Grandma Riding Her Bike

I wasn't actually searching the 3D Warehouse looking for this; I was looking for a different model created by one of my students that I wanted to blog about. (She took that model down to make some changes, but will replace it later and then I'll show it off!) But while poking around, I ran across another model that made my day.

I'm into tessellations (as anyone who's read this blog would know), and found an Escher-like tile that was created by modifying a rectangle, by a student (or a teacher?) at Nevada Middle School.


Here's how he or she decorated this tile:



And after adding one more grandma with different colors, here's the tessellation:


If you want to get this model for yourself, click the model view below to go to its 3D Warehouse page.



Once you're in the 3D Warehouse, take a minute to browse through the Related Items - more models uploaded by Nevada Middle School. There are some other great tessellations, as well as nice 3D house models.




And if you like Escher, I posted a free project on the Math Forum that shows the steps needed to create this sort of pattern. Scroll way down to October 2009.

And if you subscribe to our Projects of the Month, one of this month's projects shows how to make Escher patterns from a hexagon.





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What is this Solid?

For this month's project on the Math Forum, I'm demonstrating how to set up a sectioned animation like this:



It's a great student exercise in 3D thought - figuring out what an object is based on section planes moving through it in a couple of different directions.

To see how this model can be set up, please see my FREE projects page on the Math Forum: http://mathforum.org/sketchup/projects_of_the_month.html, and download the April 2011 project.


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What's Coming in Our April Projects?

Next week on the 15th we'll be sending out some useful stuff! If you're a subscriber to our Projects of the Month, here's what you'll get:

Escher Hexagons

This project takes advantage of the fact that a regular hexagon can tessellate infinitely to fill a plane. By making a few changes to a single hexagon, you can make some wild tiling patterns.


Sharing Your Models

Ever notice how SketchUp models sometimes appear on websites and blogs (such as this one), or on Facebook, Twitter, and other social sites? This project will show you how that's done, and how you can get your model to appear in 3D on the web.



Section Planes and Animation

One of last month's projects showed how to use section planes to help "get inside" a house to furnish it.



This project takes this idea one step further - using section planes to create an animation showing both inside and outside views. To see the animation itself, go see my blog post from earlier today (http://3dvinci.blogspot.com/2011/04/section-planes-and-animation.html).

If you want to get these projects, as well as 33 more over the course of 12 months, sign up here to subscribe (still just $36 per year).


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Section Planes and Animation

One of the Projects of the Month going out next week (April 15) shows how to use section planes as part of an animation. This is useful when you want to show interior views of a house, like this:



The animation above uses just four scenes and three section planes, and took about three minutes to put together.

Want to see how it's done? Subscribe- it's just $36 per year.


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What's Coming in Our March Projects?

The three projects this month range from the practical to the whimsical and rather impractical. All of them are fun, naturally! If you're not a subscriber, it's just $36 for a year's worth of projects: 3 per month for 12 months. Sign up here.

Spaceship to Mars

Based on a SketchUp model and animation by math teacher Guzman Tierno, this project shows how to "fake" an animation of a spaceship orbiting a planet, by adding in a background image and setting up a few scenes.



Here's the animation I made:



Furnishing a House

A question I hear all the time is "how do I get furniture inside this house?"

It's pretty easy when you know how to use section planes.

String Cube

This geometry project looks like 3D string art - one of those projects where you run string between pegs. But it's just a big set of SketchUp edges.


Once again, here's where you can get the Projects of the Month. Enjoy!

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Spaceship Animation

Two posts down I showed what teacher Guzman Tierno did with a rocket model created from a student's drawing. I loved his animation of the rocket "flying" through space, so I use this idea for one of this month's Projects of the Month.

I found a spaceship model in the 3D Warehouse and an outer space picture from Google Images. The rest is done with styles and scenes. Here's my animation:


Check back in about a week to see the other two projects!




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New Book on LayOut 3

Today I'm releasing my updated book on LayOut: Google SketchUp 8 Hands-On: LayOut 3.



As most of you know, LayOut is a presentation tool included with SketchUp Pro. You can insert SketchUp models into LayOut, and use labels, text, dimensions, and all sorts of 2D drawing tools to present all the wonderful features of your model. But LayOut can do much more than that, and this book uncovers all of LayOut's useful features.

This new book is available in PDF and color-printed formats. We skipped the black and white version for this book, since color and materials plays a large role in the exercises.


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Traveling Through Space in SketchUp

I've posted about Guzman Tierno before - he's a middle school math teacher in Italy who does amazing things with his students in SketchUp. Last May, I posted his video of the SketchUp-modeled battle of Troy - you HAVE to see it. He's very into Sketchy Physics, and created a cool (and slightly disturbing) video of a 24-vehicle mashup.

This time it's something short and sweet - a model of spaceship, created from an 11-year old student's hand drawing, in an animation that looks like it's flying through space.



The spaceship itself was "painted" using Photo Match, and the animation was created using scenes. The background image is simply a watermark, which is defined as part of a SketchUp style. I'm going to show how it's done in one of March's Projects of the Month.

