Update

Thanks for some of the emails. I haven't disappeared. I've been very busy with my job so I haven't had much time for my hobby. Keep an eye though and check in to see how things are going. But for now it's work time.

Ground Floor - Stairs to Sub-Basement

Completed sub-basement stairways as seen from one level below the ground floor. This was a monumentally difficult component to reproduce. It's always difficult to keep the face/edge count to a minimum when you have so many curves flowing on every axis.


And a couple of other shots from different angles.

Ground Floor - Stairs to Sub-Basement

Partially completed stairs to sub-basement.

Ground Floor - Ceiling

Needing to put in the Ground Floor ceiling which is also the floor for the State Floor.

Ground Floor - Windows

Finished Ground Floor windows attached to an unpainted exterior. Here we see the windows without the decorative grillwork. That will come later to a handful of the windows.

Sketchup Tip #3 - Components

I've been asked about how it is that I build some components. In this case I'm going to use the Residence Ground Floor windows as an example.

In this photo we see the diagram of the window being applied to a panel:









In this next photo I've pushed the actual window area so that it's recessed about ten inches:









It's always better to keep the number of lines and surfaces to a minimum. And since many objects in life are symmetrical it saves computer memory and time by only building half the component as seen here:









Then I take some of the finer detail and surfaces and expand them outward:









I then insert glass:










Now I define the half portion as a component and copy, paste it, then flip it or make a "mirror image" of it:









And here we see the two halves of the window fused together:









As a single window it uses up 108k. And when I copy and paste it 21 more times, the total memory for all 22 windows is only 117k. So what you're seeing is not 22 objects, but 1 with 21 carbon-copies:

Ground Floor - Office & Hall

Partially completed Ground Floor Office and Hall