thanks for all the helping abswers

I'll let you know, where I'll get

first of all: Thanks a lot for the link, it worked! really don't know, what was wrong all day
I'll check out the links you gave; thanks for those

as to 3.) The terrain I want to do won't be for GE, but for just for myself. So I guess I'll put all those trees in there as well ... sometime...

and now I wonder, if GE really shows an image of my house??? Actually I can't even imagine, that it will show an image of my village... I just don't think that that corner of Austria is very well covered. Well I'll knowby tomorrow.
Thanks for your help so far!

Those images are amazing! Could you post your "Before"-pics, as they were originally in sketchup? I would like to see the difference.

How did you put the clothes and cushions in?

1.) If I want to do a model of a real building e.g. the local primary school, the town hall or some hotel, where or how do I get the "measurements" or the floorplans? Is there a copyright-issue?

2.) If I want to put the finished model on Google Earth... How do I get the exact coordinates? With my own GSM-thingybob or what?

3.) I would also like to do my own house (I've got the floorplans and all) - so no prob, but I would also like to model my entire plot of land (1,9 acres) including all structures (shed, wells, coop..) and landscape features. So where or how do I get the elevation contour lines (isohypses) - part of my land ( behind the house) is quite steep, so if I want to do a realistic representation of my plot, I'd have to include that as well

PS: btw: Is there any known download problem with Google earth at the moment? I can't seem to be able to download it (tried a few times today) all I get is a blank page with some code on the top end...

@ azuby okay, da komm ich sicher noch drauf zurück

I am still exploring SU, reading the handbook and searching the fora - I don't want to ask questions, that have been asked a million times nefore

...and my kids were the ones that actually drew my attention to SU - they did already some nice models - robots, fantasycastles etc.. - And what I like most is the fast learning curve with SU. Within minutes you can get things done and see some success. Years ago my sister-in-law, who is an architect let me try one of her architectural CAD-programs (at the time it cost some 15000 $) and I didn't get nowhere
SU seems ideal for people like me with little time, who want to see results fast.

I can see that already It is 1am here and .... I'm probably gonna stay another 3 hours in front of the PC....

Hello from Austria!

I'm 44,m and live in Payerbach/Austria (originally from Vienna)

I found SketchUp just 3 days ago and I am very impressed by the program, more impressed, what models me and my 2 sons (8,10) already could do and even more impressed,what others can do with sketchup!

After we've learned a bit more, we would first like to do some rooms of our house, later the entire house. A long term vision is to do a few buildings in Payerbach to include in Google Earth.

cu and expect lots of questions

Vargas