A SketchUp user posts an open letter to the SketchUp forums, lamenting @Last’s “sellout”. It generates a passionate debate. The main thrust of the complaint is that the vast majority of such acquisitions end up badly for the application and its user base, even if it enriches the core developers and the acquiror. Perhaps, perhaps not, but I don’t think anyone is arguing that this has been the case for Keyhole in the year it’s been with Google. So Perhaps Google should be the measure of such things, not Microsoft (and its Geotango acquisition, for example, where it simply took the product off the market.)

I’d be tempted to gloat that the SketchUp user’s loss is the Google Earth user’s gain, but this doesn’t have to be a zero-sum game, so mercantilist notions don’t necessarily apply here: There is no reason why work on SketchUp 6 can’t continue while bits of its engine are copied over to Google Earth. (Imagine what you might do with SketchUp-like Ruby scripts running inside Google Earth for objects, layers and data…).

Not exactly a slow news week this week, what with Google Mars, Google SketchUp and Bentley MicroStation getting KML savvy. Playing catch-up:

• Get Google Earth calling cards, made in Switzerland (via Google Earth Blog).
• Bad Astronomy blog points to a list of NASA open source software. World Wind is but one horse in a large stable.
• Adena Schutzberg meta-reports on Bentley’s briefing to reporters. She also notes there is a KML exporter for competitor AutoDesk’s AutoCAD, Earth Connector.
• Valleywag alludes to “drama” and layoffs surrounding the SketchUp purchase, but writes “I’m gonna need some corroboration before I run it.” Excuse me Valleywag, but you just have. That’s not meta-reporting, that’s reporting.
• Trawling through Ogle Earth’s comments now: Ruby programmers who enjoy GIS should know about GeoRuby. (Thanks, Barry)
• Another sightseeing site: Google Earth Cool Places. (It will be interesting to see if any of these sites manages to differentiate themselves.)
• Two weeks ago Ogle Earth blogged archtecture magazine Domus introducing placemarks pinpointing buildings covered in the magazine, but wished there were actual models included of the buildings in the issue. ZNO to the rescue! Aurland Lookout, Norway; Mikimoto store, Tokyo. Really nice.

As alluded to yesterday by Martyn Day, Bentley Systems have now announced support for Google Earth in the latest release of their flagship CAD authoring application, MicroStation V8 XM Edition.

Read the press release. All the information concerning Google Earth and Bentley is reachable from this start page on their site.

Bentley System’s products are used in the design of infrastructure, pretty much everywhere — roads, bridges and facilities, ports… (US) governmental agencies are big users, and not surprisingly MicroStation provides industrial strength CAD: The list price for the new V8 XM is $4,795.00 with an annual maintenance of $725.

So it’s not likely to end up on my desktop anytime soon. But what we can hope for is that the huge inventory of existing virtual infrastructure made with MicroStation will now begin populating Google Earth. The path has definitely been cleared. Imagine if Google were to make some of it available in a base layer…

Bentley highlights some of the nicer touches that the conversion tool manages to pull off:

• Views inside MicroStation can become saved views inside Google Earth
• Linked documents linked from inside MicroStation (PDF floorplans, say) can be converted to placemarks in Google Earth with links to the files.
• MicroStation objects that already have coordinates can be placed automatically in Google Earth.
• Layers in MicroStation become layers in Google Earth, and if the Microstation file contains hi-res imagery of the surrounding area (as it apparently often does), you can see this as an overlay as well.

You can download a KMZ file of Bentley’s campus in Exton, Penssylvania, if you want to see these features in action. There is also a “making of” screencast, but to see either you will need to register.

[Update 21:18 UTC: Okay, it’s time for me to learn a new acronym. CAD (computer-aided design) doesn’t quite define what MicroStation does, apparently. It’s more specifically AEC-related, as in “architectural, engineering, and construction”. You wouldn’t use MicroStation to design a blender, for example, not even big ones.)

UK’s Martyn Day, a design technology journalist specializing in CAD, has today’s must-read story, involving Bentley Systems’ MicroStation CAD system, SketchUp, and Google. He concludes:

For the [CAD] industry as a whole, which has struggled to promote and ‘assist’ users to move to 3D – the news is that Google owns a great, easy to use 3D creation tool and will distribute it, promote it and invest in it. It appears to be the biggest kick in the backside this industry has ever had. Suddenly 3D models are cool, Google Earth is the platform and Bentley has suddenly been promoted to leading the charge at the professional-end of this new digital geocentric paradigm.

