From the course: SketchUp: Tips & Tricks

Geolocate models in 2018 - SketchUp Tutorial

From the course: SketchUp: Tips & Tricks

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Geolocate models in 2018

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- [George] Hi, I'm George Mastrie and today I'm going to show you how to geolocate models. Now geolocation is a little bit different since SketchUp got rid Google Maps a year or so ago and so I'm just going to through the process so you can understand how to get terrain and map data into SketchUp and to precisely position your models to that terrain. Now it's actually a fairly straightforward process. So, we can find geolocation under file, geolocation. The first thing we need to do is add a location. So I have this bungalow and let's go ahead and just place it on an empty lot. So I'm going to go ahead and select add location and it brings you into a map. Now depending upon where you live, this map may look very different because will try and figure out your zip code and I'm actually in Southern California but the vacant lot that I'm looking for is actually in Carpinteria, California which is actually our headquarters. So if we scroll down and we find Rincon Beach here, we go a little bit above it, you'll see that here's Linkdin, that's where we live, but there's this nice vacant lot just across the freeway from us that has a wonderful ocean view and so let's go ahead and place our bungalow on that big empty lot. So once you find the geography that you want or the geolocation that you want, all you have to do is center it roughly in the window and hit select region. Now this will give you a window into which you can either move the map or size that window. Now you can make this as small or as big as you want but this will scale to real-world dimensions. So if I want these buildings in there, I can put them in there, if I don't, I don't need them. So I'm just going to go ahead and scale this up so that we can see the freeway and a little bit of the beach. And once I do that, I can select grab. When I do, brings in the map. Now notice how my house really isn't that big in comparison to this map but I do get exactly what I asked for. And, if I want now, I can select my house and move it around and position it exactly where I want and that geolocation will go with that model if I choose to upload it somewhere such as the 3D warehouse. Now if I want a little bit more information on this lot, you can also go file, geolocation, show terrain, and you can see now that this lot kind of slopes gently towards the sea. So if I want to, I can move my model towards the road or towards the ocean and I can position it exactly where I want on this particular lot. So if I want to move it up or down, back and forth, and so on. Once I have this geolocated, that will actually geolocate to that exact spot on Earth. So hopefully this gives you a little bit of insight into how to geolocate models in SketchUp.

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