I need to see the sun/shade patterns on my house and garden models, so I geo-locate my model using the co-ordinates from Google Maps. I do this by finding the correct location in Maps and ‘right click’ to copy co-ordinates, then paste these into the Latitude and Longtitude boxes under ‘Model Info’ - Sketchup seems to convert the decimal coordinates into Lat/Log
The problem is that I can see the sun/shade patterns still aren’t quite right - the sun’s path doesn’t appear to be in the expected position for the location. Am I using the google co-ordinates correctly? Any help appreciated, thank you…
Ah yes, I think you might have it. I assumed that the empty model space has no origin until you give it one, therefore I had thought that Geolocating it would be enough, but I see now that the co-ordinates don’t actually tell Sketchup which way the model is facing. I’ve now used Solar North tool to do that - getting more accurate results - thank you!
Keep in mind that when you use the Geolocate function it will give you the map of your site so you can orient your structure correctly.
Putting in the coordinates manually doesn’t give you that map to follow, so you need to manually orient the building.
Yes - great tip thank you. I’ve always struggled with the map resolution being virtually illegible but I’ve worked out how to improve that now. Thank you! A quick question then that relates to this - should I update the Sketchup origin axes to match North, or just move the model?
Might be important to note that geo-location terrain and images do not come from Google Earth. Google’s terms of use prohibit the use of their data in the way it is used in SketchUp. It comes from different sources now. That said, north will be set automatically when the geo-location imagery and terrain is inserted. The default orientation of the axes and origin will have the solid green axis aligned with north. Even if you don’t want the imagery or terrain in your model, the simple way to set north would be to use the geo-location feature and then just delete the resulting groups and materials.
Thanks @DaveR, that’s good to know. Sometimes I use DWG survey data which isnormally (although not always) oriented to North - in which case I the modelling is correctly orientated. It’s when I model (without a survey) from scratch and then realised I should have figured out my compass points first…! I then add in the geolocation and realise they don’t line up. But you’re right - a great idea to pull in the geo image first and then just turn that tab off so not visible. Thank you!
Might not hurt to do that even if you do get the survey data as a DWG. It could be useful for getting a handle on how things lie. The survey data is likely to be more precise but having a frame of reference is always a good thing.
You could turn off the tags for the location snapshot and terrain but if you won’t need them anyway, better to unlock them so they can be deleted and then do a quick Purge Unused.