If I read it right, Bentley is the ESRI of CAD:-) Read the whole thing; Martyn’s views are evidently infused with a deep knowledge of the CAD industry. And if you don’t read the whole thing, at least look at his eye candy.

(Bentley was looking for beta testers for its converters to KML last month, blogged here.)

I’m surprised at the surprise with which some are greeting the announcement of SketchUp’s purchase. Conventional Google and search engine blogs are trying not to be befuddled — this is getting way beyond search, and they don’t like it. But even some CAD blogs are scratching their heads.

The Irish are all over this, however (smart people). Geared Up Blog:

What models? You wait! Entire towns will be mapped all over the world, for Google. If everyone maps their village/district/block, can you imagine the resource this would create? Woah.

EirePreneur even suggested that Google buy Sketchup in July last year:

If Google bought it and gave it away as it did with Picasa it could easily recruit a huge team of volunteer 3D modellers to fill in the gaps on Google Earth. I for one would happily create a ‘freehand’ model of my local town. Wouldn’t you?

Exactly. The main thesis sustaining this blog is that Google Earth is a next-generation browser. It’s a social tool, above all, with a mission to mirror the real world. Just as HTML browsers have had content built for them with successively more sophisticated authoring tools, so too Google Earth needs to kick-start the virtuous circle that will propel geobrowsing.

Additionally, the idea of the geobrowser is predicated on the notion that much of what is found on the internet can in fact be tied to a specific place on Earth, and that we are more used to navigating physical spaces like Earth than abstract spaces like the internet (not surprising, considering that we’ve had a 4,000-generation head start with the former over the latter.) Until now, we’ve made do with the abstraction of the internet because we hadn’t yet reached the technological tipping point that made virtual Earths a feasible mass phenomenon. (The two are not really ‘worlds apart’, though. Think IP = geographic coordinate pair, web URL = street address.) Soon, we’ll have two snugly interlocking metaphors for browsing humanity’s collected knowledge: topic and place. Internet and Earth.

Or maybe the two teams just got along really well and Google had some spare cash…

A food processor threatens Boulder

Blender (KMZ) to the rescue. (What?)

I have no CAD skills. I can’t draw. Fortunately SketchUp has all sorts of predefined components you can download and mutilate. Scale them up, export them to Google Earth (like so), and you have your instant dadaist horror montage. This is ridiculously easy. Bad, but easy.

(BTW, SketchUp supports materials. I wonder if this means we can expect support for surface mapping in Google Earth soon.)

Google buys @Last, makers of SketchUp, a 3D authoring tool that’s had glowing reviews for its ease of use and which has been featured on this blog before. (Sept 9: “Sketchup and Google snuggle up” (which is where the affair must have started); Sept 12: List of authoring tools; Oct 12: Plugin for Google Earth PC released; Jan 12: Plugin for Google EarthMac released).

All the available news is up on SketchUp’s website, [and you can read Jeff Martin, SketchUp’s Product Marketing Manager, blog the news on Google’s official blog.] What follows is punditry:-)

Burning questions for which there aren’t answers yet: Will SketchUp be integrated into Google Earth or continue to exist as a separate application? What will the pricing be like? (Currently it’s ‚Ǩ469/$495 (what is it in US dollars, BTW? I can’t tell from Sweden.)) Will Google make a subset of the tools free, much like what it did when it bought Keyhole’s Earth and relaunched a pay product as a free version with upgrades to Plus and Pro?

SketchUp has a Mac version too, which makes it a bit of a rarity in the CAD world. This of course mean that Google can continue to offer feature parity for whatever Google Earth/Sketchup solution it comes out with.

It’s occured to me that Google bought something more than a virtual construction set. Sketchup also supports a deft set of file formats. From the readme:

SketchUp supports import of vector files such as AutoCAD 2006, 2005, 2004, 2002, and earlier DWG and DXF files as well as 3DS and DEM files. SketchUp also imports image files such as BMP, JPEG, PNG, TIFF, and TGA. SketchUp exports DWG and DXF from release 12 to 2006 as well as 3D Studio .3DS, VRML, and OBJ. Raster file exports include the Piranesi Epix formats in addition to the above image file formats. For 2D vector applications, SketchUp exports .EPS and PDF. For animators, SketchUp for Windows exports AVI while SketchUp for Mac OS X exports QuickTime.

BTW, you can download a free trial of SketchUp that gives you 8 hours of evaluation usage and a comprehensive 3D tutorial. You might as well get started, as you _will_ be using this software before long to populate Google’s Earth.

[Update 17:48 UTC: Google now also gains a ESRI Shapefile importer and the ability to export Sketchup Files as 3D objects and symbology for some ArcGIS products using these plugins.]