I found SketchUp to be a more manageable software in this project than in any of my previous attempts at 3D modeling. This may be in part due to my familiarity with the model in question, my childhood home, but also due to the increased amount of digital collaboration I have undertaken since my first year at Carleton. Time spent wrestling with Agisoft Photoscan and the Darwin App creation software helped me build skills that prepared me to approach the hurdles I encountered in SketchUp.
Increased experience didn’t lead to a complete removal of any problems however, but the struggles I did encounter seemed more manageable and not as debilitating as they seemed two years ago. I was unable to replicate the method for adding overhang to a roof demonstrated in this tutorial, but developed a workaround which resulted in the eaves you can see above. Additionally, I had to abandon the first iteration of the model entirely due to my inability to find a way to efficiently delete my mistakes.
After that hiccup however, the modeling process went along smoothly. I found the tool that centered rectangles around a point rather than beginning them from a vertex particularly helpful for creating the handles on all of the sliding glass doors
Reflecting on the modeling process as a whole, I got a better sense of how SketchUp could be used in my primary field of study, history. Creating a visual model of buildings or structures that no longer stand seems like an incredibly useful pedagogical device to be implemented alongside traditional instruction methods such a lectures, making topics such as long-since decayed Anglo-Saxon homes more accessible to visual learners, for instance.
One reply on “SketchUp Mini Project”
Interesting post! What were the biggest differences between Sketchup and other 3D modeling software you’ve encountered?