Construction & Working Drawings - Discussion
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@zx10r_gaz said:
Tim first... I have attached a copy of a set of plans I have recently drawn for a domestic extension in PDF format.
OK, that's an interesting set of plans to look through.
On page 1 I can't see anything that you couldn't do in SU/LO. The site map would most likely be imported from some GIS I guess rather than modelled. The scale bar at bottom left would be dragged from the LO scrapbook, as would the compass rose. No problems with the sidebar texts, obviously. Annotating the elevations and sections is easy in LO. The only part I haven't done myself is the use of colouring for the outlines of the various parts of the house but I expect that creative use of SU styles might provide that.
On page 2 I see a few things that I don't know how to replicate easily. The assorted hatching/brick/soil/insulation 'textures' are something I haven't worked out yet but I think probably use of a suitable SU style along with textures applied to the section cut surfaces ought to work. The details in D3 look like they would be standard snippets either imported as pdf/png/etc or even drawn in LO and made into scrapbook items. D2 could be done in a similar manner if it is a common detail but I did a similar detail direct from SU in my plans. Page 3 looks about the same.
There are certainly things that LO won't do that would be useful, but I really think we can do a lot more than most people believe. But as I've said before, if you have a tool that works for you and you are making money with this stuff - stick with it. Learning a new system costs money.
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Possible learning opportunity for us all; how about posting drawings that you want to be able to do with SU/LO but think it can't handle? I'd bet that in a lot of cases someone here will be able to explain just how to create them.
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@tim said:
Possible learning opportunity for us all; how about posting drawings that you want to be able to do with SU/LO but think it can't handle? I'd bet that in a lot of cases someone here will be able to explain just how to create them.
Yes very good; it would be interesting to illustrate Red's problems with his Building Department in this way; useful for him particularly!
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I have been creating Construction Documents with the same procedure with Layout as I demonstrated at the basecamp with AutoCAD for the last year.
Mitchel Stangl
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Mitchel, do you have any problems in sending your drawings to other professionals, ie electrical, structural engineers, etc in dxf or formats they require, or are you doing all of that work in house.
With some of the problems I have had in dxf conversions this is what concerns me. -
I have not had a problem. I send:
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The project model which most of my subs can use. -
With an electrical engineering I simply export the scene which I base my LO drawings to a 2d dwg in SU. -
I send the drawings as pdf which are really a universal format these days.
Mitchel
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This was done in the first version (beta) of LO which I had abandoned due to super slow speeds but I am going to give it another crack now that there are dimensions! Man would I be happy to get AutoCad out of my flow.
This was one of 4 prototypes presented to my client to discuss pros/cons of various floor plans.
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Linea
I am currently working my way through some projects using only SU and LO. I am at the Building Reg. stage so your drawing 3 is very relevant to me.
My experience so far, using LO, has been that it is quite tricky to use - almost too easy to inadvertently make scale, rotation, and move changes. However by carefully locking layers as you go I think I have overcome this issue.
As regards the section, my approach has been, for detailed work, to draw the roof eaves section in 2D and extrude it, which seems to work quite well. Given that 'hatching' is essentially a drawing board technique, pre-dating CAD, I am accepting that I don't need to hatch everything - sometimes a simple tone will do (just what SU is good at!). I have created a squiggly line to represent insulation, made it into a component and just stick it where it is needed.
I realise (as can be seen on the attachment) that you need to be very tidy in the modelling, as all the little stray bits will show up.
At times LO has driven me mad, but I am sticking at it and hope I can make it work.
Here is some work in progress - still needs more notes and tweaking, but you get the idea.Davd
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Gav wrote
@unknownuser said:
As far as things go these are about average/above average as to the end result I need to submit for planning/ building regs. I have tried my best to get an end result to look like this with SU/LO but I'm afraid it just doesn't happen. And if it where to happen it would take far to long.
I have to agree, like others had said I'd love to get as much cad as possible out of the workflow, and yes LO can handle an A1 sheet but LO still lacks the robustness of a cad system. I do use LO frequently for small jobs but in the same way that BIM probably doesn't suit everybody, I don't need to model everything in 3d to get the drawings out. So some 2d drawing and annotation aspects of the process just wouldn't be worth wrestling with in LO - that is not to say it can't be done, I absolutely agree that it can, but just that at the moment cad offers me a more robust toolset for handling 2d entities.
I've added 3 drawings of pretty simple jobs, not to prove any particular point. All involve some SU. I know that I could have done the layouts in LO or CAD but at the moment cad is the most efficient route for me. The first two drawings are 2d views all extracted from SU but the client didn't need much detail, (so in the case of the second drawing, yes LO did the job). But the third drawing, only a small project, would you really want to draw even a simple section like that in SU?
