"The works of Stack Rock Group: A team of landscape designers”

The Stack Rock Group is focused on delivering wonderful projects to the world and in their every project they are using SketchUp that makes their work easier.

Trevor Ball is a designer and partner at Stack Rock Group, around 10 years earlier he was given free reign to choose a 3D modeler for making architecture designs and he chose SketchUp. After that in these 10 years he has become the lead 3D designer, Trevor and his team use SketchUp for all of their visualization projects. He has given an interview to Caroline Early where he has shared a lot about his company and his work, this article is just a little description of that conversation.

A little about Stock Rock Group: It is an eccentric and creative Landscape Architecture firm based in Boise, Idaho and they are creative idealists who can see every kind of possibilities. They usually set foundation of project with skillful and right questions that help their clients to clarify their personal and business goals, needs, wants and desires etc. Usually the group guides general contractors, construction managers, homeowners, landscape and building contractors, building architects, real estate developers, corporations, institutions, municipalities, wineries and vineyards through their individual attention and detail excursion for every project. Their collaborative, thoughtful process helps clients to grow their businesses, project sustainability and grows many more positive impacts on their environment.

Stock Rock Group is also called a “SketchUp Firm” as all the landscape architects knows that it is very necessary to express their designs to clients in a decent and culinary way for which they use SketchUp in all their 3D projects for strong visualization. Modeling in 3D also helps their clients to understand fully about the site which gives them the feeling about the final project and also allow the architects to make any further change in the project. SketchUp helps them to import the linework of every concept and model them quickly that helps them to meet the deadlines and client meetings.

Reason to become total SketchUp techie: Trevor calls himself ‘total SketchUp nerd’ as he has been working with it since ten years, everyday and he loves SketchUp’s native commands as it gives him the ability to customize toolbars, help to find numerous groundbreaking extensions. According to him, SketchUp has any kind of extension for users for any field and the SketchUp Community forums have some of SketchUp Sages that will answer any asked questions by the users in a record time plus there is also other helpful users and SketchUp team members.

The team at Stock Rock Group: Though Trevor and his helpers is a part of a small team which is an 11 members team currently at Stack Rock Group and based in Boise, Idaho but has a growing office in Salt Lake City where they design projects all over the country like from California to Florida and everything in between. All the members know that they have the chance to make this firm exactly the place they want it to be, for which they are very serious and focused on their works. Moreover that, they don’t believe in finding the area f improvement rather they like to improve in every bit of their work. This little team is so dedicated and talented that it can handle a lot of projects around Boise like from small backyard planting, parks to medical and college campus, luxury residential properties, corporate campuses etc. and many more.

Some projects handled by the team: One of their main commercial projects was the HP campus located in Boise which is the first Sustainable SITES Initiative certified corporate campus in the world. SITES is the United States’ Green Building Council sustainable rating system for landscapes. This campus is above 200 acres where are 46 acres of moistened turf grass; 36 acres of active farmland etc. This project is like an investment in the local ecosystem services and as a sustainable model for site users and the community that become a huge success.

They are continuously focused on taking care their current clients and working on new projects; also unfinished with VR and alternatives rotes for rendering.

SketchUp or Google SketchUp is mainly a3D modeling computer program that is used for a broad range of drawing applications used by architects, interior designer, landscape architects, civil and mechanical engineers, film and video game designers also.

SketchUp can be getting as a freeware version named SketchUp Make and a paid version with many more extra benefits called SketchUp Pro. SketchUp is software from Trimble Company and there is an online library of free model congregations and 3D Warehouse to which users can add other models; besides that, the program has drawing layout functionality with variable ‘styles’, supports third-party ‘plug-in’ programs hosted on the Extension Warehouse to supply other abilities and enables placement of its models in Google Earth. As SketchUp users are most of architects, designers, builders, makers and engineers etc. who works hard to give a nice shape to our physical world, they need great tools to do the work. SketchUp is in mission to bring their best to produce some great tools for drawing as drawing is the key thing of the SketchUp users. They draw to search ideas, to identify the things and to show other people their work that they do with love and love to build; SketchUp understands it truly and trying to improve their software day by day.

Source: blog.sketchup.com/article/stack-rock-group-team-landscape-designers



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Published By
Rajib Dey
www.sketchup4architect.com
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Create design of residential systems & ground mount power plants with skelion solar plugin for sketchup

Watch the following live demonstration of skelion solar plugin for sketchup. This sketchup plugin can be used for efficient solar system design. With this plugin, one can design solar thermal as well as solar photovoltaic installations out of a 3d model.

