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.)
