I’m a DIYer designing a small residence (using sketchup of course!) and I have watched this architect youtuber because he seems to have some useful insight.
He recently posted a video on 1 point perspective and some hand drawing to get that perspective. While very interesting, this is just something sketchup does quite well once you have a model built. And you can change the point of the perspective at will.
In the comments I asked if he had ever heard of sketchup. His reply “yes, garbage”.
Instead of getting into a pissing match in the comments on his channel, I thought I would let the sketchup community know about this. It is actually pretty interesting to watch this video, and see how he derives and uses the vanishing point. Also a good laugh, knowing there is a much better way.
Hand drawing is a good skill to have but today it is no longer enough.
About 50 years ago I read a lovely book about design communication by hand sketching in “3D”: William Kirby Lockard, Drawing as a means to Architecture.
Incidentally, to me the basic SketchUp graphic style is somewhere between this book and Tintin comics. Meant as praise.
My career started with entirely hand drawing and drafting. We had to learn to construct 2 point perspectives from plans and elevations, and all kinds of tricks. One point is easy by comparison. I’ve also taught perspective drawing from life to high school students. I used SketchUp to create some of the lessons. Just look at the work of J J Zanetta and I don’t think anyone would call SketchUp garbage when it come to drawing architectural perspective renderings.
I’ve got nothing against hand drawing and the skills that that entails but this guy is a dinosaur. Somebody needs to enlighten him and take him out of the Cretaceous Period.
This is a blast from the past. I remember doing two point perspective in high school. (1976, I got my first T-square at 10 yrs old.) It reminds me of something I often think about reading some of these posts. I think manual drafting skills should be taught before learning CAD. The arguments of this versus that, one application over another or what Sketchup and Layout in particular “should” be doing are conversations I avoid. I find the critics dont know how to use the applications. Ignorance is not bliss!
In manual drafting the designer has to think the project through. A mechanical drafts man faced with a blank sheet of velum must think where on the sheet to place the part being drawn, how many orthographic views describe the part. Does it require section cuts? then what scale fits the sheet and what other parts can be fit on this sheet. The each view of the part has to be considered before placing the views to allow for the dimensions required. It gets the designer intimate with the work before drawing the first line. After all drafting is simply telling a story.
I use those manual techniques a lot in Sketchup and Layout. Construction lines (Guides) when other rely on inferencing. I like inferencing too but have found for speed accuracy a mix works for me.
As stated above a critic saying something is “Garbage” probably doesnt know what he’s talking about. The ability to project accurately is a skill though. Play around with sheet metal layout sometime. Cad does the heavy lifting for us. We can easily do things that are nearly impossible manually telling a better story.
Boiled down it’s really just someone who uses a quill saying a fountain pen is garbage.
It’s not the tool, it’s how you use it.
I’m sure this comment will help many grasp the size of the issue.
An opinion doesn’t mean much if it’s not well-Now, AI can also revive interest in hand drawing…
Regarding 3D software, and my move to programming and algorithms, I find it amusing that 3D on a computer is actually an illusion.
It’s not very different from hand drawing. Not only because of SketchUp’s ergonomics.
We think we’re drawing in 3D, but we’re not.
We’re actually drawing on a 2D perspective image on the screen.
What gives the impression of 3D is a depth calculation when the cursor encounters an obstacle (a segment, a face, the invisible background passing through the axis system). I’m simplifying a bit, but that’s basically it.
This is why we need to enter dimensions, to draw precisely of course, but also because the process is not so precise as we think.
This is not very different in essence from hand drawing, where to obtain a correct perspective, it is necessary to set up an analysis of the space (by vanishing points, guidelines, etc.)
Anyone here remember the Clock branded drafting boards with the offset T squares and the arced hollows. I think they were made from Formica boards. I cannot even find an image on the web.
I used one of those when I was in elementary school, it was like a case with an sliding door, the wooden T square fit almost perfectly on a side of the wooden case, and on the other side it had a mesh with blocks every 1cm, and a protractor at the bottom. I discovered my love for technical drawings there, then came the plastic ones, that had rails and were supposedely more accurate, but you lost the space to keep al your rulers, pencils, technical pens with different widths and prepared sheets with the margins and information.
God I miss the 90´s
@Anssi while I understand what you are saying. I think it’s worth pointing out for future readers that it is all about the ergonomics. And understanding your own body. Not that anybody let you do that in a corporate situation in those days.
Way back in the late 70s when I was an apprentice I modified my work bench and drawing table so that I could position them appropriately for what I was working on. I built my own manual risers and tilts as it was clear to me I could work longer when things aligned correctly. I endured a lot of ■■■■ for it from my contemporaries and nobody ever apologized when they copied me. But that’s life. Thankfully I wasn’t locked into the drafting profession.
It still amazes me to this day that people struggle with work benches at fixed heights when it is so easy to have variable heights. Even with simple drop legs for stability if necessary. And tilt… I think I have tapped a pet subject and shouldn’t have started.
1963 and later: having fun drawing simple 3D buildings with pen and paper using 1 point, 2 points and 3 points perspectives after my father showed me a reproduction of a Canaletto painting and explaining the principles of perspective.
1978 to 1986: having fun and doing engineering drawings with a vey basic 3D software on my Apple II.
1986 to 2005: doing 2D and 3D drawings on various Mac Models using Mac Draw and Power Draw.
2005 to present: doing all kind of 3D models and 2D piping schematics using SketchUp from version 3.0 to the most recent version on Mac and PC.
I find SU to be the most simple and intuitive 3D drawing program. Yes, it takes a little effort to learn but, compared to many of the big names like AutoCAD, Catia, etc. it is much easier to learn.
I had something that had a Masonite board maybe big enough to hold an 11x17 drawing, with a really cheap version of what I always called a “drafting machine,” an L-shaped drawing square mounted on an armature attached to the upper left corner of the board. Is that what you’re thinking of? I feel like it’s still in a box somewhere in this house. If I could just find it, I’d take a picture. Drafting machines were used more my mechanical engineering draftsman, not architects, so I never used a serious one.
And after a few years of drawing on the computer with a mouse, I started developing carpel tunnel syndrome. Then in 1993 at a MacWorld Expo, I ran into a familiar face, Ron Cobb, working in a booth for some company called Wacom. He was painting a T-Rex using a pen stylus. I pulled out my wallet and said, I’m buying one right now, and have mostly abandoned the use of a mouse since.
No, not a normal drafting board with a normal drafting machine, straightedge or T-squares.
The Clock board was purpose made for drawing perspectives. The hollowed arches were each centered on it’s own vanishing point that was well off the board somewhere to each side. The special T-squares might also have had reversed T as well as offset. They were placed against the arcs so that as they swung the straightedge always was aligned to the vanishing point. I was told that they were incredibly expensive back then. They were huge because the arched hollows took up alot of space on each side and still needed space in the center for an E size paper. The one I saw was like 8 to 10 feet wide.
Ok, that I would like to see. I don’t think I’ve ever seen one. With our regular drafting tables, if the vanishing point was on your board, you could stick a pushpin in and hold your flipped-over T-square against it (not real good for the drawing board itself), but if the vanishing point was off the board, it was problematic to estimate. Could you change the distance between the vanishing points on this table?