Skelion connect with PVWATTS V1, V2, PVGYS and PVSYST to perform a PV energy analysis allow quick implantation of solar components inside a 3d model.

Skelion facilitates the installers in making design of residential systems & ground mount power plants through sketchup and Google Earth.

The sketchup professionals can directly download it from Skelion website.

We want to feature this page: sketchup4architect.com/sketchup-plugins

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Published By

Rajib Dey

www.sketchup4architect.com

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Create 3d models from your mobile with the camera and accelerometers

The 3d modelers can get help from a new technology that applies the camera and accelerometers in an average cellphone to evaluate real objects in 3D space.

Researchers associated with Carnegie Mellon University have developed this newest 3d modeling technology. The 3d modelers will get the ability to generate 3D models of the world just by flapping their phones just about an object or scene.

The accelerometers also known as inertial measurement units, approximately notify the phone’s software the location of the phone in space. By linking IMUs with the camera, one can get stunning results.

The tool provides superior computer vision and the users will be able to generate a 3D model of almost anything through their smartphone alone. It is expected that this new 3d modeling technology can be applied in self-driving cars, bypassing expensive and “power-hungry” radar. The team applied the technology to produce something known as Smart Fit that discovers the ideal glasses frames for any face.

A face tracker program can determine the distance amid a person’s pupils inside half a millimeter.

The 3-D model can be applied to rectify for the errors originated by the IMU, even as we utilizing the IMU to estimate the dimensions of the model.

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Published By

Rajib Dey

www.sketchup4architect.com

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10 Ideas for the Ideal 3D Modeling Software

What is the most perfect 3D modeling application especially for 3D printing? Time is one of major aspect here. Normally it takes 2000 hours to get in the CAD/3D modeling. It takes a considerable amount of time – especially for consumers, patron and clients.

This problem has to be solved for the sake of CAD/3D modeling’s long lasting success rate. The business has to be developed here.

It is often seen that there are only one 3D modeler on the whole company and the machine goes unused if the man or woman would busy.

If everybody in the workplace can create simple things then the machine will be in work 24x7. The 3D printing is similar like Gutenberg press, but nobody can read or write.

We require having easy 3D modeling activities preserving millions of people to create new models. This will develop the market significantly.

Good steps have been taken so far over the year. Now the experts can use MineCraft for 3D printing like 3DTin and TinkerCAD.

Image Courtesy: www.3ders.org

Joris Peel writes in www.inside3dp.com that he has trained kids given a link to 3Dtin and 80% of the group would be capable to create a 3D printable model. This would be extremely dissimilar with customary CAD packages.

3D Systems Cubify Invent and Cubify Design are awesome tools. The preponderance energetic party in making simple 3D modeling tools is Autodesk. Their 123D suite contains 10 tools to be able to use to make. My favorite is Meshmixer which is a great push/pull tool for creation.

Below are ten thoughts for the ideal 3D modeling tool that would thrust 3D printing forward:-

• TinkerMixer: TinkerCAD’s building up of blocks and pushing and pulling models to create them more organic.

• SolidDots + smooth surfaces: - SolidDots is an iPhone

• Creepy Facebook App: People can take help from Facebook. Facebook app that inquires people about what design items, shapes, products, brands, and paintings can be possible.

• DarkerDepth: People sometime face problem transferring 2D to 3D. 3D shape is a complex shape to be formed. But it can be drawn. You can use Ipad drawing app wherever needed in darker the color used. This would let a person sketch in 3D.

• Kinect Draw: Xbox Kinect for scanning is necessary.

Image Courtesy: www.3ders.org

• Wii Controller Light Sabre 3D modeling: What if you could wield you’ll Wii controller sort of a lightweight saber and in a funny approach, with the accompanying noises at an object and creates?

• Lego Virtual Designer: Lego set already has tools to allow you to style on-line. What if through associate degree app you'll just about build things out of Lego set bricks then either constructs them in real or 3D print the output.

• Beautiful Modeler: It brings out the virtual clay in the iPAD.

• ClayService: It is a 3D scanning activities by which clay model can be made.

• D Scanner for iPhone:- Many people area unit engaged on this however if a reliable 3D scanner for the iPhone were to emerge that makes good STLs then any quite input or object may well be 3D written. What does one think? What ideas does one have for a perfect 3D modeling app.

