After years as architects we’ve settled on AutoCAD LT and Sketchup as our complimentary tools of choice. SU lets us quickly give clients the eye candy they need, ACLT lets us utilize the years of experience we’ve already invested in the platform without the considerable expense of paying for Autodesk Building Suite.
We tinkered around with Revit but the learning curve was more than it was worth to us for the $5m and under projects we do.
In the end, whatever works for you, works for you!
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To say your’e “missing something” would not be the proper answer. It all depend on how you work and what is the graphic need once you print your project.
The way I work is personal. I always start my projects by hand drafting. As I always have different approach to solve an issue, it’s much faster that way to set a final pass, as it would take 10 time the time to express my ideas with a CAD app.
Then, and I guess this is where the major difference exist between some people and myself, I draw in 2D to make sure my ideas fit with distances and norms : I have a confortable perception of spaces and volumes while drawing in 2D while some people “can’t see” anything if they don’t draw their objects in 3D.
Once my 2D project (mostly architecture, projects = scale 1:100) ready for authorisation, I do a 3D presentation so the client can “see” how it looks like. For myself, I don’t need a 3D drawing, unless am facing a very complex detail to study (witch is very rare) that I usually draw by hand.
Once I got the authorisation and the contract signed, I do the execution plans (scale 1:50 for the base plans ans 1:20 + 1:10 + eventually 1:5 for details). At this stage, nobody needs 3D as the builders are supposed to know how to read 2D plans unless there is a very complex detail to execute. Usually, for a standard house, the need does not exist.
In my opinion :
AC is much better than SU to work as a professional in the building industry because it offer ALL the tools needed to work in a professional way.
SU is much better (when you know how to us it well) than AC when, for example, you are with your client to discuss what they would like as it goes much faster to “SKETCH” (in case you don’t have the skill to draw by hand).
So it’s hard to answer you with an objective point of vue.
What I don’t like with SU is that I can’t really start with precise 2D drawing, then pass to 3D to “get an idea on how the object looks in 3D” (and show it to the client) and then return to 2D drawing for execution plans.
What I like with SU is that I can “show an idea” (unfortunately without or usable precision) very fast to a client while discussing his need.
I believe that the day the SU team understand that factor and make it easer to pass back and forth from 2D and 3D (like it’s possible with AC), this app would become a real professional tool. Thus for now, I “play” with SU but “Work” with AC (not exactly as I found a 2D app much better adapted to ma need witch is CadWork)
Thanks very much for you input. I understood what you are talking about intuitively as I could just tell that AC is very serious while SU is more fun. Since I can’t draw by hand and am only an interior designer (not an engineer or a builder) I feel like I can do everything I need or am required to in SU. Personally I am having a lot of fun with SU building my 3D models and showing clients what the space will look like with all the colours, textures etc. It’s a great tool to visualise the final outcome of an interior, but perhaps leaves much to be desired if you start some building from scratch…which will never be my concern.
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I’m not at all in line with your point of view @Schnegg
I sketch in 2D and iterate on the ideas fast on paper or, these days on a stylus tablet too.
I draw accurately in 2D with sketchup, much faster than I use to do in CAD, with the same and even more info than before, as I have textures and areas directly retrievable from faces, dimensions and tags very fastly done in either sketchup or Layout. As I’m working in 2D at this stage, layout doesn’t even blink. It’s immediately responsive. Much better than AutoCAD and I used to work exclusively in it for years.
After that I don’t waste my time in making a 3D for presentation to clients. I build a 3D model for working and iterating the project with my whole team and stakeholders. It’s a step further.
Did I need to for my own visualization of the project? I used to think I didn’t, when I worked with 2D CAD.
Now that I do the 3D model and work with it, I’m thinking why do I need 2D for moving forward?
Spaces, elevations, shadows dropping in, phot real materias and lighting, vegetation, experimentation with ceiling shapes, stairs, getting a sketch that looks like a person at the right scale into it.
In this sens it’s better than 2D and better than a physical model. It doesn’t replace drawing sketches or building the physical models for some stuff, you might still want to create 2D drawings in CAD, but a 3D is richer info in mant more fronts, therefore better for creating whatever we want if you can use it fluently.
3D is, therefore, not for limited people that can’t understand 2D.
It’s an extra and, depending on the workflow, better. For some people worse, but it allows more people to understand what we do.
Architecture is, after all, teamwork. Ideas flow the more you see, the more you communicate and the more you test.
2D is not only limiting all this, it requires a lot of 2D work for sections, elevations, etc. Extra drawings that you don’t have to draw if you use 3D.
