CAD Timeline/Map - Part 1CAD Timeline/Map - Part 2  There are many possibilities for using SketchUp to create timelines and maps, or combined timeline/maps. SketchUp gives you three dimensions to present in, and really a 4th if you count walkthroughs of a model. Most of us are so used to creating two dimensional presentations that it can take a while to get a handle on working in 3-D. One big issue that takes getting used to is scale. Because it is so easy to zoom in and out in SketchUp there is no need to keep all images and text at the same scale. Different parts of the presentation can be at significantly different scales. For instance, the picture of Frank Lloyd Wright and the images of his buildings are on two different scales in the image below. I suppose you could look at the use of Wright's picture as being like one of the giant banners that are sometimes hung from the front of museums. Those banners are at a very different scale from the exhibits they are advertising. Items in the exhibit may in turn have detailed information on display surfaces next to particular artifacts. The museum visitor needs to move close to these surfaces in order to see the information displayed at a small scale. In the model whose image is shown below it would be easy to have detailed information about each of the buildings on display surfaces next to the images. In a museum the visitor moves closer or farther to change the scale of information being attended to. In SketchUp the user virtually moves the model closer or farther to change scale.
 (All images in the model but one are from Wikipedia. The Fallingwater image is from Flickr and is shared with a collaborative commons license.) In SketchUp it is possible to add one model to another. In the image below, the model shown above, has been added into a second model that has a grid with one dimension representing time and the other the latitude where the architect did most of his or her work. This other dimension could represent things like the style of architecture, the nationality of the architect, or importance of the architect. There is no one correct design. Sketchup can facilitate a group project by allowing individuals to work on a component (like the Wright timeline) which is then incorporated into a larger project which somehow relates the individually produced components. Careful planning is necessary by the teacher if this is to work well. Some specifications of the components (such as scale) should be carefully predetermined so that the components will work well together in the final project. This can be facilitated by distributing a template to students. For more on the timeline template used here see the box below.
 About the Timeline Model Shown Here
| The box on which the images sit is (in SketchUp land) 10' x 6' (a golden section) by 92'. 92 because each foot in length represents a year in Wright's life. The building images are kept small so that they don't obscure each other. It took me quite a while to settle on this approach but I like it because things don't get in each other's way. In this example I would keep the width of all building images around 2'. Images should be placed so that it is easy to navigate between them. This is an art, not a science, and practice will be needed. All the images are captioned using SketchUp's text tool. The captions are all placed in a layer called text so that they can be shown or hidden. Layers are included when one model is imported into another so in the merged group project you will also be able to hide and show the text captions. Caption images could also be used. Wright's name and birth and death years is a caption image. |
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