What a great way to combine technology with hand-made creativity! If all teachers were like Guzman, we'd be graduating many more future engineers and builders...

If you want to poke around the actual SketchUp model and see how this was done, click the image below to open the model's 3D Warehouse page.




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Rhombic Hexacontahedron

This thing with the complicated-sounded name is a 60-sided, stellated shape, in which each face is an identical rhombus.

I mentioned this solid in a previoust post, after a teacher from Taiwan pointed me toward some excellent geometric models he created.

I love a math challenge, so I wrote up a free project to show how this thing is made.

So..... if you're pretty comfortable with SketchUp's Rotate too, and you aren't scared of working with groups and components, you too can create a rhombic hexacontahedron. And here's a twist: you can paint each of the rhombic solids that comprise this solid so that no color repeats around any vertex. Each vertex is surrounded by five rhombic solids, so you only need to use five colors.

Want to try it? It's my latest project on the Math Forum (free PDF download). As usual, I've posted a Teacher Version with some extra notes and comments, and a Student Version.

Enjoy!


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What's Coming in Our February Projects?

Subscribers to our Projects of the Month will learn how to make some excellent SketchUp models this month. Going out on February 15 are these projects:

Hot Air Balloon

To make this model, you start with a 2D shape made from tangent arcs. To get the stripes, you'll make use of hidden geometry, a feature many SketchUp users don't know about!



Mandala Pattern

There are many patterns that fall under the "Mandala" description, but this is one of the most beautiful:


You start with just one polygon, and take advantage of groups and components to get all of the shapes to be the exact size needed to fit rings inside of rings inside of rings.

Once you get the basic method down, you can apply it to other starter polygons.


Camping Tent

This project uses one of SketchUp's Sandbox tools - which are not just for terrain modeling. With a few 3D curves, you can make all sorts of organic shapes.



To subscribe to our Projects of the Month still costs $36 for 36 projects over 12 months. How else can you get so much brain candy for so little money?



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Cool 3D Solids

I've been emailing over the last few days with a high school math teacher in Taiwan. Ho-Kai Chen, who also goes by the nickname "Joe," teaches at Jing-Ho High School, and works with 3D geometry on the computer using free software such as SketchUp (of course) and GeoGebra.

Here are two fantastic models Joe has built and uploaded to the 3D Warehouse:

Cube-10 Compound (click the "3D" button to spin and zoom the model, click the "Google 3D Warehouse" button to link to the Warehouse where you can download the model).






BTW, my book "Golden Rectangle Solids" shows how to make several cube compounds like this one.

And the next one: Rhombic Hexacontahedron (quite a mouthful!).


This model can be created from an icosahedron, and I'll be featuring the how-to in an upcoming Math Forum project (free!). As an added twist, you can color the solid rhombs using 5 different colors, so that no color is repeated at any vertex:



It's complicated, but really cool and fun (at least for me!)

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What Would You Make from a Geodesic Dome?

Math teacher Willy Felton (featured here before), has done it again. One of my Projects of the Month last year showed how to make a geodesic dome:


Willy used this model is a basis for a 5-day geometry project. Not only did students make the domes themselves, but they had to use them creatively in a larger model.

Here's a video of the class's best models (my favorite is the Zombie Defense Compound):



I was wondering about the fireball-looking models used in one of the scenes (Superman vs comets), and those came from the 3D Warehouse, from a search for "explosion." It's a very neat model which will probably one of next month's projects.

Great work!



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What's Coming in Our January Projects?

In between all of the updating I've been doing on my SketchUp books for Version 8, I wrote up the projects for our Projects of the Month subscribers. This month has awesome stuff:

Shark Tower!

The new SketchUp 8 interface with Google Earth makes it easy to put whatever you want wherever you want. Such as a giant shark sticking out of a "real" building:



Dragon Curve

This famous fractal looks complex, but you can create it pretty easily starting with just a single line, over many iterations of rotated copies. You'll look like a math genius!



Good Ol' Number 2 Pencil

(Well it can be a pencil of any number.) While this looks like a pretty basic object, there is actually some complexity around the bottom of the pencil. This project will show the tricks you can use to quickly make this model:



Our yearly subscription is still just $36, which gets you 3 projects each month for 12 months. You can't beat it! Sign up here.


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New SketchUp 8 Books!

Sorry I've been remiss in my blogging duties, but I have a good excuse - I've been VERY busy the last couple of months.

If you're on my mailing list you already know, but just before New Year's I put the finishing touches on my tutorial books for SketchUp 8. Here are the covers (created using Kerkythea for rendering, pretty nice, eh?):



The new features covered are how SketchUp interacts with Google Earth, including the new Street View and Building Maker capabilities. And I've added a whole chapter on third-party resources: plugins, tutorials, materials, rendering applications, etc.

The Student Coursebook is also updated - if you're an instructor contact me for an evaluation PDF copy.

If you already have my SketchUp 7 books, stay tuned for the Delta book, covering only what's new, hopefully within a week or so.


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