With all the hullabaloo about Personal Fabrication lately, scads of committed SketchUp modelers are getting very excited about turning their digital models into honest-to-goodness, physical things. The idea is thrilling, but the process of actually going "from idea to object" can be intimidating. The PF train is just leaving the station, but with a little bit of help, anyone who knows their way around SketchUp can climb aboard. I promise.
Add standard and customized parametric components - like flange beams, lumbers, piping and more - to your Google SketchUp model by using sketchup.engineeringtoolbox.com.
This page documents how to use Google SketchUp to create 3D models suitable for fabrication. These instructions should work on both the Windows and Mac OS X versions of SketchUp.
People use Google SketchUp for all sorts of things. One of them is geo-modeling - making photo-textured models of real-life buildings that appear in Google Earth. For some, geo-modeling is a hobby; they get a kick out of building something that provides a real benefit to the people in their community. Local geo-modelers are the unsung heroes of the virtual world - no longer.