3D Warehouse: The Migration to Orgs

What does the migration to "Orgs" mean for Building Product Manufacturers? We have your answers right here! We’ve been listening closely to our users, discovering what we can do to continue to surprise and delight the designers, architects, and building product manufacturers that rely on 3D Warehouse to be their virtual showroom. I can’t really get into our far-off future plans, but I can take a moment to talk about 3D Warehouse now and in the very near future. 

Let’s talk about the new Catalogs and then follow up with “Orgs”. These Catalogs are a huge upgrade from the old catalogs with space for big, bold imagery, lots more copy, and easy-to-follow catalog sections just like a paper catalog except electronic… and full of three-dimensional goodness. We hope it inspires other building product manufacturers to take advantage of the opportunity to express themselves and share their 3D assets with the world. 

It's truly a great time for building product manufacturers to customize their Catalog templates! Why? Well, it’s really easy if you have access to your marketing imagery and copy. A few uploads, a little copy & paste, and your Catalog will beautifully represent your brand. 

Here’s a beautiful example of a catalog built by Kohler.

On to ORGS!

In early May, we will begin migrating our building product manufacturer accounts over to Organizations, or Orgs for short. What does that mean? It means you will have an administrator who can add multiple contributors to your account. It’s as easy as adding other users to your Org! We’ll show you how to do that shortly. If your account has already been marked as a verified building product manufacturer, you will be able to tell that your account has migrated by looking at your profile menu in the upper right corner of 3D Warehouse (see below). If you click on "My Account" and see more than one option, then the migration is done. Now you can choose if you would like to work in the context of your Personal Account (called My Account) or in the context of your organization.

Look at that! I can change context between my personal account or my organization’s account. Tip: When uploading models for your Organization, make sure that you select the proper context or else the uploads will go into your personal account instead.

Content development agencies who manage multiple manufacturer accounts will see each account they belong to, in the dropdown menu. Be sure to work from within your browser (not within SketchUp) and also make certain to select the proper account when you are uploading and managing content, otherwise you may end up working in the wrong account. 

As a brand, what’s going to happen to your existing content? Your content will be shifted from being owned by you, to being owned by your Org with YOU as the administrator. As an administrator, you can add other users who can help you maintain your content. 

What does this have to do with the new catalogs? Do I need to have an ORG to take advantage of the new Catalogs? No, but now you can have interns, designers, and modelers contribute. You don’t need to migrate to start updating your Catalogs. Now, how do you add other users? Using the new Org Management tool.

Org Management

The ‘little group of people’ icon is where Org management happens. You will only see this if you are an Org administrator and are operating in the context of the Org. If you have "My Account" selected, the option will not be available. 

Here we are working as The Company Inc. and can manage the Organization’s Members.

When you select the ‘little group of people’ icon, you will see the Org Management screen (below).

This is the interface for finding current members of your organization, adding new members, assigning roles, determining email recipients, and removing members from the Org.

As the original manager of the account, your account will automatically be assigned an Admin role for the Org. You will have access to add and remove Org members. By clicking the blue "Add Member" button you will see the Add Member window appear.

Here you will enter the email address for the new member and assign a role. Analysts only have access to analytics and members will have the ability to upload and manage content for the Org.

If you see the above error message, that means the user you are attempting to add does not have a 3D Warehouse ID yet. They will need to visit https://3dwarehouse.sketchup.com/ and set up an account before they can be added as an Org member.

That’s all there is to it! IF you can’t wait for the ‘great migration’ and would like to start using Orgs right away, let us know by sending an email titled “Make us an Org” to 3dwarehouse@sketchup.com and we’ll manually migrate you early.