Google SketchUp as Visualization Tool

When I was working with the Cherokee Broadband Enterprise and Trificient Technologies to bring broadband wireless to the Cherokee, NC territories, I needed to create visualizations of proposed towers for the permitting process.  I've worked with some very talented 3D animators in the past, but never really dived into LightWave or 3D Studio Max because of the enormous learning curve.  For this task I decided to play around with Google SketchUp and found it to be extremely simple and fun to use.  There were a few anti-intuitive hurdles, but I was able to quickly create fairly realistic versions of the tower designs and work though the antenna placements.