20 Years of Design8: Standing on Our Own Two Feet (2005 – 2010)

Standing on my own two feet! I closed out my first blog post with the realisation that SketchUp had given me everything I needed to make my own way. I seized that opportunity, though I didn’t do it by myself.

Extra Help Arrives

As things got busier with all the activities, orders, and technical support, I could really use a helping hand. That’s why Lukas Lagerweij joined me in 2004. Much like how I once started out in the 3D software market, Lukas worked as an Industrial Design student, helping with tech support, training, and giving demos. Initially, this was for the solid modeler Concepts Unlimited, but when Lukas was assigned a SketchUp license… the industrial designer fell head over heels for it. In no time, he was creating everything in 3D using SketchUp.

Lukas worked both on and with Concepts Unlimited, a truly accurate 3D NURBS design tool—not a 3D sketching tool like SketchUp. I was highly surprised, but it proved once again: SketchUp is a friend to everyone!

In the summer of 2005, a friend tipped me off about someone who was open to a new job. Ben van Steenwijk came in for an interview, and we hit it off immediately. I showed him the ropes of our custom-built CRM system, and whenever an order came in, Ben handled it. Mind you, that is absolutely incomparable to the situation today, over 20 years later. Now, Ben runs his own department, and multiple people process and manage orders nearly non-stop every single day!

SketchUp User Day

That summer, we hosted the very first Benelux SketchUp User Day! I rented a space at the Chamber of Commerce, where we gathered a small hall of about 50 SketchUp enthusiasts and resellers. The SketchUp Channel Manager at the time even flew over from Londo

The Municipality of Zoetermeer gave a presentation on how they used SketchUp shadow studies all the way into the courtroom. Whereas up until then they had to make do with multiple floor plans where the projected shadow was shown as a hatched area, SketchUp allowed you to let the sun glide over your 3D model in real time. Unprecedented! By the way, the Municipality of Zoetermeer remains an avid SketchUp user to this very day!

The SketchUp Channel Manager introduced SketchUp version 5. This version featured the new sandbox tools, which you can also find in our changelogs! Shaping terrain in SketchUp became a whole lot easier. This was @Last Software’s way of trying to make SketchUp more appealing to a broader audience.

There were also resellers present. Alfazet, a reseller from day one, was even selling 3D glasses that older readers might still remember from seeing Jaws 3D in the cinema… And there were new resellers present who used the opportunity to come and introduce themselves, like VMV CAD-Adviseurs. Because in the meantime, we were happily building out the reseller channel.

Sinks on Marktplaats

The most driven resellers turned out to be the ones who approached us. I still remember driving in my car when I got a call from someone who was desperate to start selling SketchUp. It turned out to be a pleasant conversation, and that reseller remains a top reseller to this day. But I had to ask: how did you actually get my phone number? You see, I barely used my mobile phone for business back then; everything went through the landline or the answering service. “Well,” came the reply, “you have those beautiful sinks for sale on Marktplaats (a Dutch classifieds site)… and your number was listed right there!” Right… That’s what happens when you have a unique name, but… wonderfully inventive, wasn’t it!

New Technology Turns the Manufacturing World Upside Down

Meanwhile, I had learned from my English counterpart bthat he had officially become a reseller of 3D printers. 3D printers! A highly interesting development that was going to turn the manufacturing world upside down. And the design world too, right?

3D printing wasn’t new; the technology actually dated back to the 1980s. But now, affordable models were hitting the market that only cost a few hundred thousand… I was intrigued and got in touch with ZCorporation. They sold powder printers that could just about fit into an elevator. Convenient, because that allowed us to run it during the SketchUp User Day at the Chamber of Commerce.

It contained a build plate roughly the size of an A4 sheet, on which a 3D shape was built up layer by layer, in tenths of a millimeter. A layer of powder alternated with a layer of binder jetting. You could color that binder, which gave you a full-color 3D print! Once the print was finished, you shook the loose powder off your model, and you were left with a 3D object. A quick spray of superglue, and… done!

And we used it to help Daalderop out of a tight spot. Daalderop manufactures boilers and central heating systems, and besides being a fellow local business, they were also a Concepts Unlimited customer. They had just finished developing a highly compact kitchen boiler that fitted right behind the plinth. They really wanted to showcase a prototype at an upcoming trade show. We received the 3D CAD model from them, 3D printed it on the ZCorp machine, and finished it with superglue, paint, and stickers. The result was outstanding!

We would eventually start selling 3D printers ourselves, but more on that in the blog post about the years 2010-2015!

Highly Honored Guests at Design8 bv

Within Ben’s network was a tax specialist who could help manage the transition into an independent corporation. And so it happened. Design8 was born, and I moved to the Stephensonstraat in Tiel.

