SketchUp expert
Areas of Expertise:
- 3d modeling
- geometry
- training
- consulting
- consulting
- speaking
- training
- writing
Biography
Books
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Blog
Bonnie's blog posts are hosted at:
http://3dvinci.blogspot.com/
http://3dvinci.blogspot.com/
November 03 2009
Design competitions are a great way to exercise and show off your modeling skills. Every so often Google hosts a competition with cash prizes, such as the recent shelter design contest, or last year's bridge modeling contest, which I helped judge.But if you're in it for the bragging rights and… read moreOctober 31 2009
This is a little delayed, but I visited the Didax booth last week at NCTM, and found some cool toys. What I took home was a small set of Geofix tiles - a set of interlocking polygons of equal edge length, which can connect to form Platonic and Archimedean solids,… read moreOctober 22 2009
I'm in beautiful Boston, MA today and tomorrow, for the regional meeting of NCTM. This morning, Jon Choate and I gave a talk on 3D geometry with Google SketchUp. We had one of the larger conference rooms (about 300 capacity), and it was standing room only. At some point they… read moreOctober 21 2009
I got this model from a teacher named June Still-Flores, who created these triangular Escher tiles after working through one of our September Projects of the Month.Here's part of what June wrote:I want to thank you for all the information you have about Sketch up. We are a small school… read moreOctober Projects are Ready to "Ship"!
October 14 2009
On October 15th, subscribers to our Projects of the Month will be getting their second batch of projects. (The September projects were described here.)If you haven't signed up yet, here's some incentive to do it soon: the $24 per year price will go up to $36 next month!Here's what's on… read moreNew Math Forum Project: Escher!
October 13 2009
SketchUp + Escher = Skescher?Here's my October project for the Math Forum: creating Escher tiles based on a square. This project appeals to math students, but also kids in art or graphic design classes. I let my own kids loose with this project, and they had a blast (though the… read moreOctober 13 2009
In addition to writing about useful plugins (see here, here, and here), I also like to write about features within SketchUp itself that most people don't know about. The subject of this post is the ever-popular Push/Pull tool, which you can modify with the Ctrl key (PC) or Option key… read moreTeen Center, Designed by Tweens
October 09 2009
Mike Valler works with the Boys & Girls Club of Greater New Bedford, and has been showing his kids how to use SketchUp. Here is the design the kids came up with to fill the space in their new teen center. All of the furniture was designed from scratch, so… read moreWhat a Great Way to Start off the Week
October 05 2009
Willy Felton is a teacher who is using my ModelMetricks and GeomeTricks materials with his students. I blogged about him before - see One Teacher's Opinion.) He sent me a link to this YouTube video he made showing what his students have done:There's nothing like seeing the fruits of your… read moreSeptember 30 2009
A reader named Walter Page sent me an example of what he recently created with Joint Push Pull, a free SketchUp plugin I described last week. Walter created a cylinder with 27 identical raised frets:Here's a quick description of how he did it:The pattern repeats over 5 faces (highlighted below),… read morePhoto in Frame: One Teacher's First Attempt in SketchUp
September 25 2009
I got an email from a tech-ed teacher named "Mrs. V," who told me:I tried your poster lesson for my VERY FIRST try at SketchUp. (Just myself, as a teacher/learner, not with a class.) I attached the drawing. It was fun and generally I had no problems with the directions… read moreSeptember 21 2009
Here's an email I recently got from a teacher:After teaching Geometry for years I have been looking for a way for my students to play with the shapes that are so central to the subject matter. Daniel Pink in a "Whole New Mind" talks about how the skills of the… read moreEssential Plug-In: Joint Push Pull
September 16 2009
I'm trying about once a month to try out and write about a popular SketchUp plug-in. Previous examples are Component Spray and Draw Metal.This time the featured plug-in is called Joint Push Pull. Now that I've used it, I don't know how I lived without it (OK, slight exaggeration).The original… read moreSeptember 15 2009
Thanks to Jon Choate, my co-author on the GeomeTricks books, SketchUp now has its own page on Drexel University's Math Forum. The Math Forum is one of the best-known resources for math teachers, and we're proud we can contribute to this community!These FREE SketchUp materials can be found on http://mathforum.org/sketchup.… read moreSeptember 11 2009
Our first set of SketchUp Projects of the Month is ready to go out, and will be emailed to subscribers next Tuesday, September 15.Here's what we have this month:Escher Triangles: by starting with one equilateral triangle, you'll learn how to create and copy lines and shapes, to make some very… read moreMultimedia
Webcast: Showing Off Your Models: Presentations in Google SketchUp
May 14, 2009
Duration: Approximately 60 minutes. Cost: Free Google SketchUp is a free and powerful 3D modeling application, and it's easy to start right away and quickly create impressive models. But SketchUp has many presentation features that most users don...
