Buildings dimensions

latvian

Hello,

I am totally noob in Google Sketchup. I have a school project which is to create a 3D model of a building of my choice and then to export that model to Google Earth/Maps.

How to get detailed dimensions of popular buildings or landmarks so that they help me building a model? Let's say that I want to build a 3D model of the Eiffel tower, how do I get the dimensions for that?


Thank you in advance.

//Ammar

easterislandnick

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=eiffel+tower+blueprints&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=CY-5UdT9DKzE4gTs6IAo&ved=0CC8QsAQ&biw=1173&bih=594#facrc=_

Er..its not hard

latvian

easterislandnick wrote: »

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=eiffel+tower+blueprints&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=CY-5UdT9DKzE4gTs6IAo&ved=0CC8QsAQ&biw=1173&bih=594#facrc=_

Er..its not hard

Thanks for the help. Lol that was simple I know.

Michael Knubben

lol

easterislandnick

Seriously though dimensions are hard. If I was making the Arc De Triumph I would look at google maps to figure out its foot print size, from that I could look at a photo and work out the height from the width (if it's 50m wide and it's 1.25x higher than it is wide then it is 62.5m high).

Measure real word windows and doors and get a feel for the size of thing like lamp posts in real life. Most can be judged from how many people they are high (a person is about 1.8m).

Mr Whippy

Google is accurate ish, but ideally you want to use some smarter techniques.

Take a look at photo matching techniques, build irrespective of scale but get the proportions perfect.

Then just scale at the end to real world scale requirements.

A good way to do this (getting a bit heavier now) is to also model in some elements that are in the distance but still present in photos. They can just be helper points that line up in 3D space.

Now you can use the aerial image and adjust the scale so these points lay in the correct locations. By covering a larger area by many factors the scale accuracy is then increased many factors...


Also worth trying some photogrammetry approaches too, especially if you can get to the place and get your own source imagery/video.

You can get some pretty good results via that process. If you can take along a tape measure and get a prominent and fairly large feature accurately measured too then accuracy will be excellent!



Throw up some pics any way, I'm interested in what you have decided to model and how far along you are

Dave