Thanks for the links James,

The first one looks very good, I'll contact them. They are the first independant courses I've seen in the UK that are accredited by Google. The other Sketchup courses that I have come across have all cost about £200 a day for a fundamental course provided by a trainer with no formal accreditation or qualifications in the subject so therefore unable to issue a certificate of any worth.
The UK Google SU office in Wembley, London seems to be totally redundant, they were running courses a year or so ago but it all seems to have gone quiet.

I'm trying out ProgeCad, really the same as AutoCAD, crashes like AutoCAD too!

Boo, ideally we need accreditation from a recognised educational authority that quality assess courses. That is what really carries weight on a resume as Tobobo requires.

Aargh! Cad just crashed on me! hadn't saved!

Gaieus I'd love to do it, I taught AutoCad for about a year, but not really relevant to SU.

I've wanted this for a long time! I think there were one or two SU one day courses ran in the UK by @Last pre Google.They ran it London and Leeds. At the time I couldn't afford it, I thought the price was steep for just one day. If there isn't a course out there, couldn't we try to write our own course and get it accredited by an official examining body?

and they designed it in sketchup

http://www.instructables.com/id/E16Y5T8F22U9YWA/

This is ingenious! But seriously bizarre

Dylan

I've not read all of this thread yet so I'm probably not up to speed, but to build my website I used moonfruit. http://www.moonfruit.com/ It is basically flash templates that you can do virtually anything you want with but you don't need to know any flash or html. I've built a few sites with it. You can build a site for free if you don't mind having adverts. I paid £50 for two years - that is enough bandwidth to build five sites. You can build blogs and forums with moonfruit too.

Jon

LOL Ross, a smart choice.

Thanks

I haven't downloaded Kt 2008 yet, I'll check it out.

Congratulations!

I have no issue with carrying flowers if I buy them for my girlfriend, I've never really understood why some men would feel daft carrying a plant.

Good article Solo.

I use dreamlinux on my old laptop, it was easy to install and cost me nothing. It installed with Blender, Gimpshop, Inkscape and a few other design apps. I've added Cycas for cad work and would have to say it's a very nice lean system. Open Office is excellent too. I've had no problems transfering files to windows or commercial programs.

There seems to be plenty more 3d/cad apps in development for linux at the moment:

http://archimedes.incubadora.fapesp.br/portal/project/archimedes-project/
http://avocado-cad.sourceforge.net/
http://www.octree.de/

This is a controversial article about a design lecturer who switched all his design students from OSX to Ubuntu and replaced all the courses proprietry software with open source alternatives. It makes for a good read, and the following comments raise some good arguments for and against.

(www.linux.com)

Food. Heart shaped food.

Have you seen the movie Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon? They move really gracefully like that with special effects. It would be amazing to make an action film with those base jumpers. But I think the insurance would be probably be very expensive!

SU aside, I think this is the best thread we have had so far (this and maybe the fun little game). I'm all for being happy!

My girlfriend is great, just started living together.

I like running at dawn, try to do it daily, I'm no athlete but it makes me feel healthy and chilled out. The picture below is just one that I have captured on my phone at that time of day. The building in the background is the Deep, the only submarium in Europe designed by the architect Terry Farrel.

My cat Ginger, is fantastic too. He is very intelligent, possibly an evil genius if he had opposable thumbs.

My new found passion is the shed I've just built for my mountain bikes. I can't explain it. Build a shed if you haven't done it before.

Also I like growing vegetables, we have an allotment near our home. Mainly growing weeds at the moment though.

Lastly and not least, recently there was a major flood in my city, two thirds of all houses were flooded, but everybody pulled together and actually it was quite a novelty. Nothing better than seeing a man canoe past the local pizza shop.

Thanks for the links Mike.

The price is already coming down then. I'm very interested in the prospects of having diy 3d printers but the RapRep project seems still quite rudimentary The fabbers seem to be a bit further on. I've downloaded a free version of Pepakura, a free "model unfolder". Interesting.

http://www.tamasoft.co.jp/pepakura-en/

Just to make it clear, I don't want to make a gun! Ok so it looks like you couldn't anyway. But the future for real 3d output is amazing even if this stuff is in its infancy. Architecturally I think this could revive model making,

302 Found

(forums.reprap.org)

Above is a link to an interesting, if a little long, forum discussion on the pros, cons and practicalities of building your own 3D printer and some views on the ramifications of mass roll out of these devices.
There is a great quote; "put your feet up Santa, the christmas machine is coming!"
Also they propose the idea of Napster style piracy issues to do with downloading and printing, for instance, toys.
My immediate concern is that criminals could download blueprints for a handgun or other weapon and print out the parts? But a crime spree shouldn't stand in the way of innovation! I want one.

I'd be very interested to know if anybody has home built a 3d printer capable of architectural model making.

Has this guy modelled Falling Water for anything in particular, or is it just a portfolio piece; I'm suspecting it's the latter. I'm thinking perhaps he is angling his services more at reconstruction for heritage reasons, maybe a museum display or the History Channel.

Does he actually have architectural or design based clients? I would love his skills, but are there any significant commercial benefit for an architectural client (unless we are talking something on the scale of a new Olympic arena) to spend that much money on presentation? Where I live, developers are very tight with there money. The money goes on the development. Visualisation is kept to a minimum.