Image Courtesy: www.geeks3d.com

Image Courtesy: cronosal.blogspot.com

Image Courtesy: interactivefabrication.com

Reference : www.inside3dp.co, influenced by the article of Writer Joris Peels

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Published By

Rajib Dey

www.sketchup-ur-space.com

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Interview with Fred Abler, Ceo of Form Fonts, a go-to subscription based collection of 3d models and textures

Form Fonts is our go-to subscription based collection of 3d models and textures. I have been a member of Form Fonts for the last 9 years and I absolutely cannot exist without this service as a professional designer and visualization artist. The amount of time I save and the value added to my 3d presentations is unmeasurable.

One of my favorite features of Form Fonts is that you can search generic terms like “cars” or “coffee table”, and also brand specific terms such as “Audi” or “Design Within Reach”. The collections are enormous and the quality of the models is unmatched. Form Fonts models and textures look excellent in SketchUp and photo-real rendering programs.

Recently we had a chance to chat with Fred Abler, CEO of Form Fonts, to better understand how this resource came to be. Visit Form Fonts here to browse the collections and sign up.

FormFonts 3D : A Decade of Serving Up 3D Models!

Editors Note: As FormFonts 3D is turning 10, we thought it might be interesting to review the history of the pioneer of 3D Model Stock for SketchUp. This is an interview with Fred Abler, CEO of FormFonts.com.

SketchUp Magazine: How and when did FormFonts get started?

Abler: In 2001, I was working at the CAD Research Center at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, CA where I had done my architecture degrees. We developed some pretty cool agent-based spatial decision support systems. But over time, the lab basically became a military defense contractor. I wanted to get back to into architecture, and I was especially keen on the potential for ‘smart objects’ in architecture.

A friend at ESRI introduced me to SketchUp, and I was immediately taken by this little 3D modeler. It was just a joy to use. It was only for visualization of course, but that’s where the marketplace was in 2001. At the time I was also on a campus committee for Internet2 Research - a consortium of 260 universities worldwide connected by a super-fast fiber-optic research network.

Because Internet2 promised unlimited bandwidth, I began to wonder what impact capacious bandwidth would have on 3D modeling. It occurred to me that the effects would be significant.

Of course we all had BIM-like dreams. But where to start? At the time, huge 3D CAD libraries came on-disc with shrink-wrapped software, or were sold separately. These ‘block libraries” were pretty basic, outdated the minute you installed them, and they took up significant amounts of disc space.

Sketchup was really the first “downloadable” 3D modeler. So I thought: Wouldn’t it be great if you didn’t have to download all those stock models? You should just be able to go out to the web, search for what you want, and then download just what you need. And because everyone would be able to download the very latest version of a SketchUp component, it would actually be practical to update the 3D model library on an ongoing basis.

SketchUp Magazine : What today we would call “the Cloud” and/or “Software As A Service”.

Fred Abler: Yes, exactly. But in early 2000’s we didn’t have the cloud yet. It was called a “Service Oriented Architecture”.

SketchUp Magazine: So how did you test your idea for a 3D Content Cloud?

Abler: I approached @Last Software in Boulder, Co. and very enthusiastically pitched them on my idea for a ‘living library of 3D SketchUp components”. I hired a Computer Science student (Paul Thormahlen) at Cal Poly to write the software for a 3d model server and called it “Objective Networks”. I paid for everything out of my own pocket, and designed ObjectiveNetworks.com so users could upload their own models, and share them with the SketchUp community.

SketchUp Magazine: Did you charge for this, or was it free?

Abler: It was all completely free. At that time it was still unthinkable to charge for anything on the Internet.

SketchUp Magazine: Why do you think ObjectiveNetworks ultimately worked?

There was nothing else like it at the time. TurboSquid was the only player and they charged pretty dearly for their high-poly models. So being first helped a lot. But I also decided that we should show the number of downloads for each contributor’s model, kind of as a way to thank them for sharing their model in the first place.

We had some amazing modelers who were very generous like Markus Sillander, Anri JoJo, and Alan Fraser, etc. Word got out pretty quickly you could score free 3D models on Objective Networks, and the SketchUp community was still very small (by today’s standards). So fans would upload their sketchup components to Objective Networks, and the model counts would rise almost instantly. In fact, a little too quickly.

Fig 2. Objective Networks screen shot (c. 2003 ) showing free 3D SketchUp Components. Objective Networks was the forerunner to the Sketchup 3D Warehouse, and FormFonts 3D.

This made me take a closer look at the Downloads count, and I discovered something pretty interesting. As soon as an artist uploaded their model to share, they would do something very strange. They would instantly turn-around and download it themselves 10 or 15 times.

