Hi all,
With full acknowledgement that this is an incredibly broad question / topic that’s going to lead to a wide range of responses, we’re curious to hear from all of you about what, in your opinion, makes a great 3D Warehouse product model?
I’ll give a bit more background.
As you’ve probably noticed, the 3D Warehouse has started featuring more models from manufacturers. Going forward, we want to make sure manufacturers have feedback from us and also from the community so that they build out the .SKP version of their product catalog correctly. (Note: We’ve also launched a ‘3D Warehouse Content Developer’ network if manufacturers would prefer to hire service partners to get their products modeled and published to 3D Warehouse by SketchUp experts.) So the core of what we’re asking for feedback on is: what needs to be right when you, as a user, download one of these model from 3D Warehouse. What makes it useful in your design process?
As a starting point, I’ll throw out some of the things that we believe. For a model uploaded to 3D Warehouse to be useful it must, at a minimum, meet the following criteria:
The file name is correct / useful / logical.
The component name(s) are correct / useful / logical.
The insertion point is correct
The axis is correct
The appropriate template has been chosen
The units are correct
The labels are spelled correctly and complete, and the leader lines are correct
The file is correctly organized around groups and components and layers
If it’s a Dynamic Component, it has useful options visible to the user and the correct logo, if applicable
Model credits are applied
Face orientation is correct
Textures are correctly applied and aren’t too large
It’s an appropriate file size.
‘Purge unused’ is selected prior to upload to get rid of extraneous textures and geometry
The LOD (level of detail) is correct for its use case
The scale is correct for the type of object
Of course, this criteria only leads to a long list of questions:
- What is the best naming convention for files?
- What is the correct insertion point / does it differ based on the type of product?
- What is the best template for a product model?
- What is the best way to organize a model with groups, components and layers?
- What is the correct way to texture a model, and how large should the image files be?
- What is an appropriate file size for a component? How would you define a ‘low-poly’ model?
- What is the best way to “stage” a model for 3D Warehouse?
As a way of structuring this conversation, let us know if you think we’re missing a bullet point in first section above, or if you think one is incorrect. Alternatively, feel free to add a definition for one of the questions, (e.g., what is the best way to organize a model with groups, components and layers?), in the second section.
We and the manufacturers appreciate your feedback and hope this leads to better 3D Warehouse models for all of you to use.
Thanks!
-
Chris