PE6_Google SketchUp

Google SketchUp
by Ginny Holm
I have progressed on my Centennial Park. I was able to add a gazebo, a rounded walkway around the fountain, a few park benches and some trees and shrubs. As you can see I've come a long way from the floating balcony rail in PE1. I still have a while to go to make the park look like what I have imagined. I need a richer variety of shrubs and flowers. I need to add in actual grass and have more people (preferably students) mingling around and enjoying the park. 

My Centennial Park is coming along.

Google SketchUp is still a work in progress. I finally mastered rotating today. I found that the protractor that  pops up is used to determine which axis you want to change. Once you've place the protractor, then you move on to rotating the item in the direction you desire. Obviously that would have been good to know when I tried to place the balcony rail on the town home a while back. 


I think overall this is a fun and great product. I would recommend giving yourself time to really learn it before attempting a real project. The possibilities are endless, but the learning curve (at least for me) was challenging. I plan to add to my park little by little. Hopefully within a week or two I will have it exactly the way I want it to look. It requires focus, and when you are interrupted often it makes it hard to remember some of the tools. I don't think I could have done it without the amazing Lynda.com videos. Those were truly a lifesaver! To check out this great 3D tool, click here.

PE5_Google SketchUp

Google SketchUp
by Ginny Holm

After trying to change the texture of the fountain in the one that I dragged from the Components with little success I decided to try my hand at actually drawing the park myself. I was able to successfully draw the grassy area and pathway and add textures using the materials in the Window/Materials. I found a great fountain in the Components menu.

I watched another video in Lynda.com called Texture Editing that directed me toward the materials window. There was a great selection for just about any item that you could imagine. I plan to add a gazebo and some park benches in my next rendering. Overall I am becoming much more comfortable with Google SketchUp. I feel pretty comfortable in tackling the Centennial project and am pleased with what I have come up with so far.

Word to the wise for beginners, it’s not as easy as everyone says. You need to tackle it with a very open mind and try not to have an idea of what you want or expect. Just go in with a fresh slate, erase Illustrator and any other 2D platform you’ve worked with. You have to literally think in 3D, which isn’t as easy as you would think. I think now that I have watched almost all of the Lynda.com videos (and will watch them all before my final post) and am no longer trying to relate this program to anything else I am actually able to accomplish much more. 

PE4_Google SketchUp

Google SketchUp
by Ginny Holm 
First things first. I watched two more videos in Lynda.com. This time I watch 3D Warehouse Components and Downloading models from Google Earth. I still have four more videos to cover to finish all of Lynda.com’s Google SketchUp information. I learned the following from the videos and am getting on track to my original goal of creating a rendering of a small park with a fountain for our Centennial website.

The components menu is still the place to go. Type in what you are looking for and it gives you not just the components on your hard disk but the entire components online as well which they call a warehouse. For example when I typed in window I had a huge assortment of various windows to choose from.

You can go into components and type in a landmark you are looking for like the White House. I clicked on the little white house and it gave me an example of the Little White House in Warsaw, Poland. Once you click on the image, you can also click on the Map tab and you are shown the actual building in Google Earth. It’s pretty neat and would also be a way to see if the structure you were considering building would fit within the area you intended to build it. You can download the building right onto your document if you like.

Back to my original plan... a small park with a fountain for our Centennial website. I typed small park with a fountain in the Components finder and viola I found literally a small park with a fountain! I have downloaded it onto my document and plan to figure out how to customize it to add the details that I envision in our park. I created a ScreenFlow video on using the Components to import my park. You can click on full-screen view for a better view.

W4 Final Video Option 1

This week's final video project left me with a lot to contemplate. I wasn't really sure which option to go with. I wanted to make a video that I felt strongly about, and create a mood within the video. I wasn't ready to do option 2 as we are still in the beginning phase of seeing how well adding a group Flickr account for the class to share is working out. It's something that I do hope to add to and you'll certainly hear more about it on my AR site. I also wanted to do something that didn't pertain to my AR topic for a change. So here it is. I would love to hear your thoughts...