Apparently, artists didn’t want anyone to think their model was “un-loved” or “no-good” so they primed the pump! This was fine with me if the artists wanted to provide a little of their own social proof. In the three years ObjectiveNetworks was online, we served out almost 5,000,000 free 3D components to the nascent SketchUp Community.

SketchUp Magazine: And didn’t @Last Software give you some grant money at some point?

Abler: Yes,I demonstrated a private beta version of Objective Networks to Brad Schell at an ESRI conference in 2002. And when I showed them how you could drag ‘n drop a 3D model from ObjectiveNetworks.com directly into the SketchUp workspace, they almost fell on the floor laughing with delight.

After that. I asked @Last for some grant money and they graciously gave me $5,000. I took the grant money to the Dean of Research at Cal Poly SLO, and she matched it with in-kind equipment and bandwidth, and, that’s how we got our first server.

SketchUp Magazine: So then, How did ObjectiveNetworks become FormFonts.com?

Abler: As ObjectiveNetworks got larger and larger, the limits of crowdsourcing became painfully obvious. We tried several ways to get the crowd to help us quality-control the models. But all of these efforts were unsuccessful.

After awhile, the brilliant modelers that were contributing to ObjectiveNetworks started to get a bit resentful. They didn’t like the fact that their work was surrounded by junky models people had scrounged up somewhere. And the imbalance between “givers and takers” became too hard to ignore. So many more people were downloading models than uploading them, that it started to feel truly unfair to those that were contributing.

As it got worse and worse, the model quality just became almost random. And in many ways, ObjectiveNetworks became a victim of it’s own success. The more people that used it, the worse it got. It’s the same complaint a lot of people still have with free sites today.

So the choice was to shutter the site, or turn “pro” and use the lessons learned from the free site as a kind of test marketing. I eventually chose the latter, and then began contacting a few of the most talented 3D modelers in the world at the time (Alan Fraser, Allister Godfrey, Nino Alvarez, etc.).

Most of these guys were already selling small collections of their own models on CD, and Alister had even started a small website. But the community reaction to actually charging for 3D content had been pretty hostile, so everyone pretty much said they would gladly throw in their lot with me, should I started a commercial version of Objective Networks

SketchUp Magazine: So you started FormFonts.com in 2004?

Abler: Yes, while ObjectiveNetworks was still serving out free 3D models, I hired Cal Poly students to develop a ‘subscription’ version of ObjectiveNetworks. I also asked my architecture classmate Marc Frederickson, to invest and partner with me in starting FormFonts.

Marc provided most of the initial capital we needed to set up commercial grade servers, software development, hosting, accounting etc. Today Marc is what I call our Chief Operations Officer. But Marc doesn’t really like titles, so let’s just say he wears many hats.

When FormFonts became the first website to sell 3D content by subscription, most everyone thought (and a few said openly) that we would fail. In 2004 paid content was pretty much an unknown, and selling content on CDs was the established norm.

But in retrospect, we really didn’t have a choice in the matter. The subscription model was the only thing we could do. We couldn’t charge much money without a serious backlash, and we just didn’t have that many 3D models to begin with.

Fig 3. Splash page of FormFonts.com today.

We couldn’t leverage the thousands of Objective Networks 3D models because the quality was so variable. And we only had about 120 professionally made models when we launched FormFonts 3D, so we couldn’t charge much. I decided to ask $33 and make the subscription period just 3 months, and automatically renewing.

Fortunately, we got the price right and our best was spot on. There was simply no other place you could get professionally made SketchUp components at the time. So once people tried and liked our professional 3d models, they decided to stay with us.

SketchUp Magazine: So ten years on, how many 3D models do you have, and what does your subscriber base look like today?

Abler: FormFonts has more than 50,000 3D models and assets under management. Our annual subscription has been $199 for 5 years now. We’ll probably need to raise our subscription rates a bit next year, provided the economy keeps improving.

SketchUp Magazine: And who are your customers?

About 70% of our subscribers are architects, landscape architects, contractors and other AEC design professionals. 20% are in the entertainment industry (film and tv production designers) and 10% are various design professionals (e.g. trade-show booth and event designers).

We also of course support many more file formats now, so our 3D model library is available to a much larger universe of 3D modelers, not just SketchUp users.

SketchUp Magazine : So what will the next 10 years look like for FormFonts?

Abler: The subscription model has been very very good to us, and FormFonts will keep improving our service in some new and interesting ways. We also have been asked to expand the types of 3D models we make, and we’re currently moving into 3D geo-content and mapping.

Editors Note: Please check in how FormFonts 3D is doing today, and visit their website
www.formfonts.com

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Published By

Rajib Dey

www.sketchup-ur-space.com

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