[Sdpg] Great tool for site design

[Wesley Roe and Marjorie Lakin Erickson]

 From the Portland Permaculture listserve

I was down in Phoenix over the thanksgiving break and visisted some
friends who are building an intentional community in the downtown
city core and was exposed to a great tool, Google Sketchup. This is
a free 3-d modeling tools that allows you to easily create a scale
model of your property, including trees and any other objects
that may exist in it, and rearrange things as you wish. You can
plug in the longitute and latitude of your location, and then watch
where the shadows fall at different times of the year. My friends are
modeling there whole design with this including swales, their outdoor
kitchen, etc.

You can get this @ http://sketchup.google.com/.

More about the Phoenix EcoHood @
http://directory.ic.org/records/?action=view&page=view&record_id=20891

~Deepak