W4 Reading

by Ginny Holm

           As I research more I am so happy I chose to do my blogs with a little review rather than the concept map. Not that I don’t see the relevance of the concept map, it’s just that I feel like by writing my reviews in this format, I can start my Literature Review more easily. It’s as if I’ve already done an overview and just need to add more detail to each review. Here are my week 4 selections:
Reading 1 by American Psychological Association:

            PowerPoint presentations have often had a negative response from their audiences. Suggestions were made on how to deliver successful presentations that included limited text, more graphics. Presenters tended to read along with the slides which took away from their effectiveness. Written summaries were strongly discouraged as they distract from the presentation because the audience was to busy reading the hardcopy to pay attention to the presenter. It was also suggested to use enthusiasm, voice projection and body language to engage the audience.

Reading 2 by Bartsch R., & Cobern, K.:           

            Students were asked whether they preferred and learned more from PowerPoint presentations or overhead transparencies. Results suggested that studies be done to see what types of presentations benefit different types of students. At the end of the study it was found that students preferred PowerPoint to transparencies.

Reading 3 by Rogers, D.:

            It was shown through data that the majority of American students are visual dominant learners. Benefits of multimedia learning included that it mirrors the way the human mind learns. Multimedia encourages discussion and participation. It was inevitable that technology would become a norm within the classroom.

Reading 4 by Vance, V.:

            Both students and experts were asked the same questions regarding the effectiveness and overall use (both as a viewer and a designer) of PowerPoint. Both students and experts felt essentially the same in regards to narrowing slide content to main points. Students however, felt that it was often difficult to narrow the content down effectively. Students also felt limited to what they could do because of the software’s limitations in regards to visual elements. Students felt that using animation was effective especially in slide transitions, while the experts disagreed.

           

            Well, that was my reading for week 4. As I did last week, I am including a link to my AR Resource page for anyone who would like to use the resources that I found.

PE3_Google SketchUp

Google SketchUp
by Ginny Holm

Google SketchUp continues to confuse and intrigue me. I have watched even more videos on Lynda.com and find them really helpful. I’ve also jumped into the program and am able to easily move, rotate, copy and scale items.

The component tool has many options to choose from.

The component tool, which I found in the Window command in the application bar let me choose from an array of things including people, construction, transportation and more. I’ve enclosed a screenshot so you can see exactly what options are available. There is an interactive feature on some of the components that allow you to “interact” with the objects. Examples include opening and closing the car door (to see if it will hit the wall or fence you may have placed next to it). You can also interact with some of the figures, which allows you to change the color of their shirt. A really cool use of this new feature is for example the fence in my rendering. When I pulled it into the document it was only 5 or 6 panels long. Since it had a green interactive triangle indicator on the thumbnail when I saw it in the component panel I knew it was interactive. It allowed me to select it, and using the scale tool I just pulled it and it stretched and added panels accordingly. You can find all kind of things that you can modify to fit your designs like stairs, windows, etc.

Green triangles indicate the component is interactive.

While I am progressing, I am nowhere near a Google SketchUp artist. I will have to watch a lot more videos and put in more time to figure out if I will ever master this program. I can see where it’s fun to play with, but I want to use it to actually produce renderings for my school. Hopefully Week 4 will bring some much needed aha moments.

PE2_Google SketchUp

Google SketchUp by Ginny Holm
I have watched 4-5 instructional videos on Lynda.com for Google SketchUp. Tip: be sure to use a 3-button mouse, it makes navigation much easier. I learned how to navigate using the orbit, pan, and zoom tools. I greatly admired a group of townhomes the narrator brought in as I am an architect deep inside with poor math skills.


After watching the videos I really just wanted to get started immediately and usually (losing this term loosely) am able to figure out a program pretty quickly on my own.

Lynda.com lesson on left / my new document on right

I easily opened a document that gave me a person on an axis with a lot of green space. I longed for the townhouse that I had seen on the Lynda.com instructional videos and chose File/Add New Building. It brought me to an option to choose buildings from around the world. That seems a bit overwhelming, and I really only wanted a grouping of Charleston style townhomes that I saw on my instructional videos. I tried File/3D Warehouse and was able to type in the term townhouse and choose from many styles that Google SketchUp users had uploaded. I settled on one and brought it in.

Note the little back object near the left townhome,
it's the balcony... more things to learn!

I used my newly learned orbit, pan, and zoom tools to view the design from various angles. This particular model had empty boxes attached. I tried my hand at adding windows by using the rectangle tool. I felt I needed a balcony and used the 3D warehouse to locate a nice wrought iron style. I was able to load it onto my document, but as you can see it’s dangling over the walkway and it’s not facing the right direction. Obviously I need to watch a few more videos…