'll come across one that looks like this:

There is more then meets the eye with the table.  Its dynamic, that means you have choices.

If you use the scale tool on this table, and stretch it out, it automagically gets longer without getting distorted, and it will throw in the correct amount of chairs.

If you right click on the table, and select the menu called "Dynamic Components" and then "Component Options" You are exposed to a menu that shows several different options for the table.  You can change the color of the cushions. You can select if you want the chairs at random angles, or if you have a touch of OCD, you can have them lined up perfectly.  

You can even use the "Interact" tool to hide certain chairs.

You can even make the largest table in the world with just using your scale tool. (You may want to NOT do this if you are using an underpowered machine!)

This table is really useful, and I use it all the time.  Its so easy to scale it to the size that you need, it sure beats drawing something from scratch.  Check out this great DC to save you time on your next design!

Basecamp 2010

I have talked a bit in the past about how it's getting cooler and cooler to be a geek these days. Some of the richest people on the planet are geeks! There are lots of "Geek" conventions around, like this one, or this one. (For the record, I am not interested in either!) But for us Sketchup Geeks there is nothing better than Basecamp.

Google graciously invited 250 of the world's greatest Sketchup users to come to their campus in Boulder Colorado. There were people from literally all sides of the planet. I personally met attendees from Australia, Croatia, Hungary, France, and the UK. I know there were more world travelers there as well.

I have been to Google before, and if there is one thing Google is good at, besides just about everything on the internet, it's how to take care of its guests. Besides all the great food they serve, these events are hosted in an extremely fun, unconventional way. This wasn't a conference, it was an "unconference". To some of you this sounds like a disaster in the making, but trust me on this folks, this was the richest, most immersive conference I've been too. If you follow this blog, you'll know of my conference credentials.

Before we got seated for the keynote address, you already could tell that this was going to be fun, I mean, look at the stage where we were set to have our conference:

No, your eyes aren't deceiving you. Those are campsites that are set up on the stage. This is where we were set to have our "unconference" sessions.

Aidan Chopra and John Bacus gave an entertaining keynote address to the attendees where they launched Sketchup 8 to the world! The keynote was interactive, we were able to talk and ask questions. It wasn't just Aidan shouting at us through a bull horn! They went over all of the new features of Sketchup 8. There was some great stuff to see. One fact that stood out for me is that Sketchup gets 1 million uses a week. This is unique uses. Think about that for a second, 1 million unique people, per week, are using Sketchup.

Alright, now I know you have all been on the edge of your seats waiting to hear what an "unconference" is. Besides being a procrastinator's dream, I think it's the most organic way to run a conference. With all of us in the room, we were handed sticky notes and pens and asked to write down an idea that we wanted to present. After we wrote something down, we stepped up to the mic, or bull horn and spoke, or shouted our idea. We then slapped our idea on a giant marker board with time slots.

After we put our ideas up, the Googlers organized them into schedule. We all poured over it and picked the sessions that we wanted to see, and headed off to separate rooms.

If you haven't already figured it out, there is a camping theme going on here. I like how they did this. It kept everything light and humorous. Even though each session had a presenter, it usually turned into a discussion of the topic at hand. The atmosphere made everyone feel comfortable engaging one another. It definitely made for an organic experience no matter what the size of the session.

The next day, after feeding us well (as Google always does) we had the opportunity to attend some presentations by different companies. There were a lot of rendering plugins that were shown. I attended a session by Shaderlight. Shaderlight has a rendering plugin for Sketchup, that even in its infancy, is showing great promise. As I have said before, I always thought rendering was for a different breed of computer user. Seeing this plugin has shifted my paradigm as far as how easy it can be to render in Sketchup.

Shaderlight's Render presentation

This is a kitchen that was rendered by Shaderlight. I have seen renderings this good before, but what had me in disbelief was the Shaderlight folks telling me that I could render this kitchen in minutes. I challenged them with one of my own Sketchup models, and they pulled it off. (More on this in the future)

So on day three, we all ended up back in the auditorium for a little Q &A with the Sketchup team. During the sessions, Google put a huge marker board up where we could all write ideas down that we want to see implemented in Sketchup. They were all put on a list, and we went through each one. Google offered up comments and suggestions, and engaged the crowd to find out exactly what the thought behind each idea was. The marker board was eventually retyped and put up on the giant screen where we were able to discuss, and vote on new feature ideas. The size of the text was determined but the loudness of the applause!

The Google team actually cares what its users think, and it showed on this last day. Not only did we, the users, get to make this list, we were able to discuss it in a open forum with the programmers from Google. They were able to give a lot of insight into how they choose what they are going to add to Sketchup with each release. I learned it's an exceedingly tricky process to add even the smallest features to a program that is used by so many people in so many different parts of the world in just about every profession that exists.

I feel privileged to be able to attend this event. The Googlers worked so hard to pull it off, and pull it off they did. The event went like clock work, and was the most enjoyable conference I have attended. Google worked tirelessly to finish Sketchup 8 and release it during Basecamp. I talked with a few of the Google programmers that worked 20 straight hours compiling code to get it ready for release. Not only did they do that, but they spent the following three days from morning to night working the conference.

A big thank you to Google for the incredible release, and the incredible conference!