Another thing I don’t think I’ve seen in this thread is to start drawing the line then to input its length from the keyboard and hit enter. This gives exact dimensions. In conjunction with the shift key axis locking this gives the best practise for starting most drawings.
Then you have a reference line or plane from which everything else can be inferred.
This avoids all the problems creating faces etc; these are caused because the lines produced by inference can be fractions of a millimetre off the plane required thus needing a number of triangles to create faces.
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If you have Color By Axis on…yes. But we don’t draw with that mode most of the time as it’s visually distracting. It is for me anyway. I use it as a “check” from time to time. Another issue that get’s confusing is that when you are working inside various components and groups within a model…and resetting axis for each, it gets very confusing as to what are the “real” (or in AutoCAD, the “world” ) axes.
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Very true. I use inferencing a LOT- but you do have to be careful. If you are drawing a perimeter around a complicated building, for example, I find it more accurate to force the red and green axis for every line segment I draw. Inferencing can get you in trouble sometimes.
Yep - I do the same. My logic is that there are no curves in SketchUp - everything is an approximation. So it’s logical to do as much as possible on the axes then to join the gaps afterward by inference.
Hello ksarch_CDG_TSA_2!
I’m sorry if this is off topic but the developer of Dibac for Sketchup
are also developing Dibac CAD.
Maybe Dibac CAD can be of help if you are used to starting out with 2D views.
Their demo videos look really sweet.
All the best!
/Johan
I don’t mean color by axes - this is a line in the process of being drawn on axes, which indicates the axes color and that it is on axes -
You can also adjust the axes colors if you find them distracting in SU preferences - such as reducing the saturation of the color.
It is certainly part of best practice to use shift and the arrow keys to lock an Axis while drawing (right=red left=green up=blue down=lock to referenced geometry). This is especially useful in a complex model with an “inference rich” environment where the inference engine is working overtime hunting up options.
Edge color by axis is a useful tool when checking to see if things are roughly square, but be careful using it as a definitive diagnostic tool for a warped model. Be aware that this too is an approximation, it has been proven that under very small tolerances (.01˚) lines will color as “on axis” when in fact they are not.
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Import issues from AutoCad are caused by the line thickness, if you have polylines of set thickness, SketchUp imports the front and rear as two lines, making two faces, each 0.3mm (whatever) apart BOTH missing the snap. Once this is in ANY drawing, you are screwed forever with no known cure because nothing finishes up square, vertical or aligned and slowly but surely the drawing collapses because corners are a fraction of a mm off the snap. This is not unique to AutoCad/SketchUp and drives me insane! The solution is to make a dummy copy of your AutoCad drawing, remove all thickness, layers, in fact everything! Export that and it will work great.
If you are an architect, forget layer management in SketchUp and only use it as a presentation feature. Everything must be groups within groups within groups and components for repeated groups (such as joist, window, door, oven unit).
If you site manage, arrange your groups so that they mirror the constructional sequence. The concrete slab will be a group with holes in it for the lift shaft, stairs, ducts etc. The columns and beams will be a group etc. However there is a point where you cross the line of playing and commercial reality. On very large drawings, I find the the easiest way in SketchUp is hide virtually everything, draw on the blank outer group (so it doesn’t auto merge or join with another group), when complete, make into group and move it to correct sub-group. That way if ‘something happens’ you haven’t destroyed half a days work and you can build your drawing ad-infinitum. Great thing is if the customer doesnt like your fireplace design, its just a sub group, hide it and make another group, called ‘Fireplace Apr19’ etc
If you have 30 years of AutoCad, Rhino, 3D sMax etc behind you, all this is quite hard to get your head around it!
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I would contend that if you are an architect, the use of Layers, in concert with Scene Tabs, is incredibly important…and you 're missing out big-time if you’re not using layers.
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…“inference-rich” environment…
hahaha—I love that!
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I share your pain. I have used SketchUp for years and naively assumed Layout would be as good a product and I could use them in combo to product construction drawings directly from the model. Alas, after about a year of frustration, many lost hours, and some lost work, I went back to Autocad for drafting. I would like to learn Revit which seems to do both, but need to take a class as it is not intuitive. I had posted on here for help but the problems persisted and there was always a subtle suggestion that the program was fine and I was at fault for not using it properly.
I googled endlessly for tutorials and help, which highlighted another problem with Layout - the name. It is too ordinary a word and I would have to sift through so much junk to find the tutorial. I think the program needs to be rebuilt from the bottom up and given a new name.
Yes thats what I said, use layers for presentations, ie in conjunction with the scene tabs to create walk-through’s etc. The point is that by having a very organised group hierarchy, the model does not degrade if there is a 3D snap error somewhere and even better it becomes obvious and is easily fixed.
