SketchUp: U.S. Green Building Council’s headquarters

 

You could call our friends at Igloo Studios “multi-taskers”. While they mainly concentrate on creating products and plugins for designers and architects, they also have a podcast, a SketchUp training program and a popular book.

Their latest project is a virtual tour of the U.S. Green Building Council’s headquarters in Washington, D.C. (Note: you’ll need the Google Earth plugin installed to view).

This project is cool for lots of reasons. For starters, USGBC’s 75,000-square-foot facility is loaded with efficient and innovative green features that have earned the building a LEED Platinum rating. Professionals regularly tour the USGBC for real-world examples of successful green practices.

 

However, not everyone has the luxury of being able to visit Washington DC, so Igloo Studios built this one-of-a-kind Google Earth tour of the building. Using a custom instance of the Google Earth plugin and building product catalogs from the 3D Warehouse, Igloo was able to create a tour of both the exterior and interior of the building! 

As you navigate through the 3D building, you’ll notice it’s jam-packed with other goodies like a guided audio tour, photos and embedded videos. You can even click on the building’s materials and products to learn more about the green tech used in its construction.Once you finish the tour, you can launch a test that will earn you the same continuing education credits that you would get for taking the live tour.

And the coolest feature of all: if you find a building product during the tour that might be useful in one of your projects, you can download it directly into your SketchUp design!

 

Learn about building materials and then bring them into your model 

If you’re interested in learning more about how your products or buildings can be visualized in this way.

Two new cities in Brazil

Two years ago we launched a web-based tool that creates 3D models from a 2D workspace: Google Building Maker. At the time of the launch, users could only make models in 50 cities. Today we’re adding two more cities, just in time for the anniversary of its launch. With the addition of Porto Alegre and Brasilia, you can now create models in 124 cities.

Join in the birthday celebrations by modeling some buildings in Building Maker’s newest cities. Feliz aniversário, Building Maker!

SketchUp: More Building Maker cities

It’s a great day for the citizens of Argentina — and for Canadians in the nation’s capital. We’ve released new Building Maker imagery in six new cities:

  • Buenos Aires, Argentina
  • Córdoba, Argentina
  • Mar Del Plata, Argentina
  • Mendoza, Argentina
  • Rosario, Argentina
  • Ottawa, Canada

…but that’s not all! To help these cities get modeled, we’re having the first ever modeling competition for Building Maker. Starting today, you can create models in these six cities to win prizes in two different categories: Best Model and Most Models. The first place prize is a GPS-enabled digital camera; second place is a Building Maker shirt; and third is a Google travel mug. Have fun!