3D takes a bit longer to model but in Sketchup it’s fast. It pays up and it’s a what you see is what you get approach.
It gives room for a way more creative and iterative process. As it relates to the extra dimension of space that 2D lacks.
We base our execution plans on a 2D workflow, inside SketchUp and inside the model, derived from it’s 3D shape.
Section Cut Face plugin for 1:10, 1:5, 1:2 and 1:1 or Skalp from 1:100 to 1:20
I play and work with SketchUp and it’s rewarding.
AutoCAD was never rewarding. It was painful and
for the most part uncreative.
Sketchup is only uncreative when Layout gets stuck.
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You have some good points! What I don’t agree with is how you mention “unfortunately without it usable precision”, I don’t know what you mean by that. It’s perfectly accurate of a program. I’ve never had an accuracy issue, perhaps years ago when I didn’t know some of the basics so I wonder if that’s the problem on your end. I’ve never had the tape measure tool read something it isn’t supposed to be after I’ve done things properly so…
I could make a standard 1500 sq ft house with the 2d line work of the walls (just talking modelling speed right now with no design thought involved) extrude them all to the right heights and make a complicated roof for the whole thing with multiple hips and valleys, turn it back to 2d and have a side by side of both in probably 2-3 minutes or less if I was just going for speed. So you can definitely do what you’re talking about with the 2d. One option for going to 2d on a big house model almost right away is to use eneroth flatten to plane plugin, that’s the fastest option I’ve found, I believe it’s free. You can also just export as a 2d DWG from the file sketchup window and import the file back into wherever you’d like.
If you use s4u cut one of the biggest time saving plugins out there and the fredo box stretch or even the fredo move tool, you can do 2d drawings really really fast, even natively doing 2d drawings is very fast and comparable. If you want to use curved corners and all that, an amazingly fast option is fredos spline tools.
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“Sketchup is only uncreative when Layout gets stuck” hahaha. Yea I agree.
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What I mean by “precision” has to do with graphic codes, not with lengths of lines. I don’t know about all the codes that exist in the world, but in Switzerland, the thickness of the lines express the differences between “vue” (from top for architects and bottom for engineers), cuts for woodwork, cuts for concrete, dot lines for bottom or top invisible lines and so on.
Also, there are graphic code for different materials and static fonctions, like load-bearing walls, partitions, wood, etc.
Now, maybe because I developed habits working with Cadwork for 2D drawings,It seems off-putting to me to redo an apprenticeship that takes nights of study, but it is possible that it is because I am getting older and that the brain is slowing down; o)
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Yea that might be better in Autocad, I don’t know, I will say though that in my experience Sketchup offers dashed line styles, mostly all one would need for a design. I know you’re not talking about that, so when it comes to Layout, layout can handle all of the line thicknesses of varying thickness and line weights much better, whatever colour you want, etc. You should be able to present what you’re mentioning easily with Layout. For example I use stacked viewports, one of them always reveals all hidden objects below, meaning I never have to dash in any objects above or below. This is achieved by using a viewport stack setting all tags to a dashed style. Once this viewport is setup, I don’t have to touch it again for future projects and essentially almost my entire layout workflow is all just a template, I do next to nothing to get as nice of results as I want, I just have to spend the time in setting up Layout the way I want to display my drawings and I’m done for future jobs, meaning I can focus on drawing.
If you want good hatching, use Skalp, it’s quite amazing for that. You can setup viewports to set hatching, you can use the fredo paint tool to instantly paint any nested objects, I use fredo paint so so much.
Yea I think sketchup and layouts weakness (although not a problem for me) is they could have much better options for hatching and ESPECIALLY for quanitifying, god the quanitifying in sketchup is just so bad, although still workable, just a pain though.
I think what you’re expressing is the difference of trying to learn on your own vs hiring someone like myself or another to get you into a solid workflow quickly without having to spend the painful time to figure it all; out on your own. Even reading a book on someones workflow still takes so long to figure it out on your own, in comparison to a live demo where you can ask questions and get results right away. The faster way to learn a better method is to do a live session with the person you want to learn from. If you’d like help in this regard, I’d be happy to setup a session with you for free the first time and show you how I have my setup and we can go from there. I mostly do design but consulting is something I do from time to time. I’ve recently taken someone off of vectorworks and now using layout exclusively, a well known designer in my area.
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We are not at all in line for many point of view ;o)
First, if for you architecture is a “team work”, for me, it’s a solo job because I am the designer and I (use to) build houses and small buildings. But also for me, architecture is not a profession, but a state of mind (or an attitude). If I need assistance, then I hire draftsmen and yes, then we can call it “a team”.
