Nicely done. I wonder how you would go modelling up an entire airbase?
Actually, I did play around with creating an airfield/airbase in SketchUp but the file became so large that I found it to be unmanageable since I was modeling the thing in 1:1 scale :)
Creating the runway and parking aprons was relatively easy to do and then it got complicated when I tried to randomly place things here and there to not make it look all dress-right-dress and in some kind of formation. After all of that effort I deleted it and figured it was saner for me to just focus on one small part of a facility such as an individual hardened aircraft shelter into which I could put a lot of detail. For as simple as that model was to create, it still ended up at 5mb when it was all finished and there was a lot more I could have added to it such as the missing personnel access door, interior lighting, central drain, plus the blast doors for the jet exhaust portal. I figured the doors at the front were enough of a chore without having to try and repeat it all over again and for most folks the details I put into the model are overkill. It was still a fun exercise and I enjoyed the sense of accomplishment that comes from sharing the finished model with others.
Great results. One thing about adding a lot of details is that it can sometimes be better just to build a framework first and do details in later versions. Some very simple 3D HAS models are posted in the Digital Aviation Arts group over on dA' and when you take the building and a 3D jet and some simple render program that will do lighting, like Kerkythea, some really photo level results come out, which can be further spruced in Photoshop with backgrounds and small items and some weathering.
If you want to try and model an airfield and keep the size down, try modeling it as a a 1/32 diorama size. Scale is almost irrelevant at 3D, except if you are actually integrating the results with real earth structures like you mention many sketchup users as doing.
As What-if-ers' (Ooops, I mean Beyond the Sprues'ers ;-) scale is what we make of it.
