John graduated from Virginia Tech with a B.S. in Civil Engineering in 1987 and has been in the construction business his entire career.  For the last 21 years he has run his own custom home design/build firm.  An avid 3D modeling enthusiast, John builds highly-detailed 3D models of every house he builds with the use of SketchUp and the many available extensions. These models are essentially exact replicas, down to the framing members, outlets and switches, etc.  After years of frustration searching for a comprehensive estimating solution for his SketchUp models, John envisioned the desired system, created the user interface and hired a Ruby programmer to create Estimator for SketchUp, currently available on the Extension Warehouse and his online store.