SketchUp 7: Hands On

I teach a short unit on SketchUp in my freshman Multimedia class. It's a survey course so we don't spend a lot of time on any one program but I always try to work a unit on SketchUp into the mix. I've struggled a bit in the past as to what I should teach the kids about SketchUp. I love the program. I love that it's free and the kids can download it at home if they want. But, those first few steps into three dimensional drawing can be daunting for my kids. I feel that my inexperience and lack of background is part of the reason I can't get most of the class excited about the program.

Last year I decided I needed to improve my SketchUp skills in order to better teach it. Searched for all the books available and many of the websites. Stumbled on a review of SketchUp7: Hands On by Bonnie Roskes and tracked down the website where it's sold, 3DVinci. It's an expensive book but I convinced my department chair to buy a copy for me and spent part of my summer working through some of the exercises. I have to say, my SketchUp skills are better and I now have a better idea what to include in my lessons. I originally thought it might be a book we could buy for the kids to use but it is pretty comprehensive and weighs in at 502 pages. It would be overkill for a three week unit. I could see using this with high school class dedicated to the program. The publisher says it could be used with "advanced middle school" students but I think it's a little too advanced. Not that they couldn't do it, I've seen middle schoolers use SketchUp before and do some amazing things.

Still, this is a great resource for any middle school and high school teacher who uses SketchUp to have on their bookshelf. It also would be a useful book to have in the high school library and I'lll be making this suggestion to our librarian. The author, Bonnie Roskes has a blog that I just discovered today. Looking around her site I found this useful little explanation on how to better use the Push/Pull tool. The 3dVinci website also has a subscription service that will give you a 3 new lessons every month. (I've not tried this but looks promising.) There are some other resources availabe at the site. The website and the book are both worth looking at.

[Image captured from 3Dvinci: http://www.3dvinci.net/]

A Tale of Rock - 3d Animation

Here is another student animation project from the University of Hertfordshire. This one is called A Tale of Rock and was done by John Godwin in 2007. I'm building up a list of short films I can show to my video students next year. This one will be on my list.

Check out his home page to see some of his art work also.


A Tale Of Rock - 3D Animation @ University Of Hertfordshire 2007 from Digital Animation Herts Uni UK on Vimeo.

[Image captured from John Godwin's web site: http://john.idlecreations.com/]

Veni Vidi Vici

Always looking for short films to show my students. Here is an animated short, Veni Vidi Vici that was put together as a final project by Will Burdett and David Bryan at the University of Hertfordshire.


Veni Vidi Vici - 3D Animation @ University Of Hertfordshire 2008 from Digital Animation Herts Uni UK on Vimeo.

3-D Print your house

Someday in the not so distant future, you'll design your house on a CAD program and send it to a contractor who will download it into a large 3-D printer. That big old printer will then build your house from the foundation up out of concrete or a similar building material in a matter of days (rather than weeks) at about a fifth of the cost.

Read about it and see more videos of the process at Contour Crafting. (I think the YouTube video below is a compilation of all the videos from the site.)



[via BotJunkie]
[Image: Captured from Contour Crafting: http://www.contourcrafting.org/]

3D Printer

Several years ago I was touring our local vocational school with a group of technology teachers. The one thing that jumped out and had me talking and dreaming for days was the 3D Printer. The thing was expensive. They had written a grant and I think the assistant principal had to sell his liver in order to raise the money. But it definitely was cool.

If you don't know, a 3D printer is a machine that creates a 3D object. It's print head is able to move in 3 directions, side to side plus up and down. Any object can be thought of as being made up of many, many thin layers. A 3D printer prints each of those layers one at a time from the bottom of the object to the top. Of course, it isn't using ink but rather some material that can be extruded in a liquid form that quickly hardens. The one I saw used a type of plastic.

Think of a brick house. You lay the first row of bricks around the foundation. Then you add row after row of bricks until you finally have a house. If your bricklayer were a 3D printer, then each layer of bricks would be one pass of the printer head. Still not clear? Don't worry, lots of folks have a hard time getting their head around this one. I think the big problem is calling them 3D printers. They should have borrowed the name from Star Trek and called them replicators! Watch the movie and hopefully it will make more sense.

Hod Lipson and Evan Malone at Cornell University have developed a 3D printer that you can build, if you are handy, for around $2400. It's open source and the plans are free. Their hope is to get a lot of people working on this project and get the price down and the quality up. Imagine if you will, anything you can design in a CAD program could be reproduced as a 3D object.



NewScientistTech Article: "Desktop fabricator may kick-start home revolution"

Popular Mechanics Article: "Fab at Home, Open-Source 3D Printer, Lets Users Make Anything". There is better video at this site.

[Image: (Hod Lipson / Evan Malone) from"Desktop fabricator may kick-start home revolution." NewScientistTech. 09 Jan 2007. NewScientistTech. 26 Oct 2007 .]

Google SketchUp 3D Challenge

Google SketchUp 3d Challenge

I loved creating new challenges to give my students when I was teaching in a technology lab. Once they had a handle on the basics of a piece of software or hardware I made them stretch a little by throwing down a personal challenge.

"OK Johnny and Susie, now that you think you know Photoshop. I want you to take a picture of your selves, load it into Photoshop and switch your heads on to each other's bodies. It's got to look real. You've got till the end of the hour. Go!"

This motivated my kids to use the skills they had and maybe explore a little deeper just to accomplish the task.

The Google Sketchup 3d Challenge does a similar thing. Every week they present a new challenge to create a 3d picture using the free modeling software put out by Google [Google Sketchup] . You can post your efforts online for everyone to see and the results are as varied as the skill levels of the folks posting. A couple of the previous challenges were a wooden toy and a Mars rover.

It's a lot of fun. Also, it pushes me a learn a little more about the program with every new challenge.

[image is from the Google Sketchup 3D Challenge site. Created by Don East]