I have been doing custom residential and light commercial design for about 18 years. I started with AutoCAD and continued with that up until about 6 years ago. When the whole 3D thing took off I made the switch and have used ArchiCAD, SketchUp (just for fun, never completed a project), and most recently Chief Architect. Chief Architect has been great but the cost continues to go up in price (as of today it is another $40 per month). There are a lot of great tools that automate things to help save time. Unfortunately, they can also cause issues if you are trying to do something specific that the program doesn’t like. Sometimes something simple can end up taking hours. Some of my remodels are also on really old homes that are not built the way things are today, and it seems to struggle with that.
So… I recently purchased SketchUp studio. I know you can create an entire construction set with SketchUp and Layout. I have also become more and more interested in photorealistic renderings. My only concern is how much, if any additional time it will take. I am hoping to get some feedback from people that have switched from Chief Architect or similar programs. Any other advice or thoughts are welcome as well.
I’ve read a lot about this very thing and it seems like for relatively small projects it could be faster than the other options. You need to be very in tune with best practices for modeling and model organization. Be advised that there will be a lot of upfront time developing those practices and especially making templates for SU and LO. The more you can utilize templates, the more time you save, and that time save must be realized over a few projects before it really starts to be efficient.
Check out books by Nick Sonder and Mike Brightman (Mike also has a full on extension – ConDoc Tools – that automates construction documents from SketchUp to Layout).
The books are a few years old but the fundamental principles remain the same.
I dropped Archicad last year (after 29 years!) due to their price gouging and negative development. It was costing more each year and productivity was dropping. I didn’t think SU would cut it fully as a replacement but I have been surprised. However, as others have already stated you need to learn how to use it for your workflow and also look for the addons like Profile Builder that are capable of doing a lot of the heavy lifting. Once you get the hang of it, you will come to appreciate the simplicity and flexibility is its greatest asset. And there are many helpful & knowledgable people here to get you over those early challenges.
Happy to hear you’re interested in switching. I used autocad archicad and revit prior. Archicad was pretty good at tackling 3D and 2d plans. The wheels fell off when it came to custom geometry and rendering. SKUP + Layout is an underrated workflow. Mainly because you can model anything in 3D, and 3D is where your mind lives for the bulk of the work (at least how I use it). I was handed a Nick Sonders book by an old boss and got the hang of it in about 3 or 4 days. The key for my workflow is everything is modeled anatomically correctly in skup, and layout is like an indesign program for viewports and annotation. Like the other forum members stated model organization and layer management is critical. Shoot me a DM if you want a quick tutorial.
Oh and welcome to the community!
Thanks for the feedback! I have the book by Nick Sonder and Matt Donley. I bought it a couple of years ago but never really studied it. Now that I am considering going all in with SketchUp and Layout, I will need to read it. How closely do you follow the workflow that is laid out in that book? I have watched a few other videos and some say that all the walls should be drawn from a top view and then saved to use in the plan view instead of push/pulling them and using a section plane. Looks like they drew everything in 2D and then separately in 3D. I remember trying the section plane and it made my windows look messy in the 2D plan view.
I don’t mind spending extra time setting things up as I have had to do that every time I switched design programs in the past. I don’t want to overthink it, but I want to make sure the time I spend is spent setting it up correctly.
I was hoping Nick would update his book, as I imagine he has updated his workflow, but he’s probably too busy designing houses you may also want to look at 5D+, Condoc, Medeek wall, plugins etc and play around with different plug ins as they all impact how to organize your workflow. I think it’s both the blessing and curse of SU/LO is that everyone can make there own workflow but it can involve a lot of wheel reinvention
I can’t imagine that there is much to update with Nick’s workflow.
As I said – it’s my view that the fundamentals of his workflow remain the same.
Nick’s 2016 book was co-authored with Matt Donley – Matt published the second edition of his own book SketchUp to Layout in (I think 2021). I haven’t read Matt’s 2nd edition book so don’t know if it discusses Nick’s workflow.
I do like the flexibility of being able to decide what my workflow will look like. I know there are a ton of plug-ins, but hoping to keep that to a minimum so my software overhead doesn’t get out of hand and I don’t need to keep reinventing the wheel (as you mentioned earlier) every time I add or remove a plug-in.
Everyone here has a slight variation tailored to their workflows. Mine is a dumbed down version of Nick Sonders. They talk about drawing in orthographic projection first then either importing auto CAD or drawing the floor plan in 2D. Not really important. Mostly that helps their brains think about a space the way they’ve been trained (in 2D floor plans, elevations, etc.). If you can model in 3D, just do that and then go through later and cut sections/ plans/ elevations. One trick that massively improved my modeling efficiency is using the arrow keys (left, right, or up) while using the line tool. You can draw orthogonal lines in real time. This pretty much eliminates the need for 4 viewports like in archicad/ revit with plan, section, and 3D. If you can draw it in 3D why would you need the other views. SketchUp just saved you a ton of navigation time
you may also want to look at 5D+, Condoc, Medeek wall, plugins etc and play around with different plug ins as they all impact how to organize your workflow. I think it’s both the blessing and curse of SU/LO is that everyone can make there own workflow but it can involve a lot of wheel reinvention