Igloo studios featuring sequences design ::the elkhart initiative

Igloo Studios, along with our friends and collaborators - Sequences recently entered a design competition together. Matty Bennet, of Sequences, really powered the whole thing with our very own Nate Logston helped visualize the idea.

The contest is hosted by Dwell and has been titled: Innovate It!

We like to work on projects like these that expand our thinking and creativity, and give us a chance to have fun working with our partners. Sure it would be great to be selected, but we believe that the process is the best part. For whatever it is worth, here's a brief overview of our submission:

Selected Relic :: The Pop-Up Camper

matty bennett :: sequences design nate logston :: igloo studios

In the words of Matty: "This competition came across my desk for the first time 03.27.09. Of course we misread the directions, went ahead and completely developed a special product. So we have opted to include our renderings and such to maybe persuade your decision of the three selections.

The Reason :: We believe as homegrown men of Indiana world of technology improvements in racing and autos have seen our state fall to its knees. The once RV motor capitol of the world; Elkhart, Indiana has seen some better days. Thanks to Obama coming to Elkhart their is a renewed interest in thrusting the RV/ personal camping industry forward. Rebates from the govt. are not nearly enough. Being involved in the New INdustrialists movement has seen this coming. 30 years of development, the in house designers have only changed the upholstery.
Completely reliant on destination electrical. Entirely too large, wasting time and precious space, what you take in is all you have. No thanks.



Our Solution :: Small 4’x4’ box by 1 foot thick, 20 inch diameter wheels capable of being daisy chained together, scooters, bicycles, pulled by humans, and autos [with adapters]. Upon moving axles spinning producing and collecting in cells housed within, solar panels inset protector adding to reserves. Once to site remove wheels [quick release] set aside, we will back to those. Pull out some stabilizers, set upright, pull on top, releases telescopes out to 8’ tall. The solar panels flap out for cover and collecting. Maybe a graded dew/ precip collector tray that leads to a cistern that can be filled before you leave home or put faith in mother nature. Once in the cistern gravity leads to faucets over a swivel out sink basin/removable and retractable exterior rainmaker head for rinsing off. A pull down six foot bed and modular cushions. Additional flap down work surface with collected LED panel for night time activities, it also pops out and can be used around camp. An electric two burner unit/ 12 pack cooler. Awning structure attaches, made of solarized fabric panels with dew collection pockets around perimeter of awnings. Back to the wheels, jump up on the flip out step extend your towers install the louvered pinwheel like structures to wheels and blow. Many add ons would be available. Introducing the NidoFab Adventure Nest, Everything but the food and the toilet. This is bigger than us, just as studio 804 has done after the storms in Kansas, we feel responsible to provide a solution via this competition. Thank you."

Upcoming Event: We're speaking at Where 2.0

We were honored to be recently selected by the good folks at O'Reilly to deliver a pair of presentations at the upcoming Where 2.0 Conference in San Jose, CA. The conference, which focuses on "Becoming Location Aware", will take place May 19-21.

Our first presentation will take place at 11am on May 19th. Our CEO Alex Oliver will be giving a talk titled Translating Geo-Web Efficiency into Real-World Sustainability. In the presentation, Alex plans to cover some case study projects where technologists can leverage digital data sets to give architects, builders and designers better tools and education for building a more environmentally friendly world.

Our second presentation will take place later that day at 4:30pm. Our President Mike Tadros will conduct a 1 hour class titled Building Our World With Sketchup. During the class, attendees will learn more about how to leverage location inside and outside of SketchUp, including importing and exporting location-based data from Google Earth.

Come see us for one or both of our presentations. We've arranged for you to get 25% off your Where 2.0 registration when you enter this code: WHR09FSP. Sign up here. If you plan to come, we'd love to meet you! Email us at info@go-2-school.com and we'll plan to catch-up at the show.

A letter from the guy on the videos

Howdy Strangers,

Our eskimos have been busy here at Igloo HQ this winter, gearing up to launch a series of new products and updates for School - our software training and consulting division which focuses primarily on SketchUp and Google Earth training. I just wanted to take a couple minutes to recognize the invaluable role that our clients and customers have played throughout the course of our development as a company.

To everyone of you who have supported us in our efforts to pursue our passion for educating people around the world about this funky little program called SketchUp, we really appreciate the role that you play in making our dream a reality.   

We started teaching SketchUp for @Last Software back in early 2004, and put out our very first SketchUp training DVD back in '05. In early 2008 we achieved another milestone when School was officially deemed a Google Authorized Training Center. Becoming an ATC was something we've always wanted to do, but the last 8 months have taught us that organizing a country-wide live training effort can be quite a handfull! Still we've continued to grow and improve each month. We're incredibly proud of the fact that over the past year, our band of misfit SketchUp geniuses have disseminated their priceless wisdom to over 3000 SketchUp users in over 20 cities across the country. 

Whether you're someone that we've had the pleasure to meet in person at one of our live classes, or whether you've watched our DVDs, or watched our online video tutorials, or if you were one of the 1500 people who have subscribed to our YouTube channel, or the 10,000 people who have subscribed to our podcasts on iTunes or whether you became a fan of ours on facebook.

THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU!!!!

