Sketchup + Condoc Tools + Medeek + Layout + D5 Workflow

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Hi Guys! Long term Sketchup user and knowledge consumer of the forum, but this is my first post. Bit of an introduction and a round table disussion all in one I suppose. Hopefully that is OK.

First off my name is Tyler. I have been designing and building single family residential houses and remodel/addition projects since 2011 in Southwest Missouri and Northwest Arkansas. I’m old enough know its hard to rememer when I first starting using Sketchup. Around 2006 or 2008 maybe, when it was still Google Sketchup. My first version was 7 or 8. I used it lightly for recreational purposes and then a little more seriously when I worked for a skatepark company from 2008-2011. I was a salesman for a skatepark company and it qickly allowed me to produce VERY ROUGH 3D models of skateparks. The customers loved this and I could do it in real time. I knew at this point the lightweight UI and ability to do quick modeling on the fly with an out of date laptop would end up being very valuable, so I’ve stuck with it ever since. At the time I was laughed at by our design team that used much more sophisticated software (3DSMAX) to produce final designs and renderings that took multiple days to produce. Through that I saw that ultimately the customers were happier having it fast and actually participating in the designs real time. When I left this company I continued to use Sketchup to show customers what their proposed addition or project would look like and ithelped me sell 100s of jobs. Even when presented as raw models or poorly executed sketch style drawings. (We all have to learn along the way, LOL). Prior to this I did have experience in both manual paper drafting and even several years of Autocad and have always had an eye and passion for perspective sketching.

Anyways, fastforward 13 or 14 years and I am now exclusively providing conceptual design and construction drawings to my clients along with some consulting and construction management. Right now I find myself in a unique position in our market. I have clients relying on me for conceptual design and visualization, permit sets, detailed construction drawings and marketing material such as photorealistic renderings and animations.

In 2017 or 2018 I bought Mike Brightmans book and adopted my own shortcut version of his system for my own condocs and permit sets. I am now an avid user of his Condoc Tools extension. Which I absolutely love. Creating all the scenes and stacking viewports was my frustration and impatience weakness. Now I am obsessed with keeping my process as parametric as possible. Change is constant and I prefer to only make it in one place if possible!

So Sketchup, Condoc Tools, and Layout have been amazing for that. Mike, if you read this, thank you for developing Condoc and all your videos.

Through watching some of Mikes videos I was introduced to the Medeek extensions and thankfully Condoc Tools adaptation to work with them to have amazing organizational control of a very detailed model and ultimately drawing, which as a builder myself, I like very much. Having 3D details of every stud, header, beam, anchor bolt, portal frames, HVAC, Electrical and hopefully soon Plumbing is a very important aspect to me. To have the ability to provide a set of comprehensive plans to my clients allowing them to hold their subcontractors accountable to the plans with great detail, while eliminating guesswork and minimizing mistakes, is of great value to all to my clients and ultimately makes the sub and general contractors expecatations and scope much clearer.

I have gotten pretty efficient at using the Medeek extensions while modeling but when translating more complicated plans to Layout I feel I am missing some steps or tagging/layering improperly. I am not sure if this is due to how some Medeek extensions, like the electric, for example seems to only work properly when nesting lights in the ceiling and switches/receps in the walls and ends up creating unpredicatable plan exports from Condoc Tools to scrapbook or possibly layering in the wrong order. I understand the basics of modifying the Condoc drawing set tools but honestly some of it feels a little weighty for me to solve or modify in an decent amount of time as I have multiple projects I need to deliver detailed plans that include MEP drawings.

My latest complication has been moving the models I create using Medeek along with Condoc tools into a rendering platform. I have used Lumion, Twin Motion, and D5. I am really leaning towards D5 as renderings and animations are not my main priority and my least knowledgeable area. But D5 is giving me good results with a simple and fast process. All rendering software or extensions I have struggled with lights, fixtures, and 2d/dim tags as I import models for rendering. Adding canlights, changing out materials, etc. It seems like often the components Medeek generates in the model just don’t want to cooperate with illumination and swapping material to create atleast a mid level final render or animation.

Is anyone else implemnting a “one model” process to generate drawings and renders from or am I fighting an uphill battle? I absolutely love Medeek for the details but have been tempted to siplify the detail to more seamlessly move the model into the rendering phase without having to change everyhting in the rendering program or create a dumbed down second model to use for rendering and visualation process. My goal is to only have one model that is parametric across all extensions and rendering engines.

