SketchOSM - New Editor for 3D Buildings Released

General talk
1

Update 2018-05-14: SketchOSM is now available at the SketchUp Extension Warehouse!

Hi everyone,

My name is Dale and our team developed PlaceMaker, a popular commercial SketchUp plugin that imports 3D geospatial information (including OSM data) and optimizes it for SketchUp users.

I want to introduce a new OSM editor that we have developed for the main purpose of making it easy to add more 3D Buildings to OSM. The editor is a plugin for SketchUp so you need to have SketchUp Make (free) or Pro (2017 or newer) installed in order to use it.

I hope that this editor will serve three main purposes for the OSM community:

  1. Introduce OSM editing to the millions of SketchUp users around the world
  2. Provide a useful tool for existing OSM collaborators to add more 3D buildings to OSM
  3. Increase the number and quality of 3D Buildings in OSM

Please watch the video below to understand how it works:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1PtYiTUIKiE

Features:

  • Compatible with SketchUp 2017+ Make or Pro (Windows Only)

  • Geo-location tool

  • Geo-locate your model and import a satellite image from DigitalGlobe as a reference for tracing buildings

  • Import OSM road centerlines and show existing OSM 3D Buildings for reference

  • Create Simple OSM 3D Buildings

  • Create Multi-Part Complex (Relation) Buildings

  • Parametric tools to edit new buildings

  • Height Tool

  • Roof shape (gable, hip, round, skillion, onion, dome, round, pyramid)

  • Roof Height

  • Building Color

  • Roof Color

  • Edit Building Outline

  • Minimum Building Height

  • Copy Attributes (tags) from one building to another

How to Install

  • Download SketchUp 2017 Make for free. SketchUp Pro 2017 or newer can also be used.

  • Install SketchUp by double-clicking the downloaded installer file.

  • Open the Extension Warehouse from inside SketchUp

  • Search the Warehouse for ‘SketchOSM’ and then install

Basic Usage:

  • Geo-locate your model to select the location you want to create buildings. For best imagery resolution, zoom in to the max level before importing.

  • Use SketchUp built-in tools to trace faces over top of building outlines

  • Open the SketchOSM Dialog (login to OSM first)

  • Select a building outline face and click the ‘Create Buildings’ button

  • Select the new building ‘group’ and adjust the building attributes using settings in the dialog

  • Upload buildings to OSM if desired using the upload button in the dialog.

Please check out our FAQ here and watch the video above before posting feedback:
https://mindsightstudios.com/sketchosm/

Thanks!
Dale

2

Could you add the number of levels to the attributes set?

3

You can add a height attribute to a building with SketchOSM, but not number of levels.

4

That was a feature request, not a question.

Also the tags addr:housenumber and addr:street are important for all map applications. Could you add those attributes as well?

5

We will likely add number of levels, and address tags in the future. Thank you for the feedback!

6

See https://www.reddit.com/r/openstreetmap/comments/88llme/photomatch_on_sketchosm_is_amazing_to_add_new/

Please don’t provide your users access to sources that we are not allowed to / can’t use.

Thank you

7

Hello SimonPoole,

Thank you for the message. The Google Streetview feature shown in the video is actually not part of SketchOSM. I realize this is confusing so we will take down our video and upload a new one that does now show any references to Google Streetview.

We will not encourage our users to use Google Streetview as a reference. Our desire is that SketchOSM have full support of the OSM community.

Thanks

8

SketchOSM has now been officially released on the SketchUp Extension Warehouse! See first post for updated installation instructions.

https://extensions.sketchup.com/en/content/sketchosm-placemaker

9

We just released an update which fixes issues where the plugin did not work if a user had their decimal separator set to a comma instead of a period. Please give it a try and let us know what you think. Is this a useful tool to anyone?

10

When I try to login to OpenStreetMap. A message box shows “Sorry! SketchOSM requires you to have Internet Explorer 9.0 or greater installed. You currently have version 7” But, my OS is Windows10. How to solve this problem? Thank you very much!

11

Try this link to download IE 11
https://support.microsoft.com/en-ca/help/18520/download-internet-explorer-11-offline-installer

Even though you have Windows 10, it might be possible that your IE version is old. I think Windows 10 uses Edge as the pre-installed browser now.

SketchOSM (and all SketchUp plugins) display UI dialogs using the current IE version that you have installed. Unfortunately, we as the developer have no control over this (we can’t choose to use Chrome or Edge for example). Installing IE 11 should fix your problem.

12

It would be great if you can also change existing objects after reading, this unfortunately does not work. :roll_eyes: