Paul Lee, a Cork-based architect, and CEO of Viewsion Virtual Environments has worked in digital modeling, architecture, product design, and education for many years. With his background and expert knowledge in SketchUp, he always wanted to create an engaging way to interact with his city’s history and culture using digital tools. We sit down with Paul and talk about how he used SketchUp to recreate Cork, Ireland in 3D.
Tell us about your recent project.
I’ve always been passionate about my hometown of Cork, Ireland and I wanted a way to show it off and help build an engaging experience with it. This led me to kick off the project of creating an intricate 3D model of the entire city.
The first challenge was to create a 3D model of the city center, which meant building a 1 kilometer-radius city model... a huge task. I could have done it all myself, but because I'm a teacher, I gathered together students who needed work experience and I taught them how to create 3D digital models. I tried to make this learning experience fun by having the students collaborate with each other on the final model. Each student modeled a different part of the city, and at the end, we pulled it all together into one model.
Different views and sections of the historic Cork, Ireland in SketchUp.
What was the typical SketchUp workflow for you and your students? How long did it take to complete?
