Well I have always been a big fan of Powerpoint, it is a lot more powerful than people give it credit for… and I should have really investigated this workflow more seriously long ago but as usual work always gets in the way…
Nevertheless I an currently modelling a concept design / feasibility study for two 46 floor apartment towers in SU and have set up the presentation in LO to generate PDF’s as the design progresses.
frustrated that I cant do all the other enhancements I usually do in PPT. eg image transparencies, gradients, shadow drops, animations, find and replace text, master pages, transitions, real text editing… etc etc etc…
I also use PDF-XChange Editor for all my PDF production and it has a option to convert PDF’s to Powerpoints…
… hmmm what if I convert my LO PDF output to PPT?
will it be painless?
will it respect the content and position of information in LO?
will it be editable in PPT?
will it be quick?
I can happily say yes to all the above !
If you want to go one step beyond LO only output consider direct conversion into PPT via PDF-Xchange’s convert tool… it is impressive
Note Vector work remains vector in PPT, as do text blocks and individual text…
Now you can do before to after fades of your construction in PowerPoint ! (though I imagine the
“before” for a project like this is just a hole in the ground. Are you doing this project all in SketchUp/ LayOut?
Whenever I start a new project I immediately create an A3 PPTX for it that I setup the draft presentation and keep it active throughout the design development… in it I build up the story of the project … the Brief, site Context, Reference Projects, Relevant Law samples, initial concepts, design strategies, massing studies, then final concepts… PPTX is so versatile and I can easily hide information [hide slide] I don’t want actively published…
The SU/LO work is maybe 50% of all that effort so being able to easily pull LO drawings in an editable form into PPTX [rather than before just cut and pasting screen saves or individual jpg exports] is a very valuable.
The second benefit of the PPTX as opposed to LO document is anyone on the project team can further adapt the PPTX… for their own needs, marketing, financial analysis… etc I hate creating dead end data… such a wasted effort…
Hi gsharp. Thanks for sharing your tricks.
What about amendments - Does your method allow any LO updates to be published to your PowerPoint presentation?
In a practical sense most amendments only affect a few slides / pages of the PPTX so it is less hassle to just do a manual patch…Powerpoint does have the option to insert linked images … so you could structure your workflow to export from LO as an image to a specific folder and then insert that image as a linked file in PPTX… so every time you exported from LO your PPTX file would see the updated image…
Sorry, missed the question… in answer… yes it was all done in SU/LO… up the the level of feasibility design… eg functional areas and disposition, primary circulation, massing volumes, statutory planning compliance, indicative structural and facade design and internal planning, unit mix… generally sufficient for development and funding approval.