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Dcauldwell
I've started to draw roof tiles the same way, it makes for a nicer visual rather than a flat plane with a stuck on texture.
Agree on the hatching too, but the end user only sees a paper based drawing, so while hatching isn't needed for digital clarity, once it is on paper hatching is still helpful. -
Hi all,
This is my first post, but this seems a sensible place to put it. Ive been using Sketchup and Layout the last few months now for producing precast concrete and structural steel shop drawings for construction purposes. (see attached examples).
Havent had any problems with getting the drawings approved by the project engineers, and the drawings are generally of better quality thens some others I have seen. I have found the dimension feature of LO2.1 to be extremely useful, as previously I was dimensioning my models within SU and hoping they would come out OK. Any feedback on the drawing would be appreciated!
Anyway, this forums been loads of use, and hopefully continues to be.
Cheers,
Christian
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Christian,
Good to see another Kiwi in here. Those drawings you are doing look fine to me....coming from an Architect and not an engineer.
Stan
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@cmc007 said:
I have found the dimension feature of LO2.1 to be extremely useful, as previously I was dimensioning my models within SU and hoping they would come out OK. Any feedback on the drawing would be appreciated!
Hello and welcome!
Really good to see such drawings done with SU+LO
My question is: The whole model is in Sketchup and the annotations and dimensions in LO?
Or have you done something more with LO? -
The entire model was build within Sketchup in 3d, rather then just producting a 2d line drawing. All annotations and most dimensions were done within Layout. I have just directly inserted the 3 different views of the same model into Layout and gone from there.
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That looks good Christian. I am interested to know is the thick lines of the reinforcing were done within SU? and is fo how?
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Came up with a new procedure for linking the SU - LO files that allows for 'hatched' walls as shown in the file below. No 'make faces' plug-in needed, so walls/hatch all update with the model.
Also came up with a dashed lines routine using a custom sketchup style with dashed lines. The only thing that sucks about it is that you have to have it render in 'raster' instead of vector so the dashed lines are kind of fuzzy looking.
Models consist of a few layers - Walls (e), (r), (n), a floor/details/cabinets/stair/doors layer, and an 'above' layer. I like the looks of the final result and have only a few comments about layout:
LAYOUT: WHY ARE YOUR LINESTYLES SO CRAPPY? WHERE IS A GOOD DASHED VECTOR LINE STYLE? WHERE IS MY BUBBLE LINE? WHY DO YOU CRASH WHEN I TRY TO EXPORT?
Ok so here is the deal: after going through this whole experience with SU-LO, I am seriously looking at buying Vectorworks. Yeah it's not as fun but I'm getting paid to be productive and LO makes it really hard.
I've come up with a nice template file now that should save me some time, but seriously do I want to have to go through this crap every time with SketchUp? Making construction docs, even just a respectable floor plan, is painful at best. As much as I like Google I honestly know that they don't give a crap about architects/designers. It's too bad because they have a product that could be pretty good if they cared to develop a few things about it. Sad, too, I used to be SU's biggest supporter.
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Aw, come on, baseLINE, you're not motivating me to help out here. You can crudely do most of this, keep it on a scrapbook and quickly reuse. There's different styles of drafting symbols in the TB- scrapbooks.
When you mention "Also came up with a dashed lines routine using a custom sketchup style with dashed lines. The only thing that sucks about it is that you have to have it render in 'raster' instead of vector so the dashed lines are kind of fuzzy looking. ", please select the model in LayOut and render as vector (in the SketchUp Model inspector) and they'll look sharper. I've played around with crude hatching patterns doing this, and it's not totally worthlessly sucking bad
.Work with me here, people.
b
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Bjanzan, SU/LO is a great product, but is this an invitation to say what I'd like to see in layout? LO is great for presentation, and some documentation, but falls short of tools for a full set of construction documents. The following for starters:
- Professional CAD type controls, and formatting of lines, line fonts, cross hatching, dimensions, and text, including tables, schedules, general notes, keynotes, and labels.
- Parametric drawing between 3d model, 2d plans, 2d sections, 2d elevations (interior, and exterior), dimensions, text, and labels.
- Parametric labels relating, sheet number/name, detail number/name, and drawing index. Select a label and go to that drawing, scene, or view (within SU, LO, or external application).
- Plot drawings organized like a set of construction documents.
- I/O with HPGL, and other conventional CAD formats.
- Hooks to written specifications, and BOM.
- Command line to type in commands (menu is too slow for some sequences). Nested commands. Command line script support (for those who can not Ruby).
I really don't know what I need, but can recoginze the value of a tool. How can we help?
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Thanks. We appreciate suggestions. Quickly though (until noon today Mtn time, Oct 22, 2009) you can add them to SketchUp's suggestions at http://productideas.appspot.com/ (if they're LayOut related, put them under pro), or vote for ideas you like!
b
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