Also, there has been some change in the past decades. When I did my apprenticeship, we use to draw ALL plans for ALL trades. Depending of the involvement (if it included interior design or not), we would get paid between 18% to 25% of the cost of the building. Now days, because most clients think that architects are worthless, the fee (in Switzerland) is between 8% to 12%. Thus, the planification is reported to compagnies, witch often creates situations where there are “many architects” on site, creating confusion and technical bad manners.
I can draw in 3D CAD since 2004, and before I did it on the ink board since 1983. If it helped me to sell my project to clients, it never did for my natural vision in space and rarely helped me solve a technical issue (it did some time to communicate with a worker to draw on a wall a 3D detail to explain the issue).
Now, in my building carrer, I never had to draw in 3D for masonry, reinforcement, framework, ventilation system, plumbing, electricity, plastering etc. I did for some furniture, but never “to build” a house.
So there may be a generational factor, because what I see now is no more “architects”, but “designer” that most of the time don’t know how to build. Before, the aesthetic was translated by the static. Today, most of the so-called architects “decorate” the static. Worse still, they no longer know what the eaves, the cornices, the drains or the drops are for. It seem that 5000 years of building history is useless for those “genius” (that I call “illuminated egocentrics”). I can find all kinds of those, able to “invent” mid-floors on flat grounds, for example…
So I totally disagree when you say “2D is not only limiting all this, it requires a lot of 2D work for sections, elevations, etc. Extra drawings that you don’t have to draw if you use 3D” (unless you build the houses by yourself from the conception to the last roof tile).
But lets stay open-minded, we never know. Maybe I can learn something from you I never suspected and I am always glad to learn something. Next time, I will make all my plans in 3D and tell the guys to manage, arguing that I need to save time because my clients think am too expansive ;o)
To finish with a touch of humour , your’e right on this particular point “Sketchup is only uncreative when Layout gets stuck”… yes, I agree, as I always get stuck with Layout !
;o)
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That used to be impossible to do natively with Sketchup but it’s now fairly easy if you use Sketchup and Layout to control Tag’s Linestyles. You actually can do that as you do it in CAD.
If your 3D models have a lot of detail (like layered walls, for instance) Skalp allows you to hatch and control those linestyles and hatches, including weights, linetypes and colors and even allows you to export to CAD very nicely, with layer separation, real hatches and linetypes.
If you are going to model that many details in Sketchup, it might not be worth it. I’d use Section Cut Face and control tags and hatches between Sketchup and Layout. Hatches would have to be rasterized, which I don’t find bad, but a lot of people do.
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I think you are seeing things in a very particular way that relates to your personal experience with 2D, 3D, architectural thinking and building construction or project management throughout these years.
I don’t see myself as old, but I’m no longer young. I like architecture and used to think in 2D exclusively, visualizing space easily and doing some models to present. Even so, at the time, I could describe myself as you describe yourself now, (though I wouldn’t diminish new architecture or architecture practices different than the one I produce, like you seem to be doing now).
2D was really enough at the time.
Then I started using 3D for some presentations and got familiarized with it. I suddenly realized I was more capable than before.
Drawing, writing, building a physical model is a means to register your thoughts. After registering you look at it and question, you evolve your thought. Instead of thinking in plan view and registering things on that exclusive view, I was then starting to register that thought in 3D.
If you register that extra dimension you register more, so you evolve more. In a lot of aspects 3D has become only just a means towards a better project. And this I’m sure: I make better projects now than I used to. I didn’t loose the knowledge I had… I just think better now.
And I’m not using 3D exclusively for my practice, I draw a lot, read a lot, discuss a lot, learn a lot and try to absorb a lot of experiences. That is all part of the final pack that is a project. More possibilities, better project. In the end there’s 2D and 3D output, as well as written and spoken.
I have a very small team but we are not solo practicioneers for sure. Our clients, engineers, landscape architects, suppliers, contractors, critics and friends help us out everytime. We love to use the collective inteligence around a project to make it better. With 3D it is more easily accessible.
Separating things between 3D and 2D workflows isn’t always that clear, but not having 3D is not better, imho is like not having a lot of possibilities, so it’s worse.
Sketchup is really cool because it allows us to use 3D intuitively and it feels linked to the other aspects of our work, even if Layout tries to break that link too much…
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I would only add one thing:
If 3D is not a fluent language for someone and if it’s more a barrier than a means to an end, then it should be dropped. I don’t think that is your case. You seem that you could easily use it more if you wanted.
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Now don’t say you’re “only” an interior designer!
But I think you will benefit by working on drawing by hand. It helps inform all the other work, including observation of details and proportions, even if, like me, you are not always happy with your hand drawing!
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