Google SketchUp 8 For Dummies

When I first downloaded SketchUp years ago, I thought I was the coolest guy on the block because I could push/pull a square into a cube. Then I went online and saw what some other folks were modeling and realized I needed to up my game FAST. So like many folks, I turned to (my now colleague) Aidan Chopra’s Google SketchUp For Dummies book.

I learned a lot from this Dummies book, so I’m especially proud to be able to announce that the newest edition of Google SketchUp For Dummies is on bookshelves now. This new edition is fully revised and updated to cover all the tastiness we packed into SketchUp 8—both free and Pro. You can find the book online and at bricks-and-mortar bookstores.

If you’re new to SketchUp, the book is a great primer. It will teach you how to (among other things):

  • Navigate SketchUp’s user interface.
  • Build a model from scratch.
  • Create and use components.
  • View and present your models.
  • Use LayOut to create documents and presentations.

A detailed table of contents is available for download from the publisher’s website. If you’re a grizzled SU veteran or already own an older version of this book, I’d still recommend checking out the newest edition. It contains several new sections about:

  • Adding additional floor levels to your models
  • Working with solids and the Solid Tools
  • Using the revised Match Photo toolset
  • Geo-modeling with SketchUp 8 and Building Maker
  • Presenting your designs with LayOut in SketchUp Pro
  • Finding and making use of Ruby scripts

There are also two additional chapters available for free download on the website, and the book’s accompanying YouTube channel has 62 supplemental videos that walk through the many techniques and examples presented in the book.

I like to tease Aidan and say that I only read half of his book. What I don’t tell him is I read the first few chapters straight through to get me up and running, but I refer to the advanced chapters often to brush up my modeling skills! In other words, this is a great resource no matter what your level of SketchUp expertise.

Share your photos about Places

When looking for information about a place on Google Maps, I immediately look for photos to help decide if it’s the right place for the occasion I have in mind. Whether looking for images of a restaurant’s cuisine, or getting a feel for the ambiance at a local bookstore, photos immediately help me learn more about a place.
A few months ago, we launched an improved photo viewer for Place pages to help you quickly and easily explore images of locations all over the world. Starting today, you can also contribute your own photos of places you’ve been to the growing collection of high-quality photos across the web.
The “Photos” section of the Place page now includes an “Upload a photo” link. This new link enables you to select an original photo on your computer and easily add it to the group of photos in the gallery.
The most useful photos are descriptive ones that help others experience or envision a place before they visit it in person. It might be a close-up of a popular dish, a wide shot of a business interior, or a picture of the outside of the building.
Photos that comply with our review guidelines will be available in Place page results for that particular business for you and any other potential customers to see. Users will also be able to explore these photos in search results across Google, Google Maps and Google Earth.
We’re eager to see the variety of photo styles and images our users share for everyone to view and enjoy.

Mapping Latin America

Book cover: Mapping Latin America

Via MapHist, news of a new book coming in April from the University of Chicago Press: Mapping Latin America: A Cartographic Reader, edited by Jordana Dym and Karl Offen, who “bring together scholars from a wide range of disciplines to examine and interpret more than five centuries of Latin American maps. Individual chapters take on maps of every size and scale and from a wide variety of mapmakers — from the hand-drawn maps of Native Americans, to those by famed explorers such as Alexander von Humboldt, to those produced in today’s newspapers and magazines for the general public.”