Layout in 3D

SketchUp
1

Hello there,

I have been modelling my house in sketchup for many years now, adding details, creating alternates, etc.
And to implement easy switches to show things around I have created many scenes

  • scenes with different cutting planes to show floors
  • scenes playing with visible layers and geometry to show alternates
  • scenes playing with cameras to see from different points of view

Then to show a specific stuff i just have to find the 3 appropriate scenes and activate them 3.

Now I need to go futher and create drawings of a given alternate to create an official building request at my hometown.

First I thought I’d use layout, that already exists on my SU veesion (2014) but the performance is very poor (switching scenes in my model causes the app to crash)

And also as I work with creo and catia at the office i have been growing an interest into what is called Model Based Design, in other terms try to avoid drawings, just add dimensions in 3D and take pictures from there to get your drawings.

Unfortunetly, in SU nothing is done to help you with that and everything pushes you toward Layout.

Did anyone here try to implement his drawings directly into the 3D ? How did you approach the stuff ? did you just add dimensions in a layer and display them in dedicated scenes with canonical points of view (Top, Left, etc.) how did you manage the printing and scale ?

many thanks for your insight (incl. if you think this is a dumb idea :slight_smile:

2

I suspect the first step is to know what specifications the building off ice require for submission? I’m not sure if they expect traditional plans and elevations? Personally I think there is some benefit to 3D as it is more apparent what is going on. Ideally, there would be the plans and elevations along with some 3D views for clarity.
The benefit of layout is that the dimensions are much clearer, whereas the dimensions in sketchup can get all over the place. You need to save certain sets of dimensions on layers for different views, otherwise they show up in other views as lines and confusion.
It might be worth simplifying your main model into a few versions, one for each scheme and delete the excess from each so that when you each of them into Layout they are not too much of an overload.
As you say, for scaled drawings Layout is much easier and changeable, you can get sketchup to represent scale by adding a know size frame around the work and use its extents for printing?

3

What are you actually doing to cause this? You’re not clicking into a Layout window are you?