When we first sat our scrawny butts in front of a camera, we honestly hoped that someone out there would watch our stuff and benefit from the goop that dribbled out of our brains, but never really imagined that our little rinky dink productions about SketchUp would reach so many people. Our podcasts have been watched nearly 2,000,000 times by over 30,000 people in over 50 countries around the world. I'm not sure, but I think that means we're almost legitimate internet celebrities. I'm gonna have to do some research on that. Maybe even get myself a new t-Shirt. 

Thank you to everyone who's ever complained. It made us better. Thank you to everyone who said thank you, It gave us hope that we were getting better. And thank you to everyone who took a chance on our little experiment. We're really looking forward to all the exciting things that we're working on for you. We're going to be rolling out a new website and a bunch of new products and courses in 2009. We hope you'll stay tuned as we grow this thing into a legit company and we hope you'll continue to help us make School the most bad-ass resource for learning SKP. 

.SKP 'til we .DIE!!!

Sincerely,

Mike Tadros - and all of your friends at Igloo Studios

Using SketchUp and Google Earth for Complex Data Visualization

Recently, we were asked by the folks at Google.org to create a few Google SketchUp models as well as an animation for their Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS) team. They were interested to see how SketchUp and Google Earth could be used to help visualize the process of drilling for and harvesting geothermal energy. We're pleased with the results and we're thrilled to see that websites like Treehugger.com have picked up the animation (see it directly below):



From the onset, we recognized that this project would present a great interplay between 3D models of structures such as drilling rigs and powerplants, as well as point cloud data and illustrations of the depth of various layers of the earths surface . Immediately, we were excited by the thought of how compelling SketchUp and Google Earth would be in helping us tackle this sort of visualization. The results make for a far more compelling presentation than one that would have required having to flip through slides of static images and graphs attempting to tell the same story.

Once we located the site in Google Earth, we were able to import topography and satellite imagery into SketchUp as a base for the models. Then we imported a series of CAD files and images reference materials to create models of the drilling rig, power plant, and a model of the Earth's Surface. A big thanks goes out to the folks at Geodynamics - an Australian geothermal energy company that helped out by providing us with a bunch of information which aided us in creating a realistic model for our simulation. 

The trickier part of this project - was figuring out how to take thousands of data points that mapped out a fracture cloud and add them to our 3D model? An integral aspect of our answer to that question is the ruby-driven application enhancement aspect fostered by Ruby developers around the world who greatly contribute to SketchUp's ability to be used seamlessly within a collaborative environment. In our case, we were able to leverage the work of Didier Bur, a talented Ruby developer who had created a ruby script that helps solve the data cloud problem we faced.

While a larger list of Didier's scripts can be found in the Ruby Library Depot, we ended up using his cloud.rb script to import a bunch of data from a CSV file which was given to us by Geodynamics. The CSV file contained measurements of each stimulation event in the geothermal site, including the location, and time of each event that occurred. Using the cloud.rb script, we were able to tell SketchUp to represent each data point as a 3D box. The data was parsed out and imported into separate layers based on the time-stamp info from the CSV file. Then the data from each layer was colored according to a timeline diagram. Ultimately, this strategy allowed us to create an animation entirely within SketchUp that took the timing of the stimulation events into consideration.

Thanks to Google.org for inviting us to participate in this exciting project. It was a great chance to learn more about enhanced geothermal energy production and Google's Develop Renewable Energy Cheaper than Coal initiative. We plan to create an episode of 'The Sketchup Show' soon that outlines more of the details of visualizing this project in SketchUp, so stay tuned for that.

The SketchUp Models for this project are available for download from Google's 3D Warehouse.

Sustainable Industries 2008 Top 10 Green Products

Sustainable Industries released their annual supplemental issue - 2008 Top 10 Green Products. Our Blue Marble Project division is proud to have played a role in the creation of this year's issue by supplying Sustainable Industries with the 3D computer models that were embedded in the downloadable PDF version of the issue. 

The 3D models, which were modeled in SketchUp, can also be downloaded from the Google 3D Warehouse. The 3D PDF (.u3d) models were exported from SketchUp using the RPS 3D PDF Exporter.

Note: In order to see the 3D models that are in the PDF, you'll want to be sure to open the file with Adobe Acrobat Version 8.0+.

 

YouTube Video of Our Google 3D Basecamp Presentation

Some of the videos from Basecamp are starting to go up on YouTube. Here's the vid they shot of our presentation. I was actually a little nervous to give this presentation. It was kind of outside of my usual comfort zone of SketchUp stuff. But it was really fun to have the chance to talk about all the great projects we've got going on at Igloo. Thanks again to Google for putting on a great event and inviting us out there. And thanks to everyone who showed up for our presentation. We were glad that we weren't presenting to an empty room. 

Click Here to check out more videos from the 2008 Google 3D Basecamp. The SketchUp and Green Design presentation was really cool. Hoping to get Peter Ellis on the set for a few SketchUp Show episodes and find out more about the EnergyPlus: Energy Design Plugin (especially once they release a MAC version).

Google SketchUp Basecamp 2008 presentation

Thanks to everyone that attended our Google SketchUp Basecamp 2008 presentation! We've included our slideshow below. Please contact us at info@igloostudios.com with any questions.



For more photos from Google SketchUp Basecamp, check out this SketchUp Photo Blog.