The End of the Sketchup Journey

I have just spent a week learning  Sketchup, or getting up to novice user stage.  I am now fairly comfortable with how it works, although things like arrays are still a mystery, but I know they can be done.

The man who started at work has now gone, and with him no doubt my boss's enthusiasm for things Sketchup or any other 3D for that matter.

My last stage was to use Layout, and I found this simple and easy to use.  It is very similar to the idea of Autocad's Paper Space.

Two things that need fixing (or is it just me not using it correctly!?):

1. To get a linework only hatch to appear is not that easy.  The only way I can see is to use monochrome hatches, which probably would work - or just use standard hatches and print in black and white. As you can see from these elevations, I did not show hatches.

2. When dimensioning, it seems you are not able to control the lengths of the witness lines, but that might be because I have not found where these are altered.

Yes, the linework looks terrible, but that would be me not setting it up nicely.  There is a man on Youtube who shows you how to get this looking pretty, by creating two views and importing them both so they sit on top of each other, which seems a bit of a drama to do.

Getting there, sort of...

Why oh why cannot the programmers of Sketchup, get out and have a look at the way Autocad does pan and zoom? (He ranted).

How hard would it be to have the mouse wheel do a pan instead of orbit?  Just gets cumbersome coming from Autocad to do such basic things. Maybe there is a way of customising this.

A quick google found another person who came across the same problem:

Quoted here from SketchUcation by by Macho3001 » Sat Nov 23, 2013 1:17 pm

"My problem is this: - I work on models in both sketchup and Revit/ AutoCAD/ Max Design. Unfortunately, the middle mouse button in sketchup and the other Autodesk software is EXACT OPPOSITE. While Sketchup uses Middle Mouse Button (MMB) drag to orbit and Shift+Drag to Pan, Revit-ACAD-Max do the exact opposite, MMB drag to Pan and Shift+Drag to Orbit. After having been a long user of Sketchup over the years I have learnt that Sketchup way of assignment is more suited for productivity and ease of use, as one tends to orbit (& zoom) more, rather than pan, while navigating 3d space."

Well, there you go: the answer is just hold down middle  mouse button and shift at the same time!

Progress on the house model has been achingly slow, but it appears the outside is done, albeit a bit rough.  This is an actual house renovation I am working on at work at the moment, all that is happening is the garage at the front is being stretched.

This is a Vray render:

This is the Sketchup model:

This is an Enscape Render (Instant rendering-unfortunately my trial period has run out so I had to be happy with a screen shot.  Excuse splodges!

The rationale behind Sketchup as far as I can see at the moment

I am having a few issues, as a beginner, which with time may prove to be not quite right, so read on with that proviso. Especially that poor soul on the Sketchup team whose job it is to monitor stuff like this.

1. It seems a bit iffy that you model in one program , and use another to produce output. People obviously cope with this, so this could be just pickiness on my part.

2. You put a window in a "wall".  Great. Not so great if said wall is 2 surfaces, because then you have to dig another hole in the inner surface. Not so easy if other things are in the way. Throw in the situation of a brick veneer and a timber stud wall and suddenly windows get very irritating.

3. You want to do nicer windows? Easy, just download and install a plug in that does this. Oh wait....anything any good costs $$$.  Some of the free ones are not up to date. Want a roof tool that means you just pick a surface?  Can be done, except the one I chose said no way to the roof in this picture.  So it had to be built in pieces. It turned out I had made it too big anyway.  Vali Architects put out some nice stuff. Just $118/year.
Tempting but at the moment I am just trying to master the basics, so drawing things from scratch is the name of the game.

4. Just saw a Youtube where a man is manually putting on ground lines.  Surely this is the goal of 3D to do away with this sort of madness?

Rendering with Sketchup

It seems there is no rendering native to the free version of 2017.

To do rendering you have to buy a licence from Vray for US$350 for an annual licence.

This compares to US$450 for an Enscape licence which does similar things.  I hope I have these prices right-google to check!  This blog is not a review comparing the two.

Vray lets you download a copy to try for a month (Enscape only 14 days for their trial)

Easy to download and try.  Apparently you need to use Vray materials, and the pool water, even then I still came unstuck, but with higher resolution managed slightly nicer renders:

Now I have just noticed the sky has gone...maybe time to look at the Vray tutorial.

Starting out with Sketchup

A few years ago I downloaded and tried it out, and being a dyed in the wool Autocad user, I did not like it.

About six months ago, I tried it again, and when I found there was no fillet command, I put it to one side yet again.

What has changed is a new architectural draftsman has started at work, where I produce residential house plans using Autocad LT. He has about 20 years experience, and can use almost any CAD software, so when he said give it a go, I thought: why not!



So, here I am again, with a copy of 2017 sketchup on board, doing some stuff, but very slowly and with many mistakes.

These are a few of the things I have picked up so far:

1. Starting with 2018 Sketchup, you are no longer working on a downloadable program, but are working on  a web based one.  Not so bad you say? Well it appears that add-ons will not work with the web based one. I have 2017 installed, and it seems you cannot download the 2017 version any more.

2. With the 2017 version you end up with two programs, one called Sketchup and the other called Layout.  The idea is you model in Sketchup and then bring that into Layout to produce a set of plans, usually floor plans, elevations and so  on.

3. It seems the add-ons are what makes it a more capable program. For instance one of my first ones was TIGs 2D tools, which does have a fillet button on it.  There are some free, some you have to pay for.

4. If you were contemplating using it to do architectural work, you pay NZ$1000 for the pro version, and according to the man at work, spend another $500 on add-ons.  Which is way cheaper than what you would have to pay for Revit. 

5. Coming from an Autocad background, you have to re-wire your brain a bit.

6. If you make something, e.g. a post, right away, make it a GROUP.  If you are planning on using it as a standard thing in your drawing, and want any changes to one to be reflected in all, then make it a COMPONENT. I will be looking into the idea of locking things, as it seems I made a roof then deleted it!

My first project is a Pool Pergola, which I have done some plans in Autocad 3D and a rendered quickly from Autocad.

This is the Autocad version:

This is the 2D image from Sketchup- the roof got deleted somewhere!

I downloaded a trial copy of Vray for Sketchup, and did a quick render:

As you can see, a few problems with the pool water opacity.