Recent Work

[otb designworks]

I thought everyone might like to see a pretty complex model with lots of detail.

Not my design, but I was heavily involved with facilitating fabrication, primarily with designing the timber frame joinery, steel bracket connections, excavation planning and implementation, and real-time support.

I trademarked the term Virtual Build Environment (VBE) as a term to describe the use of a fully detailed, easily distributable and accessible 3D model for design, fabrication, management, etc. I know this isn't a new thing in the great big world, but it sure is in the world of US high end construction and the companies I work with have implemented me into their normal workflow. Pretty addicting having me and a full VBE on the other end of the phone when things go sideways on the site.

I produced over 200 pages of shop drawings, RFI's, and presentation materials, all in Layout, for this project, and we aren't done yet.

[jeff hammond]

so when can i move in?

that's great Chuck. thanks for sharing

question- is the stonework a texture applied to a flat surface or something else?

[otb designworks]

Hi Jeff,

yes, that is all it is. This was never intended to be used for any sort of presentation purposes, so I had everything color coded and not textured to start.

But, once I had it all built, it seemed a shame to not try to show it in its best light, so I tried to get things as close to what is being fabricated without taking forever to do it. The stone was the easy part; placing all the wood grains in the correct orientation on that huge timber frame was an exercise in patience, let me tell you. I am getting too old for so many non-paying hours, you know?

Worst part was doing all this on my ancient 3.1 Mac Pro while I have been waiting 5 weeks for my new 6.1 nMP. Just the final cut express time was agony knowing that there was a blisteringly fast alternative just over the horizon.

Thanks for taking the time to watch!

[pbacot]

Great work (staggering actually). Fine video! Thanks for posting. Keep it coming!

[jeff hammond]

@otb designworks said:

Worst part was doing all this on my ancient 3.1

pfft.. it's not nice to brag about the shiny computer you have there

(like your 3,1 -this old timer isn't going to see summer this year.. and hopefully not much of spring either)

[cotty]

Impressive Video! I would like to see some of the Layout pages...

[pedrinalex]

Chuck.

Today I saw a really great and extremely professional work.

Thank you for sharing, It is so necessary that young people who begin the craft of architecture see work like yours.

regards

Pedro

[otb designworks]

Thanks, guys, for the kind words and taking the time to watch the vid!

I am working on a couple other videos, showing interiors, shop drawings, fabrication, etc. Stay tuned...

[alpro]

Very impressive and very cool, thanks for sharing.

Mike

[Bryan K]

Very impressive.

[otb designworks]

Thanks for taking the time to check it out and post kind words!

[jim smith]

Really great work Chuck!. I am also interested in seeing some of your construction docs in layout. Have you compared the detail and time to produce this work against some other BIM programs like Revit, Vectorworks or Archicad? It would be interesting to me and I am sure others to see how our SU stands up next to the "$eriou$" software.

[pilou]

Some cool!
It's a special Plugin ?
Or it's just made with Sketchup ?

[otb designworks]

Hi Frenchy! Everything is manually built from existing architectural and structural pdf's or designed and built by me

The reason why these VBE"s are so powerful is that they are a complete 3d blueprint of the project in question. While I do use a lot of plugins in my workflow, I very very rarely use automatic geometry generators and I also almost never work off the DWG's. I want to place everything as if I were building it on the site; no shortcuts out there, and I would do the builders a disservice if I didn't treat the virtual build with as much concerted precision.

My job for these large projects is to virtually build what is shown on the plans, identify issues, communicate these issues along with possible solutions, implement any changes, and then generate shop drawings for the interested parties. I would just propagate architectural and structural mistakes if I took their DWG's and started blowing and going. When you are doing shops for millions of dollars of worth of subcontractor services, you had better be worried more about precision than speed in model creation, you know?

[otb designworks]

@unknownuser said:

Really great work Chuck!. I am also interested in seeing some of your construction docs in layout. Have you compared the detail and time to produce this work against some other BIM programs like Revit, Vectorworks or Archicad? It would be interesting to me and I am sure others to see how our SU stands up next to the "$eriou$" software.

Hi Jim,

An essential component of these VBE's are that they are readily distributable and accessible to and by contractors and builders.

I have worked in various different modeling and drawing softwares and, for me, Sketchup and Layout, even with all their blemishes, were the way to go.

But I can't really give an indication of time comparisons, ease of use, etc vs the big softwares, sorry. I can say that I wish Trimble was more aggressive with the development of both Sketchup and layout; there are definitely aspects of both that cause me heartache and time wasted. Both are way too unstable, in my opinion, and Layout just takes too many damned clicks of the button to be a real joy (I would pay serious money just for the ability to move a dimension to one end of the dimension line, as in Sketchup, without the 6 well-timed clicks it takes now; that alone costs me days of time over a year, for example)