SketchUpdate Newsletter, January Issue

[Google SketchUp Pro]

In the spirit of getting right to the point: With today's launch of Brazilian Portuguese, Korean and Traditional Chinese, SketchUp 7.1 (both free and Pro) is now available in nine languages. The others are French, Spanish, Italian, German, Japanese and English. The 2010 Google Model Your Town Competition deadline is just over a month away; it's definitely not too late to round up a team and put together an entry. Just think about what you'll be able to do when the whole world is modeled in 3D... It's almost time for the Olympics, and the venues are spread out all over the Vancouver area -- wouldn't it be nice to be able to visualize where everything is? By opening this KML file in Google Earth, you can fly from location to location and see 3D models (made in SketchUp, of course) of everything from BC Place to the bobsled track. We created a short feedback form so you can tell us what you like (and what you don't) about this newsletter. Be heard! Happy sketching, Aidan A new year, a new SketchUp build To get the new year kicked off right, we've got a fresh new build of Google SketchUp (Free and Pro) for you to install. For this maintenance release, we focused on fixing some bugs and two security issues that we've had reported. This free upgrade is recommended for all SketchUp 7.x users, and is now available for download. Check out the release notes for all the obsessive detail, and keep those emails, forum posts and crash reports coming so we can find and fix more issues like these. For those of you using our French, Italian, German, Spanish and Japanese translated product, this release of SketchUp 7.1 is also available in your language. Keep reading... Looks who's modeling! The Google Model Your Town Competition is running full-steam ahead with almost 700 pins in the world map representing teams from six continents. From places like Cauquenes, Chile to Cape Town, South Africa to Suva City, Fiji to Alirajpur, Madhya Pradesh, India to Aberdeen, Scotland to Tallin, Estonia and Burlington, Iowa people have taken on the challenge of representing their communities. Folks in Iowa, Colorado, and British Columbia are motivating community members by building their own websites, garnering local press, tweeting, and soliciting help in online forums. Keep reading... A discussion about creating construction and working drawings with LayOut Over on the SketchUp Community Forums at SketchUcation, there's a long and interesting thread about using LayOut for construction and working drawings. In some ways, it's become a philosophical discussion about what constitutes a “construction drawing” (given the advances in 3D technology and rendering) – SketchUp modelers are never afraid to dig deep into these kinds of things. Some of us have been following the discussion closely, and we think readers of this blog might want to check it out, too. Keep reading... Take a vitual tour of the Olympics in 3D The countdown to the 2010 Winter Olympics has begun, and the Google Boulder office has been busy modeling the Olympic venues in Vancouver, BC using Google SketchUp. Last month, we introduced photo-realistic 3D models for eight of the nine venues hosting the games. Today, we released updates to many of the models using higher-resolution imagery, and, the last venue for the Olympics: the Bobsled Course! Keep reading... Popular Woodworking in the Warehouse One of the great benefits of working on the SketchUp team for the past five years has been the opportunity to be around designers who have inspired me to become a woodworker (albeit a fledgling one). That said, it was a nice surprise to find Popular Woodworking's Collection in the Google 3D Warehouse recently. Keep reading... Competition winners visit NYC Just before Christmas, Tasha and I had the pleasure of meeting the winners of the Design It: Shelter Competition: David Mares of Setúbal, Portugal and David Eltang of Aarhus, Denmark. (We swear being called “David” wasn’t a requirement for winning.) We talked about their designs, among other things; check out the Guggenheim website for a great account of how the day went (including more about the winners and their stories). Keep reading... Connecting SketchUp Scenes to LayOut Templates Both SketchUp and LayOut include Templates: pre-designed files which you can use as a starting point for your own work. There's a way to use custom Templates in both applications to simplify your printing and presentation workflow. Basically, you can set things up so that a SketchUp model automatically populates a multi-page LayOut document with a number of pre-set views. Keep reading... LayOut 2.1 gets its very own book While there’s a healthy selection of books about SketchUp Pro, there hasn’t been a book dedicated entirely to LayOut – until now. Longtime friend-of-SketchUp and writer Bonnie Roskes has just released Google SketchUp Hands-On: LayOut 2.1. The book is written in Bonnie’s usual step-by-step, hands-on tutorial format, and it covers pretty much everything you need to know about LayOut. Keep reading... We're on Twitter! Follow @sketchup, @modelyourtown, @3dwh, and @buildingmaker for up-to-the-minute news. You're receiving this email as a result of downloading Google SketchUp Pro and opting-in to receive the SketchUpdate Newsletter. If you would like to unsubscribe from all emails from us, please click here. Google Inc. 2590 Pearl Street, Suite 110 Boulder, CO 80302 sketchup.google.com