Maybe this is asking too much or I need some guidance on replacing Medeek components for more render friendly components? If anyone is utilizing a “one model” system like what I am trying to explain I am happy to pay you for your time for guidance in cleaning up or modifying the overall process. Again I do not want to move away from Condoc Tools or Medeek. I am wanting to streamline the process of creating detailed MEP drawings and overall renderings and visulatization while working from one master model that is parametric.

Sorry for the long winded post guys. I have been beating my head against a wall here trying to clean up this process to deliver the fastest and most precise models and drawings possible but I am coming to the realization I may need some guidance or advice from someone smarter than myself!

Thank you guys!

Tyler

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I’m gonna start by saying I don’t have a solution to your problem, but I am in a similar boat to you. I’ve used SketchUp for years (also when Google owned it) on and off. Well, I transitioned from a site superintendent at a production homebuilder in NWA to an architectural designer at a much higher end builder less than 2 years ago.

I use Sketchup, Layout, and the Medeek tools for all of our plansets. I don’t do a ton of rendering or use ConDoc tools currently but it’s cool to see someone on here that has a VERY similar workflow to me. Let alone in the exact same area!

My biggest gripe currently is how tedious Layout seems when doing documentation. I just looked up ConDoc and am very impressed. Would you say it’s worth it if I want to streamline things?

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There are often going to be some difficulties between things created in SketchUp and then trying to carry them over into a renderer.
I think if you have a SketchUp based workflow ; then a renderer that works directly inside of SketchUp is going to be an easier situation to deal with , as you can control the materials of the renderer directly under SketchUp via your component libraries or even with scripting.
V-ray and Enscape are both good in this regard

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Hey bud! Glad to know I’m not the only one working from both sides. I agree with your statement on creating actual working drawings in Layout. Condoc Tools is 100% worth it. Its very affordable and you can customize the plan generator with your own tags and scenes if it doesnt fit your needs perfectly. A little bit of work upfront but then you have a repeatable process to export models to plans very quickly. Mike Brightman has tutorials on customizing the planset generator and its quick and intuitive. When I finish building out my template Im happy to share it with you. But I would highly encourage just getting Condoc Tools now and starting to familiarize yourself with it. If you like Sketcup UI you’ll probably love it. Built with the same mindset. Keep it as simple and lightweight as possible but has the capability to get as complicated or detailed as you need or like. And no, im not affiliated or paid to endorse it lol. But maybe I should be. As well as Medeek. Nathaniel is doing amazing things with his extensions.

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Ok this is good info. I haven’t tried any of the Chaos products in years. Vray intimidates me to be honest because I dont have much experience with rendering. But from what ive researched Enscape is real-time and user friendly for guys like me that work out of sketchup and dont want to spend too much time in a standalone render engine or program. Lumion seemed simple but them not having a monthly option is a deal killer for me. If utilizing Enscape the most is it possible to move that file or model into Vray to get the higher quality image or animation? Or is it completely separate? I really like how fast and easy D5 is on the surface but if I can control most variables from sketchup then thats a huge bonus. My main struggle is lighting. Can you create luminescent components like can lights that dont have to be completely reset or replaced in Enscape? Hopefully that makes sense

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Chaos are constantly working on interoperability- at the moment you can open a file that you’ve worked on in Enscape and much of it transfers over to v-ray.

V-ray itself has had several big improvements in recent years to simplify some common tasks and give you more flexibility to make you image entirely in v-ray without needing to kick it over to photoshop

V-ray introduced chaos cosmos a while back and this gives you thousands of out of the box render ready materials and decorative assets. By the end of next year there will be something like 30,000 of them.

There is also another step where you can move your project from Enscape or v-ray into Envision - which is another aggregator type renderer , much like D5 or Twinmotion.

I understand why v-ray is considered intimating - it’s a versatile tool much like SketchUp is, you just need to find the buttons and workflow that works for you .

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Thank you. This has been more helpful than what feels like hours of YouTube research. It looks like Chaos offers monthly payment plans so thats super helpful as well until I decide it’s the permanent solution.

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It looks like they have a 7 day free trial. I’ll go ahead and download that and see what I can put together for construction plans. After watching quite a few YouTube videos of course! I’m fine with work on the front end to save time everywhere else. As long as I can get a good template down I’m sure it will save hours of headaches.

And that would be great! I’ll shoot you a message with my email so we can stay in touch.

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I think youll find it very useful. And if you check out Mike Brightmans YouTube channel, it think its called Sketchup Workflow, theres tons of good content

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I’d have a look at Enscape first - I have all of the renders available to me as we sell them all. But I find myself going to Enscape most often - certainly first.

