I want real archicture drawings of houses but also want a 3d model. Do I have to do things twice in SketchUp or how is the best workflow so I can reuse my work. I want both.
The best way to do this is with Sketchup Pro because it has the companion program called "Layout’ ( see one of many tutorials on this: How to set up your Sketchup Model for Layout - YouTube).
Layout produces clean working drawings to scale. While this is preferable, lesser results can be achieved in Sketchup alone. In Sketchup you can model in 3D and save views of those perspectives, but you can also switch off perspective to get parallel views. So in short, yes, you can model once and use that same model for both 3D models and 2D drawings without doing the work twice. You would have to export the separate views as SU doesn’t have pages like layout and achieving scale is harder. The same model and views would also be used inside of layout, with all the dimensions done there.
All the 3D work you do as a model can be saved with a number of 3D &2D views (plans, elevations, sections etc.) which can then be saved as views and shown in Layout. The beauty of layout is that the dimensions, line weights etc. can be controlled. With the SU model linked to the Layout document, any subsequent changes to the model are updated in the Layout images plus there are a number of options to control the scale of the drawings, vector lines and other architectural graphics from a scrapbook.
Without Layout, you can save 3D views in Sketchup as tabs, and then save other views using parallel projection for elevations, sections, plans etc. Dimension lines and leader text can be drawn on the model but they are not as controllable as in Layout. All of the dimensioning can get messy when changing scale/ view size. I find it cleaner to isolate certain dimensions on a layer that relates to a particular view so it only shows up for those views, otherwise it can interfere when looking at other views.
If you will be doing a lot of this type of work I would recommend SU Pro with Layout. Otherwise I would search for some tutorials on construction drawings from Sketchup alone. Someone may have figured out some techniques, but Layout for sure will make life easier.
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