SketchUp book: Mastering the Art of 3D Construction Modeling

Dennis Fukai is Director of Research and Development at Insitebuilders. He’s a licensed architect and contractor with more than 25 years of design and construction experience, and a Fulbright Scholar with a PhD in Architecture from the University of California at Berkeley. He taught graduate and undergraduate courses in building construction and architecture for ten years before beginning his publishing company Insitebuilders.com.

You may recognize Dennis’ name; he’s been writing SketchUp books since 2004. Mastering the Art of 3D Construction Modeling is the title of his latest publication, which was released in March of this year.

Dennis’ newest book is an update to his classic 3D Construction Modeling, first published in late 2005 using Version 4 of SketchUp. The great thing about this book is that it’s also accompanied by a disc. This CD includes a series of short, illustrative videos, divided by chapter. For each chapter, the CD also contains several “tips and tricks” videos which show how to use a particular tool for a construction goal. The printed book itself is basically an illustrated index for the videos.

Dennis’ books are visually amazing.

His books have received rave reviews because they’re great at communicating 3D modeling to the construction industry. You can learn more about his latest project as well as purchase the book by reading this blog post.

Adding your local knowledge to the map with Google Map Maker for the United States

Before Google Map Maker—a product that enables people to add to and update the map for locations around the world—only 15 percent of the world’s population had detailed online maps of their neighborhoods. Using Map Maker, people have built out and edited the maps for 183 countries and regions around the world, and now, due to the contributions of citizen cartographers, 30 percent of people have detailed online maps of the places they live.

Map Maker users have mapped entire cities, road networks and universities that were never previously recorded online. These contributions have been incorporated into Google Maps and Google Earth, so the collective expertise of the Map Maker community benefits the millions of people using these products globally.

Today we’re opening the map of the United States in Google Map Maker for you to add your expert local knowledge directly. You know your neighborhood or hometown best, and with Google Map Maker you can ensure the places you care about are richly represented on the map. For example, you can fix the name of your local pizza parlor, or add a description of your favorite book store.

You can help make the map complete in other ways as well, such as marking the bike lanes in your town or adding all of the buildings on your university campus so they appear in Google Maps. We’ve seen incredibly detailed contributions from power users worldwide, including this comprehensive map of IIT Bombay. We’re eager to see you add the same level of detail to locations in the United States.

Indian Institute of Technology Bombay

To confirm Map Maker user contributions are accurate, each edit will be reviewed. After approval, the edits will appear in Google Maps within minutes—dramatically speeding up the time it takes for online maps to reflect the often-changing physical world.

University Campus Maps

Amid the height of “March Madness” from the NCAA basketball tournament in the US and the end of the spring break, it’s a good time to look at campus maps and how students are getting around these days. As universities continue to grow, finding the location of a class is becoming more difficult. Fortunately for today’s students, our Geo APIs can help make campus navigation a lot easier.


Northeastern University


Northeastern University’s campus map is great example of a highly immersive Google Maps and Earth experience. Using the Google Earth Plug-in, users can ‘fly’ in animated 3D from one building to another. The entire campus is custom modeled in 3D (which can easily be done using Google SketchUp). The map also features custom icons, integrated directions, custom balloons with pictures, and even a page where users can see the locations of Northeastern students studying abroad.


University of Washington


This map is a great example of a seamless custom imagery overlay on top of the Google Maps baselayer. Buildings on the custom UW map are clickable and clicking on one of the buildings brings up a custom styled info window with links to departments held within the building. UW also provides a shortened URL for the building for easy sharing. On the left hand side of the map there is a navigation bar for noteworthy locations such as computer labs, parking, or libraries. Selecting one of the categories will populate the map with a corresponding custom icon. Extra credit points for a custom styled and easy to use UI, both in and around the map.


University of Ottawa


Going to school at the University of Ottawa presents some unique challenges, namely that it can get really cold in the winter. According to the City of Ottawa’s visitors site, the average temperature in January is -10 degrees Celsius! This map aims to make life easier for students by providing integrated direction with two options: shortest route and warmest route. Buildings at uOttawa are interconnected, so students can choose to go between buildings or to brave the cold outside. This map also features custom overlays, custom icons showing the locations of overpasses, and custom info windows.


University of California – San Diego


Waiting on your bus can sometimes be huge time sink, which is especially troublesome if you happen to be in the middle of finals. The University of California – San Diego has taken the guess work out of campus transportation by tracking the real time location of all their shuttles on a Google Map. Using the map above, students can see route maps, travel times, and shuttle locations. There’s also an integrated trip planner to help students get around the greater San Diego area.


University of Notre Dame


In addition to being a great looking and easy to use full screen map, the University of Notre Dame has added filtering tools to highlight the relevancy of certain buildings at a given time. For example, clicking on the “Game Day” overlay button will highlight Notre Dame stadium (where the games are played) and Bond Hall (where the marching band plays traditional game day concerts), as well as a few other buildings active on game day.

Mobile Campus Maps

As mobile devices and smart phones become more common amongst students on campus, schools like Missouri State University are taking advantage of mobile optimized Google Geo APIs. In February 2010, Chad Killingsworth, Assistant Director of Web & New Media at Missouri State University, posted a story here on the Geo Developers Blog about how his school created a mobile device optimized map for campus buildings, parking and real-time transit system information.