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I will say trying to do it all in one model isnt practical. I do use the Medeek extensions and after a few of years can say im pretty good with it. I dont use Condoc. or D5. I have looked at them but they dont suit how I want to do things. I usually have a main model for the structure. A striped down version of the structure that I can use on a separate site model. Changes to the main structure model are easy to update the “sub” models. Site models can get very large so having all the detail of the structure in that model just slows things down.

I have looked at Condoc from time to time and it looks like it has a method for creating tags and and automating your layout viewports. Its impressive but not for me. I have pretty good templates and a structure of Tags and scenes already in templates for SketchUp so when I model with Medeek things are put in the right place. I also have my Layout template setup so it populates the viewports upon the “Send to Layout” from SketchUp with minimal cleanup. Then if I need renders (I use Vray) I make another model and usually focus on just the scenes Im rendering. Most clients dont want to pay for rendering, so unless they really want the interior design aspect and realistic lighting I dont often do renders.

Your comments on the level of detail regarding electrical. especially lighting. Unless your rendering I dont put in outlets, switches or recess lighting. All this makes for a bloated model and you dont really see these features in most drawing views. I may put some in for section cuts and in Details but think of what you will actually see. A traditional Ligting plan is just symbols on a plan view. Same with the Electrical. Often the electrical plan does both. A lot of people dont even do an electrical plan. My electrician friends like my drawings because the feel they are quoting apples to apples when there is an actual electrical layout.

I personally dont do old school black and white plans. I feel thats old technology and isnt required. I have a library of 3d details in color organized in scrapbooks that are clear to even the home owner that doesnt look at plans every day. The drawings are easy for anyone to read with subtitle color that make notes and dimensions easier to see. Contractors love them.

There are limits to how automated your drawing process can get. I hope this helps.

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Hi Ivan,

Thank you for the response. Very helpful info. My workflow for drawing sets has been similar to yours. Condocs just helped me get those scenes all generated and viewports stacked much quicker once I got the feel for it. I think I trialed it twice before and didn’t stick it out but now I’m needing to be faster and doing some more volume than before.

Medeek is a double edged sword for me because I do tend to get hung up on modeling every little detail inside and out but it’s just not practical I’m finidng as I pull my hair out spending too much time doing so.

The rendering is becoming a neccesity for me to have in my workflow especially for my higher end clients that want to see “exactly” what it is going to look like before making final selections. Most of them aren’t asking for or expecting complete realism or animations but the real time rendering is amazing when I host design meetings with he clients.

As far as the lighting and electical plans my cutomers do want them. I hate drawing them lol. I’m still feeling out Medeek Electric to see if it is something I will continue to use for those drawings.

My hope and goal has been to streamline a parametric single model process with tag and scene control to move from conceptual, CDs, and renderings with the highest level of accuracy as possible. I agree with you that it does not seem practical, atleast not with my current knowledge and skillset. I can build lighter weight models for visualization and basic drawings (permit sets). O I can draw very detailed technical models for high lever CDs, but using one model for both has so many drawbacks. Dream killed! lol. Back to the drawing board.

I appreciate your feedback buddy! Thank you for taking the time to write a detailed response.

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The Medeek extensions literally give you enough rope to “hang yourself” if you let them. The key is to put in only as much detail as you need. I built the electrical extension because I got enough call for it that it made sense to offer it, but from my own standpoint (actually doing design work for clients) I probably would not use it as much as one might think. I just depends on how much detail you want or need, and of course what the client wants.

On a similar note, with the Wall plugin, I put out this video specfically a few months back because a lot of people were under the misconception that they had to show all the framing if they used the extension. The fact is I’ve tried to make it flexible enough so that a more simplified approach is possible and you can then adopt the appropriate “level of detail” that you are comfortable with.

I probably wouldn’t even use my own HVAC plugin, not because it isn’t cool or kind of fun to use, its just that I’m not interested in that level of detail in my model. However there are situations where some designers want the whole HVAC system represented.

My goal as a developer it to make an extension(s) that fits certain niches and is flexible enough to handle 80% - 90% of the customer base’s needs, while at the same time trying to keep it as simple as possible. Sometimes it is very difficult to thread that needle.

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It is definitely a never ending venture to perfect you process. One thing I like about participating in this forum is the exchange of ideas. Its a gift to have very talented people who share their experience not just a tech support function. Keep posting as you develop your process, we all benefit from the discussion.

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