Today, Ismael led the class in modeling the CCB building in Durham, which they had chosen
yesterday. Students started by finding the building (again) in Google Earth. Then, they
imported a piece of Google Earth's map into Sketchup, where they could create the model of
the building. They looked both at satellite imagery and at external pictures to estimate the
dimensions of the building.
They created a shape representing the "foundation" of the building and matched it up with
the satellite image. Next, they "pulled" this object upward to create a three-dimensional
model of the building. They estimated where various parts of the building jutted in and out,
and used mainly the pencil tool and the push/pull tool to add these details.
Finally, they exported the Google Sketchup model back to Google Earth.