My autistic son's interest on sketchup and can you help?

angy · 3 Jun 2011, 02:23

Greetings from New Zealand

I know nuts about Sketchup but my son does. My son Marcus is autistic and he just love sketchup. I downloaded the apps about 1 year ago and he learnt how to use through youtube. All my son draw is cars, cars and more cars. Although it is not advanced design, but he enjoyed it. The reason he is "good" at it, is because he "visualize" things in 3D. Since he was 4 years old, he draw cars in 3D.

He loves to download from the 3d warehouse where he downloaded the cities and then export cars into the road. He just loved it.

Recently, I downloaded sketchy physics, and he was like on drugs. He was furious that he cannot get his cars moving, but after watching a youtube demostration and some figuring out, he got it. Now it is about cars and sketchyphyics on sketchup

I want to extend his knowledge about sketchup and would like to see how far he can do. last week, I said to him "draw me a windmill, or else, i will delete sketchy physics". He hated that and start designing. However, he failed. He got the design correct, he got the concepts correct, but somehow it does not work. He placed all the hinges in place but when he "press" the play button, the windmill did not turn.

I have 2 requests
a. is it possible that I upload it somewhere and some kind souls can "fix" it to get it working?
b. what other plug in should i download for him to play? Something that you know that helps you to grow your interest and your kind of work.

He has classical autism and is very slow in processing at school. What I want to do, is to grow his interest, and maybe if he is good at it in the future, he can made a career out of it. Thanks for reading and if you can help to answer my two questions, my sincere thanks

Angy

Gaieus · 3 Jun 2011, 02:46

Hi Angy and welcome.

Well, must have been hard - since the "easiest" way would be that your son joins the forums and people help him directly here but I know that this kind of communication would be the hardest.

So at least I hope you also enjoy SketchUp.

If you go to the main index page and look under the "Special interests" forum, we have a Sketchy Physics subforum there. I am sure the folks enthusiastically gearing their models there will be glad to help (I do not use SP so I cannot).

On a side note; Google has some program (and materials) for autistic kids. If you are interested, I can try to look the stuff up.

jhauswirth · 3 Jun 2011, 02:55

Check out-
http://sketchup.google.com/intl/en/spectrum.html
Search for Project Spectrum.

Gaieus · 3 Jun 2011, 02:56

Thanks Jeff!

Angy; still post your issues on SP here as probably this is the only forum for it...

angy · 3 Jun 2011, 03:26

All,

thanks for the reply.

I like to thank Jeff for the google spectrum link. I will show my son on the weekend

I see that I can upload an attachment. I will upload it later. Hopefully someone can solve it for my son's windmill challenge.

angy · 4 Jun 2011, 01:36

here is the windmill that he tried to get it working, but failed

windmill.skp

Gaieus · 4 Jun 2011, 05:36

Angy, as I suggested, please, post in in the SketchyPhysiscs subforum instead. Those members rarely visit any other part of the forums and you could have a much better chance to get help (I myself do not use SP so I cannot help)