I have been using Revit since 2002. I did use AutoCAD LT2000i but Revit is insanely powerful and fully featured for architecture and construction if you know how to use it well. You can do most of the custom flex and change work that some firms use Rhino for, but for all but the top end curved parametric Dubai nonsense, Revit handles everything, from a garden shed, to a 50 storey building with services or a full sized university campus, out of the box with no need for plug-ins.
The problem with Revit now in 2019, is the price and the business model Autodesk have forced on Users. It is draconian, unfair and not flexible in terms of the license - stop monthly payments and you don’t have access to anything. This is not in the User or small to medium business/ Owner best interests. Autodesk, have become somewhat fascist, now they have the critical mass to control everyone, and be as greedy as they like. In my country, the cost of owning Revit has gone from $NZ 1600 /yr, to $,3400 per seat. While the older perfectly good stand alone license is being eaten at from the $1600 now to $1800 , until they force you off that deal.
That is why SketchUp might be looked at as a possible option for single and smaller Users/ Architects.
After 2 years of fiddling about very part time, and from the perspective of a desire to model and produce working drawings/construction drawings/permit or consent drawings, and having seen the Sonder videos, there is still a genuine need to produce 2D construction details. We are not there yet for only 3D construction details, although in NZ, we now have electronic consent document (Drawings, Specifications, supporting documents from Engineer, Landscape Architect, surveyors and other consultants, and there really is not a huge barrier to providing only 3D construction details, instead of only 2D or a mix of 2D and 3D which is what we do normally anyway.
SketchUp LO can handle 2D details but it is painful and slow, but you should look at what you do in terms of Scrapbooks /make use as your Library of detail components - make an I beam and save it out to Scrapbooks and build you details by drag and drop works OK.
Doing the “Scaled Drawing” in LO is a pain but can be done. I created a few sheets to review what LO can produce in terms of line weights and line types and I got around 100 so for that aspect, SketchUp Pro can certainly give you the type of detail presentation that AutoCAD or Revit can provide, no question about that.
there is a Danish Architect that was working on a personal plug-in type tool that creates a Section Box, or might be called a Scope Box (a la Revit) , that can section up a part of the SU model, to create sectioned 3D details and he showed me what it could do for a set of about 70 sheets of drawings about 18 months ago. It makes the critical difference, in being able to produce, quickly, a 3D sectioned portion of the model then annotate/fills/ and you have the Sonder type presentation super fast.
I have not seen it come out commercially yet, but it was from a practical point of view, a core tool that is missing in SketchUp, as others have said, Trimble, do not really support SU in terms of development, but then, Autodesk, have milked Revit and its code to springboard multiple new programs to market and improve existing products while DRIP feeding Revit development since they bought it in 2002 for 760 million odd. Revit has been the literal golden goose for Autodesk.
So on the one hand you might reasonably expect to pay more for SU Pro if they spent some thought and time in developing the software, and on the other, there comes a time, when Trible will get bored with the asset and flick it on - what is the company getting out of SketchUp right now ?
As a more or less beginner the comments reflect what is fair about frustration for “at the end of my rope” , and I agree that as you learn the correct ways you also learn to listen to the immense and generous experiences and knowledge here to help others. Use Groups to death, use components, Layers and Scenes, use Scrapbooks and the axes tools. Shift etc as they do make everything work more fluidly = less frustration and really, be fair, SU Pro is cheap as chips for what it can do.
Don’t be unreasonable about what is should be unless you are ready to pay triple or more, or try Bricsys/Chief Architect/AutoCAD/AllPlan/ SoftPlan/VectorWorks and so on, or suck it up if you do this for a living, and buy ArchiCAD or put your balls up to the devil and buy into Revit.
Otherwise, listen to the people here, be patient and if you expect to learn a new program and whack out permit/consent drawings before you know how to use the program, then you are not being realistic or fair on yourself or the clients.
cheers
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As a start try " SketchUp AND Layout ", and then see the video’s. Do you mean there is nothing there?
Exactly what are you trying to draw with I-joists? A 2D roof framing plan, a building section, a joist connection detail? In 2D or in 3D? It would help to know. Either way, There is no reason not to make all your beams/joists into components. Actually even though it may seem like extra work you can make everything you draw in SU components. Groups are fine but won’t update with changes. Same as Blocks vs W-blocks in AutoCad.
SU is not Autocad and was never really meant to be. Layout has been added so you can dimension, add viewports and sort of emulate CAD but it is cumbersome at best IMO. Stick with CAD for 2D working drawings and use SU for concept sketches and even great looking photo realistic renderings with V-ray or another rendering plug-in and or a little help from Photoshop.
