Is SketchUp for me?
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Hi - I'm an Interior Designer located in Portland OR. I've just signed up for a two session tutorial on using SketchUp for my business. What I don't really know is what are its capabilities with regard to what I do. I typically want to lay out a room with carpeting, drapes, wall treatments and furniture. My main concern is being able to show my clients furniture with the detail of what I've chosen for them from a catalog or seen in a showroom. Some of this stuff gets fairly complex with chamfers, sculpted legs and other complex details. Best solution would be to be able to import sketchUp ready files from their catalogs or from third party applications that can be re-sized or modified in SketchUp. Is this realistic or am I looking for too much? Any advice or suggestions would be very much appreciated.
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This is exactly what you want... This combined with a inexpensive render engine will give you everything you need to present professional renderings and drawings for clients. With it's free use of furniture models in the warehouse it's a natural choice for Interior people. Simplicity makes it one of the front line "shallow end of the pool" solutions. You can be drawing and rendering very quickly.
Welcome to the forum... This is your place to learn everything about SketchUp. All you need do is ask.
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Hi Nicole,
As Kris has said, SketchUp will be perfect for your needs. There are many advantages.
-Relatively shallow learning curve.
-Easy to get from SketchUp model to rendered image if that's what you need. You could also create drawings that have more of a hand drawn flavor if you want.
-A huge user base means it's pretty easy to find someone who knows how to do what you need to do with it.
-There's the 3D Warehouse which will give you access to pre-made components (at varying quality levels to be sure). There are other sources such as the Shop here on SCF and Form Fonts which have quality control.
And more. -
It certainly sounds like SketchUp comes closest to what you're looking for.
It's also cheap and easy to learn, as well as well suited for architects.
Try out the free version of SketchUp, I think you'll like it. -
Hi Nicole
I'm just starting out with SketchUp - I'm a space planner and have spent most of my years doing 2D CAD, it pays the bills. I'm also currently learning 3D AutoCAD at night classes, but I'm enjoying SU, supported by the brilliant starter book "SketchUp for Dummies"
My dilemma is how much modelling do I do, compared with using 3D Warehouse ? I guess for speed I'll end up using 3D Warehouse a lot to start with but I intend learn from components that I import, so that I could model, most NOT all (due to complexity) myself.
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Get Jpeg of your actual design elements {tile,wall treatments, wood etc} and import them into sketchup and apply them to your model surfaces.
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