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.

U.S. Green Building Council’s headquarters

[Cross-posted from the SketchUp blog]

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.

USGBC headquarters

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!

The tour features interactive elements

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

The New Product Connect plugin for Google SketchUp

Recently, our friends (and official Partners) at Igloo Studios released their Product Connect plugin for SketchUp. The plugin is designed to help you get more out of product models stored in the 3D Warehouse.

3D models which are “Product Connect-enabled” are rich with information; they can include SKUs, website links, dimensions and in some cases, pricing information and environmental statistics. After adding these PC-enabled models to your SketchUp project, you can use the Product Connect plugin to export the metadata as an organized product schedule in the form of a spreadsheet. Igloo’s new offering makes going from conception to production a heck of a lot simpler.

Here’s how it works:

  1. Download the Product Connect plugin from Igloo Studios website and install it on your machine.
  2. Find a Product Connect-compatible model in the 3D Warehouse and download it into your SketchUp model.

    3. SketchUp model with Product Connect-compatible models

  3. Open the Product Connect tool set and click Report Maker.

    4. Report Maker window

  4. Select a product schedule type (such as Cabinet or Appliance), then click the Create Reports button. The plugin generates a spreadsheet containing all of the product models as well as their relevant metadata.

    5. Product Schedule report

Today, there are hundreds of Product Connect-enabled models freely available in the 3D Warehouse. These include:

Are you a product manufacturer who’d like to offer PC-enabled models on the 3D Warehouse? Any product manufacturer can participate by creating new Product Connect-enabled models or by upgrading existing SketchUp models to be compatible with this system.