Google Announces The winner of Ponoko Challenge and Geo Super Modeler

In this season of Christmas SketchUp transform itself to Santa Clause… rather 3D Santa. It brings happiness to the faces of Ed Lewis and Huang Chung-Tang (a.k.a Tang). They are the new winner in two different competitions arranged by Google SketchUp.

Ed Lewis is the winner of Google SketchUp and Ponoko 3D printing competition and Tang is the new Supermodeler for the November month.

Ed Lewis, aka Fungus Amungus, who created an all-around fantastic Instructable for using Google SketchUp with Ponoko 3D printing to win the Google + Ponoko Challenge. The prize package of this competition includes worth $1,500 and includes a Google SketchUp Pro license, a 12 month subscription to Ponoko Prime, plus a $537 Ponoko digital making voucher.

In the Instructable, Lewis walks you through 7 easy steps to go from a simple cube in SketchUp to a 3D printed, level-3 Menger sponge.

In an interview after winning the competition Lewis said about SketchUp; “I like that I can quickly jump in and get a 3D rendering of an idea out in a few minutes. For getting an idea across to someone, it often takes less time to make a model than it does to describe it verbally. You can quickly move on to the stage where you’re trying out several different variations, which is great because that’s the fun stuff. I’ve tried a couple of other 3D programs and they’re pretty amazing, but for my purposes SketchUp is my goto program. Having a free version means I can share ideas with anyone else in the world. I can push a project as far as I want to, put up the file, and then see someone else take it even further. That’s awesome.”

In another competition announced in November for awarding supermodeler status to the world’s best geo modelers Huang Chung-Tang came out as the winner of the process. With 140 top-notch models currently in Google Earth’s 3D Buildings layer, he’s certainly deserving of the honor. After the announcement, Tang was interviewed by Google. From the interview we came to know that though he had a dream to become an architect, he specialized in Interior and Space design. SketchUp gives him the opportunity to fulfill his dream. With the help of it he started building geo models for Google Earth.

According to Tang, “My first model passed through Google’s review process and appeared in Google Earth’s 3D Buildings layer in 2008. The feeling of excitement when I see my models in Google Earth remains today. Maybe this is the Google Earth and SketchUp charm. I think all modelers share this kind of feeling.” When he was asked about his goal he said, “It’s my hope that more people in Taiwan will participate in geo-modeling. We could create a community where we work collaboratively to build geo-models of Taiwan to appear on Google Earth. My goal is have more buildings of Taiwan to be seen by everyone around the world. In the last few years Peter has taught me a lot about modeling, and helped me produce better models using SketchUp. I think this is what they mean by a ‘global village’.”