10 Ways to Harness the Power of Google SketchUp

With the recent release of Google SketchUp 7, I posted a brief interview with Guzman Tierno, who has used SketchUp to engage 13 year old students in the creation of 3-D products.



Guzman's lessons are available for sharing, but I'd like also to suggest a few other potential rich project ideas:

1] get with the holiday spirit in designing a virtual Santa's village;
2] create new and improved student desks to accommodate learning tools of the future;
3] draft floor plans for new (or old) classrooms, schools; homes; shopping centres...;
4] reproduce existing products in 3-D;
5] review Google Patent Search before constructing products from various time periods;
6] host an invention convention where new ideas are shared in Google Earth;
7] recommend a new school/community playground or recreation area by construction demos;
8] recreate famous movie scenes (The Wizard of Oz; Gunfight at the O.K. Corral; Mutiny on the Bounty...);
9] explore news archives before creating a virtual reenactment a famous event;
10] design and build new 3 dimensional board games.

To get started, visit the 3D Warehouse, or watch the Google Sketchup video tutorials:



Do you have any ideas to add?