Blue Marble Project

This article was originally posted at our sister site: the School blog

Welcome to a new series, GreenSketchUpGuide, here in the School blog.  I’m an architect and marketer in the building products industry, have been working closely with Google and School for over two years and have ideas about SketchUp and sustainable design to share with you.  My blog site, GreenDesignGuide.com, covers a broad range of topics for the residential design + building community but this series, GreenSketchUpGuide, will focus on particulars.  For example, why is SketchUp so valuable to designers and the companies trying to communicate with them about sustainable building products and processes?

Let’s turn to a case study that’s been incredibly successful.  In May of 2006, the cofounder of SketchUp software stopped by the Whirlpool Corporation booth at the AIA Architects National Convention.  Google had just purchased SketchUp and they were exploring some big ideas.  He shared their vision for creating an online repository of 3D building products in the Google 3D Warehouse that could be accessed by architects and designers who want to design with specific branded products they can trust.  What’s more, the 3D models would be free to download, easily imported into SketchUp and available for any designer using a CAD program that recognizes the .skp file format.  That’s a big vision and it took a few months to get my head around it.

But we quickly started drawing 3D appliance models in SketchUp to meet Google’s fall launch deadline.  As it turned out only Whirlpool and Marvin Windows met the deadline.  But the online press coverage we received was sensational.  Appliance websites, CAD websites and even financial websites picked up the story.  One industry observer put it this way, “Maybe IKEA, but I never expected a company like Whirlpool to be the first to collaborate with Google in creating 3D visualization solutions for architects and designers.”  I knew we were on to something, I just didn’t know how big it would become.

I visit architecture and design firms often and learned quickly how widely SketchUp was being adopted by the design community… once I started asking the right questions.  Usually I meet with principals and partners of top design firms, established professionals about my age. When I asked them about SketchUp, they pointed to younger designers and recent college grads that introduced SketchUp to their firms.  The principals immediately saw the productivity gains in their design process, the benefits to their business and were on board.

It’s been exciting to see “next gen” architects having this much impact on established design firms.  However, nobody at the time seemed to know about the building product collections in Google 3D Warehouse.  Don’t they have time to keep up with appliance industry press releases?  I mentioned this challenge to my friends at Google and that’s when they introduced me to School!

Sorry, I’m out of words.  Come back next week for more of this exciting case study (Update: Read part 2 of this case study here).

We’ve recently created and posted nearly 50 SketchUp models (and counting) for CertainTeed Restoration Millwork. The CertainTeed collections include trimboards, beadboard, full size sheets, a full line of specialty profiles and an array of accessories. CertainTeed came to us looking for 3D Assets to supplement the PDF version of their product catalog. Each of the models that are uploaded to the warehouse link directly to the online catalog, providing easy access to designers and customers looking to specify CertainTeed products.

President of BMP, Mike Tadros, was interviewed for an article about SketchUp for GigaOM. The Article talks about a bunch of great tools and plugins for Google SketchUp that allow designers to make environmentally responsible decisions more fluidly during the early stages of design. The article cites the work that Blue Marble Project has done, creating 3D models of green building products for Google’s 3D Warehouse, as playing a crucial role in the decision making process for designers who are focused on designing greener buildings.

Click Here to read the full article.

We recently teamed up with the folks at Google.org and Geodynamics (an Australian geothermal energy company), to create a series of informational 3D models and animations that illustrate the process of driling and harvesting for geothermal energy.

You can view the animation and download the models from Google.org’s website. The Models are also available for download from Google’s 3D Warehouse.

For the full run-down on the project, check out this post on our Igloo Studios Inc. Blog.

Sustainable Industries has released their annual supplemental issue - 2008 Top 10 Green Products. Blue Marble Project is proud to have played a role in the creation of this year’s issue by supplying Sustainable Industries with the 3D computer models that were embedded in the downloadable PDF version of the issue. The 3D SketchUp models can also be downloaded from the Google 3D Warehouse.

Google invited Mike Tadros and Alex Oliver to deliver a presentation at the 2008 Google SketchUp 3D Basecamp. The topic was titled ‘Promoting Your Work Using Google Resources.’ The presentation included information about the Google 3D Warehouse, Google SketchUp, and Google Earth. For more detailed information about the presentation that was given, as well as a link to the presentation Slide Deck, check out the posts that we put together for the Igloo Studios, Inc. Blog.

BMP was contracted by Velux America to translate their catalog of stunning skylights into a collection of digital 3D models. Architects and designers are now able to download the skylights for free from the Velux collection available on the Google 3D Warehouse.

Full Velux Press Release

A big congratulations to all of the modelers and photographers putting Los Angeles on the map!