Great 3D tool

Sketchup is awesome. I use it almost every day as the main, computer-based element of my residential design firm.

I hate AutoCAD and will do anything to stay on my Mac, so sketchup is great in going between PC and Mac and it integrates well with Autocad, so you can focus on designing your house and then export parts of it to CAD.

Good luck. If you ever have any questions about Sketchup, i would be glad to try and help out.

Happy designing.

Jason
 
Thanks for posting.

I used to love the old program MiniCAD on the Mac. If it's at least as good, it should be an excellent program.
 
Sorry dude, I have to disagree, I love AutoCad, but thats probably cause I'm an engineer. Like they say AutoCad is your friend take it "One polyline" at a time.

Anhar
 
insanityfw said:
Sketchup is awesome. I use it almost every day as the main, computer-based element of my residential design firm.

I hate AutoCAD and will do anything to stay on my Mac, so sketchup is great in going between PC and Mac and it integrates well with Autocad, so you can focus on designing your house and then export parts of it to CAD.

Good luck. If you ever have any questions about Sketchup, i would be glad to try and help out.

Happy designing.

Jason
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Jason for sure I will be taking you up on some questions!!! I also dropped the $100 for the book. http://cadgarage.com/sketchupbookv5.html

My grandfather and great-grandfather were architects so it kind of is in my blood. But a tool like this makes it alot simplier...
 
Hansk and Anhar- I don't really hate AutoCAD, but as a truly visual oriented person I just find the workflow of the Mac easier to take. And yes, I would be much more happy if AutoCAD were on a Mac platform, but integration with Sketchup isn't much of a problem.

With AutoCAD, Anhar, it makes sense that you'd like it because you're an engineer :) It was originally designed for engineering by engineers and let's face it true right-brainers and true left-brainers (9 times out of 10) see things differently. AutoCAD is very powerful, but compared to other programs out there it is old-fashioned and cumbersome. The thing with ACAD is that it's the monster in the market so it is not going away.

Again, from a purely design standpoint I use it as little as possible. For drafting I like to draw by hand as much as possible and sketchup fills the gap between cerebral CAD programs and hand designing...I even use a Wacom tablet and Alias Sketchbook pro for even better presentation, etc. Plus, I can take much of what I do into AutoCAD when I'm at a certain stage and the draftsmen, architects and engineers can do there thing from there.

Taylor-I look forward to talking with you about the program. The book wont give too much more than you get on the site, but it's great to have around.

I never really even started architecture school and now 2 years into my design career I'm doing pretty high-end homes. My dad has been an architect for 30 years and he swears it just have to be "in my blood" since I'm not too shaby at it either. :) (if i may say so myself). So, at the least, you will probably have a ok time with it if your gramps and dad were in the business.
I'm always caught between my love for design and addiction to filmmaking. The love afair with both continues. :)

Best,

J.
 
surf said:
AutoCad is a very popular and useful software
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Absolutely true.

Taylor-I think if more people knew about Sketchup they would get excited about its potential for previz work.

I did a spec commercial with it once and it helped greatly. You can easily model your sets and then set your viewing height and adjust the depth of field to give an idea of how your shot will look on set. Pretty cool. They even have a set of components that are bits of scaled film equipment that you can put in your model.
 
insanityfw said:
Absolutely true.

Taylor-I think if more people knew about Sketchup they would get excited about its potential for previz work.

I did a spec commercial with it once and it helped greatly. You can easily model your sets and then set your viewing height and adjust the depth of field to give an idea of how your shot will look on set. Pretty cool. They even have a set of components that are bits of scaled film equipment that you can put in your model.
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For sure on the pre-viz, I am also looking at moving a model over to Maya and doing a Mental Ray render....
 
Taylor Moore said:
For sure on the pre-viz, I am also looking at moving a model over to Maya and doing a Mental Ray render....
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Now that's the type of thing that I'd like to do, but am too dense to figure out. I would assume that you export the 3D studio and then into Maya, but you probably already know what to do if you play with Maya.

I have too many expensive hobbies as it is, so high end 3D modeling may have to wait. :)
 
insanityfw said:
Now that's the type of thing that I'd like to do, but am too dense to figure out. I would assume that you export the 3D studio and then into Maya, but you probably already know what to do if you play with Maya.

I have too many expensive hobbies as it is, so high end 3D modeling may have to wait. :)
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It's actually very easy, but you lose all your textures and need to re-texture in MAya...which has way more control of all filmic type aspects.
 
Taylor Moore said:
Wild question, but possibly if you select a specific color for the key....and use a compositing app.)
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I don't know much about chroma keying, but you can set the ground and sky to whatever color you want so you could pic the same green or blue for the sky and ground. Would that do it?

If really interested go to the skechup site and ask somebody on the forum.
 
insanityfw said:
Hansk and Anhar- I don't really hate AutoCAD, but as a truly visual oriented person I just find the workflow of the Mac easier to take. And yes, I would be much more happy if AutoCAD were on a Mac platform, but integration with Sketchup isn't much of a problem.
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Actually, AutoCAD was on the Mac back in the v.13 days.

They probably stopped revising it during Apple's bad days around 1995. I used to work at Apple back then, and CEO Michael Spindler was killing the company so much that we had evacuations all the time due to bomb threats directed at him.

AutoCAD has gotten much better, but there are other more pleasant alternatives that allow a nice 2d/3d combo based on proxies and viewing modes.
 
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