I work for a signage company as the engineer for creating all things fabricated at the shop (25 years in the business) so I understand how they are built in irl but looking for tips on streamlining my process to create my models faster.
My setup is sketchup 2017 pro
ASUS Rog Zephyrus duo 64 gigs ram
3D connexion space mouse
Just looking for some tips designing.
SketchUp is very flexible software and it is used in many different ways in different industries. It’s tricky to give general modeling advice that is relevant to you without understanding a little bit about your process. Are there any specific questions you have? Or aspects of your workflow that you would like to improve? Do you work with 3D text for your signs, or import other file types? Do you export your files in another filetype for digital fabrication (cnc router/plasma/waterjet?). Are you making CONDOCs for others to read? DO you use layout? Are you using extensions, or solid tools?
The more specific you can be about your process / problems, the more targeted the solutions will be.
Basic outline, what do you start with and what do you “end” with.
Typically I receive design files from my art department and bring them into CorelDraw and export them as dxf to scale and build my models from there,this position started from me designing something one day and the company owner thought it would help out our fabrication team with better understanding of what the finished product should look like, it has since then became my full time position and I was just wondering if there might be any tricks to speed up my work flow. My problem is the amount of throughput of build packets for fabrication are taking longer than I think they should " pretty sure it’s just my lack of knowledge on sketchup" as I have only been modeling daily for about a year now. Before that it was just the occasional projects.
Basics start at receiving design>convert to .dxf>model design>send to layout to create build packet>send packet for review by the owner> if approved it goes to customer or city >then into fabrication. But often times I have to make revisions and sometimes that takes longer than the original design " I’m bad about not grouping or making components"
That description of your workflow really helps.
I assume you are doing this to import linework directly as edges in SU. Do you use these imported edges directly or do you trace over them to create your SU model?
Fast, clean, organized modeling in SketchUp hinges on components and groups. Basic workflow is to create a shape or object, make it a group or component immediately, I use %90 components which have many benefits over groups, give your components useful names, potentially assign that group or component it a Layer (the current term is Tags but they’re still called layers in the older version you are using), then move on to create the next piece of geometry and repeat the process. Simple rule is: everything in your model should be a group or component, and only groups or component should be assigned a layer/tag.
You are probably already understand the following basic concepts, but if any of these sound unfamiliar you you could look into them.
working with inference engine
typing in all dimensions directly
Component browser/collections for commonly used objects.
Outliner
Disable length snapping
Intersect with…
Solid tools
There are loads of extensions that will still work with 17 pro, It’s hard to recommend any without knowing where the bottlenecks in your workflow are.
How are you sending Layout? DO you have a layout template, does it match the SU template you are using? If the documentation you deliver is consistent (paper size, views, title block, ect) you can make things faster by setting up your SketchUp Template and Layout Template to work together. For a simple example your SketchUp template could have two scenes pre-saved in it: a front view and a top view. You then set up your layout template to have two viewports placed as you wish, each assigned to one of those two scenes. Along with your title block and anything else you commonly use. You would open SU template, model your object, save and send to Layout, choose your custom template, and your layout doc will be pre-populated automatically with a front and top view set to the scale you have chosen in the Layout template.
The SketchUp to Layout relationship takes some time to understand and set up but it can be a real time saver.
This is where groups and components and understanding what can and cannot be done with raw geometry can really help. tConcepts that come to mind are fully exploring the scale tool, understanding how the move tool relates to raw geometry and nuanced selection process like left to right and right to left boxes, and selecting faces or edges only. This also is where a streamlined layout path allows one to make quick revisions to a SketchUp File and quickly republish an updated Layout. As well as basics like save-as and file version organization.
If you have specific questions or problems that you run into the forum is a full of very knowledgeable and helpful users with lots of great ideas.
Or if you really want a friendly evaluation attach a model of yours for folks to look at.
I like to assign shortcuts to things like Follow Me and Paste in Place to save rooting for them.
That speeds things up for me.
typically I use the .dxf i bring in as my base, i explode them and then with a few clicks on each item closing lines i have 2D workable art that i can pull up dimensionally. and Endlessfix i am not very knowledgeable on most of the items you mentioned ie…
and i never thought about using similar style templates for both SU and LO but i can see where that would make it faster because i always deal with the same views for 90% of what i create.
