Google SketchUp Cookbook

Chapter 13. 3D Warehouse and Google Earth

The potential for seamless integration between SketchUp models and Google Earth is what prompted Google a few years back to buy @Last Software, the original creators of SketchUp. Google wanted a simple, intuitive content engine to produce the models that would populate Google Earth, and SketchUp fit the bill. By creating the 3D Warehouse, Google then made it easy to share your work with the world. Google Earth and the 3D Warehouse often work in tandem: You can georeference a SketchUp model by importing location data from Google Earth, and place that same model in the 3D Warehouse for all (or for specific people) to see.

This chapter takes a closer look at these two resources. Recipe 13.1 through Recipe 13.7 cover the various ways you can use the 3D Warehouse, how you can place your own models and collections there, and how to control the privacy of your work. Recipe 13.8 through Recipe 13.13 move on to Google Earth, teaching you how to georeference a model, place a model in Google Earth, remove or replace location data, and download specific models found in Google Earth.

Before getting started, you should be familiar with the Google Tools icons (Figure 13-1) in the Getting Started toolbar, which runs by default horizontally above the SketchUp window. (Mac users can display these tools via View→Tool Palettes→Google.) From left to right, the tools are as follows:

Figure 13-1. Figure 13-1

• Get Current View. Imports into SketchUp a snapshot of the ...