So, Back to SU, instead of getting overly frustrated, step back and watch some U-tube videos. There are hundreds of good SU tutorials for everything needed to master SU, relatively quick. Master using components, use guidelines for measuring (tape measure tool), use move/copy after you have one good face. No reason to use the pencil tool much at all. Learn to master the simple basic stuff and it will make things much easier. For SU, I also recommend the use of a 3D Mouse, Space Navigator is what I use. I don’t need a bunch of programable buttons. Use SU Shortcut commands instead.
Back to CAD. I’m a long time Autocad, Revit and SU user. Revit is great for some stuff but I hate it for accurate architectural details. I still draw these in CAD and insert them into a Revit detail reference.
Why bother with expensive Autocad at all. I use Autocad but BrisCad can do Everything Autocad can do including custom Autolisp routines for half the price of Autocad LT and it has a perpetual lic. I highly recommend it for anyone who likes full Autocad. It is nearly identical and actually faster in a lot of ways.
Show us what you are trying to draw so someone can try to help you.
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You have to accept Sketchup for what it is and what it is not. My background is mechanical engineering and design, mostly automotive. The type of work I did professionally using Unigraphics, Catia, Ideas and a slew of others, just can’t be replicated with Sketchup. Those programs run in the $3k to $10k range depending on which level of productivity you opt for. If you want to design car parts for an automaker, you’ll have to pony up, because nothing else will be good enough.
Those are all true solid modelers, which doesn’t just mean they form a closed surface, a cylinder is actually represented by a cylindrical equation, strike a line from the center to absolutely any point on the arc making a cylindrical face and it will give the same length. A cylinder is really a cylinder, a sphere is really a sphere.
Anything modeled in Sketchup that isn’t a flat plane is approximated with flat faces, rectangular where it can, but mostly triangular. Even when it looks like a cylinder, sphere, etc. It is really a prism or triangulated mesh. Therefore, if you move geometry around on one face, it isn’t, and can’t, just recalculating the intersection of those theoretical shapes. Adjacent triangulated faces, whether you can see them or not, which aren’t perpendicular to the moves you are making will get pushed out of their plane. That is what makes Sketchup a surface (or mesh) modeler, even though it is a closed surface (which is a solid as far as 3D printing is concerned).
You must come to terms with this limitation of Sketchup or it will drive you nuts.
My advice for an architectural work flow, and realize you’re taking this advice from someone who only dabbles with architecture as a pastime, I drew car parts for a living (but who knows that doesn’t give me a different and useful perspective). Do everything as components. A truss for example, should be a component, and each element in that truss should be a component. It means tweaking a lot of separate parts when you make a change, but being components it will carry over to every usage. It will help prevent screwing up adjacent faces when there are fewer adjacent faces to deal with.
Save really complex stuff that is behind the scenes, trusses in the attic space that the client doesn’t need to see, for example, for later. Let components run through each other early on, don’t trim them just to trim them again, wait and trim them one time after the design is more finalized. Essentially, hold off on as much of the fine detailing as possible until it is needed. And if a big change comes after having started really complex things, accept that sometimes the quickest path is starting from scratch>
Otherwise, plunk down a huge amount of money for something more refined that is doing mathematically based modeling as opposed to meshed approximations.
The other thing about this really expensive stuff, it is parametric, meaning once drawn you can go back and change anything, and it will automatically update whatever features or objects referenced it. If set-up well only a few minor tweaks might need made to downstream modeling.
I’ve had to buy a $3k seat of Solidworks so that I can get back into the automotive level of work. Now that I have that in my stable I am using Sketchup less and less. I did an engine block for my portfolio where I can even change the number of cylinders from 1 to infinity simply by changing a variable.
If you really want a lesson in just what Sketchup is, try bringing files into a program like Solidworks. They can only come in as triangulated surfaces, because under the hood, that is what they always were.
I’ll always have a soft spot for Sketchup because it allowed me to do some great things at home I couldn’t have done otherwise. If you learn it well Sketchup can serve you well in architecture, lots of successful architects out there using it, but you have to learn to roll with its limitations, and if you can’t, get the pocketbook ready.
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Not my post -
If you are really p***** with Autodesk give DraftSight (Dassault Sytemes Solidworks) a whirl. Their LT version is free, pro is a very reasonable $199 or thereabouts and 3D version a little bit more. Pricing like the good old days. Behaves exactly like autocad and even has the same classic/modern toolbar interface options. Opens and saves to all the native acad builds ……no learning curve… been using LT version for a while no probs. Then use SU for the concepts and 3D presentations. Job done?
Unfortunately, DraftSight has no longer free version and is only on subscription! The software madness goes on …
https://www.3ds.com/products-services/draftsight-cad-software/download-draftsight/