Two months later, in December 2005, we received a visit from two Channel Managers from @Last Software, the creators of SketchUp. Highly honored guests! It was nerve-wracking because… Design8 was brand new: would we even be allowed to remain a distributor? It was all or nothing, and I don’t think I slept a wink for a few nights.

Fun detail: one of the Channel Managers came from America. She was happily taking travel photos across Europe and organizing them into a new product being developed by the SketchUp team! Working title: Grizzly. Later, you would come to know it as LayOut, the 2D assistant to SketchUp 3D. It was an Adobe-like application that was highly flexible in its use. If it succeeded, Adobe might have a hard time ahead, or so I was told. The future looked bright. Now, 20 years later, I know you can’t dethrone the true giants that easily. Too big to fail, shall we say. And LayOut… it is developing steadily, but it’s not quite a killer app yet.

The other manager came from Germany and brought along a little gift. At a local Arts & Crafts market, he had met an artist who crafted sliding wooden houses out of blocks of wood. “Push-Pull Houses, I call them!” he exclaimed in his inevitable German accent. It’s a wonderful keepsake from a great, old, yet exciting time, and it can still be found on our meeting table today!

Fortunately, the visit went excellently, and we continued our partnership.

Google Acquires SketchUp

Three months later, in March 2006, the phone rang. Another one of those moments where I know exactly where I was. I was driving my car, and over the car kit came the German Channel Manager, with that recognizable German accent once again: “Orlando! SketchUp has been bought by Google!!!”

GOOGLE! I knew Google from their search engine and also from free software! After all, they made their money through advertisements! I nearly drove into the ditch, assuming the adventure was over.

But thankfully: once again, we were allowed to stay! And indeed, a free version was released. However, the paid version remained and carried on as SketchUp Pro. So, in case you were wondering, that’s where the ‘Pro’ extension comes from. It did cause some confusion in the market, though, and threw up two business challenges: 1. You were allowed to use the free version commercially, and 2. Google decided that EVERYONE would get a free upgrade to SketchUp Pro 6. That was a shame.

Let me explain: nowadays, we mainly sell annual subscriptions. That’s great for the customer because it spreads the costs and ensures they always have support and the latest version. And it’s great for us because it provides more predictable revenue. But back in 2006, you paid a one-time fee for a ‘perpetual’ license. And then, it’s quite nice if you can sell an upgrade every now and then. But no, not in 2006. Bummer.

Ultimately, though, the Google acquisition brought a lot of good things. Everyone knows SketchUp now. In fact, nearly every week we still get people on the phone talking about ‘Google SketchUp’! And, embarrassingly enough, I still slip up occasionally myself. I’ll say Google instead of Trimble!

Extensive Library of 3D Objects

In 2008, Google introduced the 3D Warehouse. It was (and still is) an online platform where any SketchUp user could download 3D models, and any SketchUp user could upload them.

A huge number of objects no longer needed to be drawn from scratch; they were already available ready-made. This opened up some interesting perspectives.

The Perfect Match for Trade Shows

A customer pointed out how well SketchUp fit the exhibition and trade show booth construction market. The 3D Warehouse, in particular, was an exceptionally smart tool for this. Booth construction primarily uses standard objects and models, so if we made the most commonly used materials, furniture, and trade show decorations available in the 3D Warehouse, it would make SketchUp highly attractive to this target group.

As mentioned earlier, we gratefully made use of interns to whom we gave well-defined assignments. This is how we created plans to target specific demographics, look for resellers, set up financial forecasting, etc.

One plus one equals two, so we brought in intern Robert van Dee to create a booth construction collection for SketchUp and market it. We contacted several suppliers to the trade show industry and drew their objects in SketchUp. Well, Robert did. Once again, SketchUp’s ease of use proved itself: a commercial economics student effortlessly pumped out one 3D model after another without any prior knowledge of 3D modeling!

To promote SketchUp, we joined an initiative by ExpoGamma, thee ExpoBorrel. These networking mixers were highly enjoyable ways to network at various locations across Belgium and the Netherlands. The ExpoBorrel went on to have more than 25 editions!

The 3D Warehouse still exists today and now boasts millions of models and users. Nowadays, those booth construction models are simply available there for free, and many manufacturers now have an official account featuring their 3D models. Ready for SketchUp!

Click here for an overview of booth construction 3D models on the 3D Warehouse.

Modeling for Google Earth

By this point, the 3D Warehouse had gained a new feature: Geo Location.

How did it work? In SketchUp, you could import a location on Earth and draw a 3D model on top of it. A 3D model like that was then ‘geolocated’—meaning it sat in the exact right spot. You could also line the facades of your model with real-world photos to achieve a highly realistic result. And here’s the kicker: if you uploaded a model like that to the 3D Warehouse, you could check a box stating it was accurate, well-drawn, had good textures, and was in the correct location. And then… someone at Google would personally review whether that was actually the case! If confirmed, your 3D model went live on Google Earth!

