SketchUp and Autism

SketchUp
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@Ferdia I will respond to your questions here as the thread you posted in was to introduce yourself only.

In 2007, we founded Project Spectrum to give people with autism the opportunity to express their creativity and develop a life skill using SketchUp. Today, we’re excited to deepen our commitment through the creation of an internship on our team, specifically designated for a person on the autism spectrum.

We aim to provide a meaningful employment opportunity where, by virtue of the participant disclosing an autism diagnosis, our team learns to better understand and cater to the unique challenges presented by working autistic individuals, while the deepening the participant’s knowledge of SketchUp and teaching the critical “soft skills” required to work in a modern office environment.

Project Spectrum was first developed by the SketchUp Team at Google to help people with autism take advantage of their visual and spatial gifts.

Now, here at Trimble, we are excited to be a part of the Boulder Valley iSTAR project will establish the foundation for a vocational training program that prepares secondary school students for employment in high-tech industries such as IT/software, construction design and architecture. The program is community based and interdisciplinary. Our goal is to develop an interdisciplinary, longitudinal, replicable model that integrates education, vocational training, transition and community participation for young adults with ASD.

This is very exciting and I am so glad you reached out to us! Trimble SketchUp is actually getting involved with helping folks who fall on the Autistic Spectrum and are Neurodiverse. We have some exciting things to come, so please stay updated and like our Facebook page around that, click here!

Trimble SketchUp has started a program called Project Spectrum: SketchUp and Autism - Strengths of Autism shine through in 3D. Project Spectrum was created to give people with autism the opportunity to express their creativity and develop a life skill using Trimble SketchUp 3D modeling software.

We are also a part of the Boulder Valley iSTAR project that will establish the foundation for a vocational training program that prepares secondary school students for employment in high-tech industries such as IT/software, construction design and architecture.

The program is community based and interdisciplinary. Our goal is to develop an interdisciplinary, longitudinal, replicable model that integrates education, vocational training, transition and community participation for young adults with ASD.

We do not have curriculum specific for Neurodiverse people, but are working on it and working with partners who do. We have also worked with students in the past: here is a link to the 3D Warehouse page where all the students with ASD uploaded their SketchUp designs. I would suggest that he creates a 3D Warehouse account and shares his designs on there.

For right now, some of our general beginner tutorials and pages should work:

Also, I would have him explore some of our case studies, in particular video games and film / stage.

Basecamp is a conference that SketchUp hosts and puts together every other year. Our next Basecamp will be next year summer time.

Please reach out to me with any questions or comments :slight_smile:

Cheers!
AlexB

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Check out this story we received from the ASD Community:


“For over two years now, Hidden Wings student JJ Ballantine has been working with a 3D modeling computer program called SketchUp to create beautiful works of art that blend geometric and organic design elements. While he has chosen to implement this software to make very intricate, meditative mandalas, SketchUp is commonly used for a wide range of drawing applications for architectural design, interior design, civil and mechanical engineering, film, and video game design. His mastery of the program has even allowed him to teach his own SketchUp class at Hidden Wings this semester.”

Please follow the link to view JJ’s entire gallery:
http://hiddenwings.org/jj-ballantine/

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I’ve not seen this topic and created another one with an answer, to prevent the double post, I will delete the other one with this answer:

You can have a look at these models as a start:

I think the simplest method for sharing SketchUp models is the 3D warehouse (same link as before).

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Thank you so much, lots there to start looking through, very exciting to see that we’re not re-inventing the wheel here and that SketchUp has already a track record with ASD, so excited XX

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Ferdia’s latest work in progress - Hideout from Licence to Kill (007 James Bond)!

1916×814 143 KB

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