andersry The CABE architecture centres in the UK regularly hold public consultations and participatory events to engage the public in the design process of new developments. I work for part of this organisation. Sketchup has been used in this way. See document, might be useful. http://www.architecturecentre.net/docs/content/futurescape_report.pdf and a whole load of links http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&rlz=1T4GGIE_enGB340GB340&q=cabe+architecture+centres+sketchup&meta= Don't under estimate the SU learning curve though. Mr and Mrs Smith and their kids want to tell you in five minutes want they want in the new park or shopping centre, without training they can sketch it on paper a lot faster than they can in Sketchup. Sketchup is great if you have a week long consultation event, if it is just one day, get the pencils and paint out. If you need more info pm me. It is also worth mentioning that there is a general consensus that community consultations on urban design are often handled very ineffectively. All to often developers don't "consult" the public until they have planning permission and are about to start building. So the public's opinions at that late stage can have no effect on the outcome. At the other extreme, empowering the public to draw their ideas, while important, needs to be handled very delicately. If not it can be disingenuous, as you can mislead them into thinking that they are the design team. They are the client, not the designers. CABE have some good best practice info for public consultation. http://www.cabe.org.uk/

And also impressive the last paragraph: combining the two techniques. If they can map the structure and also distinguish the elements, I would not need anymore to struggle with those spectra: [image: IR_pentacene.jpg] That's like if you take a single molecule in your hands, touch it and feel the structure.

@ecuadorian said: BTW, perhaps it's time to implement a system that allows users to give a or a to a post and hide posts below a certain threshold. This would greatly improve the Signal to Noise Ratio in the forums.

This is one I did a while ago. It has 40+ hotspots and was a complete pig to setup. I used the CubicPanOut plug-in to produce the 6 views per hotspot then moved the 40x6 images over to my Mac and then CubicConverter and CubicConnector to make the finished movie. This is a link to the Quicktime movie on my dropbox account, its 280Mb so don't try and play it from here, you'll have to download it first. http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/373226/StPeters/1287-QTVR-V2.mov

Just to envision such a GUI is incredible, but to actually execute it in 1963 is utterly astonishing. Google, hire this man!

Wow, that was brilliant! The script was perfect, but the delivery and comedic timing was astonishing- they made Monty Python look like am-dram understudies (Blasphemy, I know). Must remember that line for next client meeting: Client: "And will this building be friendly to the environment?" Architect: "Oh, yes..... we've designed it to that it won't even be in the environment so there's nothing to worry about in that respect!"

FYI, http://www.kingluminaire.com/king-luminaire-product/bollards/bollard-types.asp?type=12

Mythbusters. They have one of, if not THE, coolest jobs in the world. And they use Sketchup. What's left to do in life?

Hmm ... Sounds good. I'll get me some. Thanks for the tip. Edit: Oh ... anyone got any experience with those - to my pauperish standards - fairly expensive Epson printers? (http://nl.backoffice.be/shop/information.asp?partid=C11CA16305) They worth it? Edit2: just saw that Ilford's got a whole range of ICC profiles on their site. I just gotta try the one for the cheap printer I got now (Pixma iP4200) with some of their paper. Might turn out okay. Great tip, Jackson.

@unknownuser said: Processing ! and "Open Source" so you can use any works, modify,...etc drawing, 3D, Images, sound, videos, interaction! Thank you for your suggestion. This is a really funny tool. Today I draw my new website-logo (a simple bee) with processing. [image: http://img232.imageshack.us/img232/9461/youtubeg.png] It's very interesting to learn coding with a tool like this. I guess, I will order the book of Ira Greenberg about processing. It is similar to Adobe Macromedia Flash. Also a great feature is adding OpenGL-Libraries. This makes scenes and animations very smooth. Cheers monk77

And remember to check out our links in the Materials Forum: http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=40&t=486

@unknownuser said: Skype worked for my Brother and me, he was in Rota Spain, i was here in the US. For MMS??

answer: java wasn't updated when Sitebuilder was installed. The latest of both programs was downloade, then the old versions removed, and Java was reinstalled prior to Sitebuilder being reinstalled. Works fine. Revit is next....

Eddy We are located in the Dallas area and been building for the last 5 years, things started going south last year when an investor of ours tried to micro manage a project and ended stealing his own progress draws to finance another project which forced us to take him to arbitration, the knock we took was heavy and forced us to scale our operation down significantly, currently we are focused on high end kitchens/bathrooms, design and consultation. I hope to get things going again later in the year and am currently bidding on a few projects north of Dallas.

.... my sketchup experiment... [image: http://img215.imageshack.us/img215/4667/112cgt.jpg] 112a.skp

Brodie, as others pointed out it's important to establish the rules beforehand, especially who pays you. It's not unusual for an architect to pay consultants after they've billed the client for the services, but if there is a billing dispute between the client and the architect, you don't want to be left out in the rain. If the architect hired you, then he should agree to reimbursing you within a set time.

Sorry to rain on the parade, but Rebus has been around for ages, they don't support any SU render plugins and besides, their initial file setup costs are too high to be useful for anything other than rendering commercial animations. Full list of software they support: **Autodesk 3ds Max Vray - Mental Ray - finalRender - Maxwell Render - Vue xStream - Brazil r/s - scanline - Maxon Cinema 4D Vray - Advanced Render - finalRender - Maxwell Render - Vue xStream - Standard Render - Autodesk Maya Mental Ray - finalRender - Maxwell Render - Vue xStream - Software Render - Softimage XSI Mental Ray - Vue xStream - Maxwell Render - Luxology modo Standard Render - Newtek Lightwave 3D Maxwell Render - Vue xStream - Standard Render - Blender 3D Standard Render - YafRay - Standalone Software Mental Ray - Maxwell Render - Vue Infinite -**

Thanks Alan

And of course, representatives of any other trade like to see themselves in a similar light. Only difference may be that they make smaller things which not necessarily obtrude in others sights unavoidably.

Try this with your children solo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ahg6qcgoay4 I use it with my students, makes them think about how much notice they take of the world around