Urban Design for Planners: How to Import QGIS Shapefiles to SketchUp

In this video, Emily Talen guides viewers through the process of transferring a shapefile of building outlines into SketchUp, a free software tool used to render 3D visualizations of buildings, neighborhoods, and even cities. This video is an excerpt from “Urban Design for Planners 2: Getting Started with QGIS and SketchUp.“ Watch the full course here: Building from foundational concepts explored in “Urban Design for Planners 1: Software Tools,“ this course digs into the functionality of QGIS and SketchUp. QGIS, an open source Geographic Information System, is an indispensable tool for urban planners and designers. Urban designers use QGIS to view and compare multiple layers of mapped data, group locations according to sets of criteria, calculate distances, analyze proximities, and create figure ground maps. Course instructor Emily Talen, PhD, FAICP, leads viewers through the process of loading data into QGIS, setting the coordinate reference system (CRS), and changing the graphic display of data layers. The course also introduces a few aesthetic considerations in working with locational data in QGIS. Subscribe to Planetizen Courses’ channel and enable notifications to keep up with the latest urban planning videos: Planetizen Courses offers hundreds of online urban planning video courses taught by trusted professional planners. Sign up for access to cutting edge urban planning and urban design video courses on computer, phone, or tablet: Follow Planetizen Courses on Twitter: Follow Planetizen Courses on LinkedIn: #urbandesign #urbanplanning #sketchup