We were convinced this was the reason Google had bought SketchUp. And we helped build the Earth in 3D. That was quite a chore…

We helped launch a dedicated label into the world: EarthExposure. Complete with a website. However, displaying your models to the entire world wasn’t that straightforward: first of all, someone had to download and launch Google Earth. Then they had to check the ‘3D Models’ box. And then they still had to navigate to the correct location. But if they did, your 3D model would pop into view for everyone on Earth! Moreover, you could supply your 3D model with extra meta-information and hyperlinks to your website.

We managed to convince quite a few companies and institutions that this was the new way to profile yourself. We modeled in 3D for Google itself, flew to Milan to model the Torre Branca in 3D, and put the Noordbrabants Museum on Google Earth. The latter was a very fun project.

You see, the Noordbrabants Museum was closing down for renovations. But the director figured that it could remain open on Google Earth! Now that is vision! So, we modeled the whole kit and caboodle in 3D: the museum, the garden, and the artworks, and we published it on Google Earth. Our direct lines of communication with Google came in handy here, as it took quite some doing to get all the models approved.

And Google kept developing. It was now also possible to place a block of code on your website so that a Google Earth window would appear displaying a location of your choice, complete with 3D models! We placed such a window on the museum’s website. The director invited the press for a presentation. Unfortunately, it didn’t end well: of all times, the Google Earth browser plugin had updated the night before the presentation. This update carried a nasty bug: all models larger than 1 MB failed to load! And our model of the museum happened to be 65 MB…

Google went even further and developed Building Maker: ean online, albeit very limited, modeling tool that allowed you to quickly and easily create basic 3D buildings on Google Earth. Together with Google, we organized a “Build your City” workshop in Delft and modeled parts of The Hague!

I truly believe Google had a vision for a virtual world in 3D. But SketchUp wasn’t the way to get there. The models you find on Google Earth and Maps today are automatically generated using photogrammetry. And let’s not forget the importance of Street View.

Ultimately, Google would sell SketchUp to Trimble. You can read all about that in the next blog post covering the years 2010–2015.

Suddenly We’re on Artlantis’s Website

The phone rings in the morning. “Hello, I’d like to buy Artlantis.”k a voice said. Hmm, we didn’t sell Artlantis at all! “Oh yes you do, because you’re listed on their website!”. Well, that’s one way to acquire resellers—one we hadn’t even thought of ourselves.

We were caught a bit off guard. But alright, from that moment on we also sold Artlantis: a rendering program from the French SketchUp distributor (Abvent at the time) that didn’t produce the most beautiful renders, but was lightning fast. And it featured a real-time preview. This went down incredibly well with our customers and resellers and quickly grew in popularity. We weren’t selling that many software titles yet, so Artlantis was very welcome!

For some customers, rendering was still a bridge too far. We helped those clients out by producing images and animations for them. Rendering went a lot smoother than it did in 2000, but an animation could still take all night. Our Macs would be chugging away at full blast. The Windows machines, however, had their own agenda: they would occasionally and obediently update the operating system right in the middle of the night, leaving us in the morning with an up-to-date machine, but a crashed render…

First Aid with Design… or Accidents?

We were getting more and more marketing budget and started running trade shows. The Bouw & ICT trade show in Utrecht became our regular fixture. We also made our presence known in the event industry. Together with our partners from the ExpoBorrel, we exhibited at the Eerste Hulp bij Beurzen (First Aid for Trade Shows) exhibition. A theme that suited us perfectly, given the cross in our (now old) logo. We blended in so well that someone actually came to our booth with a bleeding finger, asking if we might have a plaster!

Trade Shows, Trade Shows, and More Trade Shows

Many more successful trade shows would follow. We didn’t stand there alone, but often alongside our resellers. This was ideal, as it allowed us to steer interested parties directly in the right direction for a purchase.

SketchUp was so accessible that reseller VMV had come up with the idea to let people purchase a license right then and there at the show. At the booth (a market stall, how fitting), people could pay for the trade show special directly using a mobile payment terminal. It worked brilliantly!

The Bubble Bursts

Meanwhile, a number of banks in America were starting to suffer from non-paying mortgage holders. And well… then the real estate market collapsed. The bubble burst… And even though it took a little while, we felt the impact too. How much of an impact, and how we solved it? You can read all about that in the next blog post covering the years 2010-2015.

About the Author

Orlando Sardaro (1972) studied Industrial Design at TU Delft and founded Design8 in 2005. From Design8, he sells and supports design software, primarily through resellers. Orlando never loses sight of the end user and keeps a close eye on developments in the 3D market. In his spare time, he enjoys 3D modelling, Nutella, pizza, coffee, red wine, bread, chocolate, Italy, golf, Porsche, Apple, and sunshine.