Checking out the 3D Warehouse

The 3D Warehouse is an online storage site containing hundreds of different models. Anyone may search and download models, but to submit your own, you need to log in using your Google Account.

On the Web 

Find models of buildings, furniture, plants, and so on contributed by SketchUp users from around the world at http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/.

The 3D Warehouse models are freely available for you to share, use, and even display on your own Web site.

Follow these steps to locate and download a model:

1. In SketchUp, choose Google Get Models or click the Get Models button on the Google toolbar to open the 3D Warehouse in a browser window.

2. Find the model you want to work with. You can:

   • Scroll through the list on the opening page of the 3D Warehouse browser window and choose a category from either the Popular, Recent, or Google Picks sections.

   • Search for a model based on its name, description, location, type, or other term.

3. Select a model in the search returns displayed in the browser window to open a window with more information on the selected model, such as in the example shown in Figure 33.24.

   
   Figure 33.24: Read about the models before you download them in the search results window.

   The information includes a description, the keyword tags associated with the model, its location on a map, and a preview of the model.

4. Click Edit with Google SketchUp to open a dialog box asking if you want to load the model directly into your Google SketchUp model. Click Yes to load the model into the current model open in SketchUp; click No to save the model to your hard drive.

   If you click No, locate and select the folder in which you want to save the model in the Save As dialog box, and click Save.

5. If you click Yes, the model is downloaded and placed. Depending on the conditions attached to the current model and the one you are downloading, you may have additional dialog boxes to specify where the model is placed:

   • If both the open model and the model being downloaded have specified locations on Google Earth, a message asks if you want to place the model yourself. Click No to have the model sited at its Google Earth location; click Yes to place the model on the program window.

   • If your model doesn’t have a location and the downloaded model has a location, it is placed on the ground plane centered at the origin point with green=north, red=west, and blue=up.

   • If the model is an object, such as a bumblebee or a teapot, the model is selected automatically on the ground plane and the Move tool is active.

Caution 

If you load the model directly into SketchUp it is treated as an inserted object. Any pages or different views of the model are not displayed, nor is any screen text if it was included with the model.