Blue Marble Project - Implementing SketchUp 7 Dynamic Components
Over the last year, we’ve had the good fortune to be members of the Google SketchUp 7 alpha testing group. Today, Google announced the public release of Google SketchUp Version 7, and with it, a highly anticipated functionality known as Dynamic Components. We’d like to share some thoughts and ideas behind why we think Dynamic Components are a big deal, especially for product manufacturers.
Dynamic Components allow you to create configurable SketchUp components. For example, say your company has a product catalog of doors. Those doors are probably available in a variety of sizes, materials, and styles. Well, in SketchUp 7, Dynamic Components allow you to program a single SketchUp door with hundreds or even thousands of options so that a SketchUp user can configure that door’s shape, size and material using a few drop-down menus within SketchUp. To paraphrase: Companies like Marvin can now create one SketchUp model of a particular door type that represents hundreds of variations of the door.
This is a really big deal. Previously, companies had to create, upload and manage thousands of models that each represented an individual, configured option. If they hired us for the task, that meant that we had to spend quite a bit of time to create 3D product catalogs. Now, however, we can convert entire catalogs nearly 10x faster resulting in faster turn around times and much lower costs.
As we mentioned earlier, these Dynamic Components are brand new. To learn more about their functionality, check out the videos below as well as the info page on the Google SketchUp website.
If you are interested in a live demo, we’d be glad to show you how Dynamic Components can be used by your company to drive sales and leads for your products. Contact us anytime to set up a meeting.