Sketchup at AA
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Unfortunately for me, I'll never accomplish the same degree of Hapkeism as Durant himself, and the flying jacks are nothing more than a tribute
Is Durant still active on the forums btw?
Never mind, not since July it appears.
// Olle
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The mind boggles.
But there is certain a snobbery within institutions over what is the "industry standard" (whatever that happens to be?), and what is not. I go back to my old university and I still get the same crap, and as soon as the words 'SketchUp' come into my conversation, I can see their eyes glazing over. I think also, a lot of it has to do with the old fart draughtsman(ship) brigade, those who think that the design process is supposed to be hard work 100% of the way, and that modern tools, such as computers are only for loosers, unless of course you have 'the best'. All this crap shows me is how utterly brittle these people's ego's actually are. SketchUp, a tool that does the job well for anyone willing to learn its simple interface, a job that once took years of practice just to get right first time. It still does of course (take practice)- and I think this is where they have missed the point.
FWIW, We even were told at university that we had to start doing proper orthographic drawings again, with a pencil and a ruler. I cheated and used SketchUp with all those fun styles in my finals. None of those buggers noticed the difference!
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I've just left this in the comments page;
@unknownuser said:
tfdesign says:
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
November 22, 2010 at 5:20 pmHi. Before you start writing software such as SketchUp as simply ‘banal’, perhaps you might like to look at the work of Paul Russam, who recently reproduced an number of Northern Ireland church visualisations, and published the results in SketchUcation, a forum dedicated to SketchUp users worldwide.
http://picasaweb.google.com/Paul.Russam/IOTD20090216?feat=directlink#
As for rendering within SketchUp, because lets face it, the majority of this “banality” you talk about, are based on non-rendered images.
and another;
You can read the rest here;
http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?t=16822
(you may have to register in order to view the rest of the work, if images are uploaded to the server).
regards,
Tom Fenn
Hopefully we may have a few hundred AA-based SU users joining our forum soon?
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Well put tfdesign.
I'm curious to see the answer, but I'll bet he won't admit sk can be pretty good...@tfdesign said:
FWIW, We even were told at university that we had to start doing proper orthographic drawings again, with a pencil and a ruler. I cheated and used SketchUp with all those fun styles in my finals. None of those buggers noticed the difference!
HaHaHa. I did almost the same thing. To this day there's still people that thing some of my "CAD" drawings, some "render" images and 3D models were done in autocad and max.
. Has i said in my previous post, it doesn't really worth the trouble discussing with this kind of people...It's so much easier (and pain free) to lie and leave them in the ignorance...lol -
We shall see.
I think he'll be hard pushed to find any fault in Paul's drawings.
I wonder what else we can bring up? There was those brilliant set of office renders recently, where no one could tell the difference between SketchUp and their Canon's an Nikons. Anyone have the link?
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found it.
http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=81&t=31094&p=273507&hilit=Canon#p273507
anyone else want to have another go?
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I recall a time when Acad was the little guy on the block, poo, poo'd by all the big boys, and organizations like AA. Well most of those big boys are gone now, and Acad (IMO, sadly so) has the market sewed up.
If SU ever gets LayOut to function as a complete SU integrated drafting production drawing tool (with ruby Api, and a full function dxf translator), watch out Acad.
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Couldn't resist leaving a comment on this one.
john
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@jbacus:
I am not sure if your quote from van Gogh is your comment or your signature line? -
@mitcorb said:
@jbacus:
I am not sure if your quote from van Gogh is your comment or your signature line?That's my sig- looks like my post is waiting for moderation, too. Here's what I said:
@jbacus said:
Hi Sam,
Glad to see you’re using SketchUp and 3D Warehouse at the AA, and I think you’ll find some interesting and surprising results if you keep at it. Never mind the tutting… they wouldn’t be doing that if you weren’t onto something interesting.
We designed SketchUp to democratize the world of 3D modeling and to make it accessible to the broadest possible range of “designers.” It is by definition an anti-elitist design tool. It is cheap (even free) where other tools are abusively expensive. It is quick to learn where other tools require enormous commitments of time. It naturally produces unpolished representations that invite discussion among stakeholders on a team rather than slick renderings that hold clients at arm’s length. It invites “expertise” no more or less than any other tool, but doesn’t require it. SketchUp is designed to be as powerful as a pencil and a roll of tracing paper. And as weak.
I think the models you see in 3D Warehouse are evidence that our attempt at democratization is working. An astonishingly broad range of work is visible there- from the loftiest of mathematical theories to the humblest of amateur skateparks. SketchUp is used regularly by over a million unique users a week now. Most of whom, as is true of the general population of people in the world, aren’t architectural theoreticians.
I do think you’re wrong if you assume that the populist positioning for our product comes from a position of naiveté, tempting though that may be. Many of us on actually came from very theoretical backgrounds in architecture. I was a student of John Hejduk’s at Cooper Union (the AA across the pond) in the early ’90s and I well understand the issues you are raising. Given the choice, we just chose a populist path for our product over something more exotic.
I hope your research goes well. Or at least that it leads you in an interesting direction. I welcome further discussion on this subject if that’s useful to you– my email address is appended below. And I’ll keep an eye on your blog, too.
john
.BTW, the “…basic, dumb, utterly devoid of expression” rendering style is just a default. And, frankly, you could have chosen a different one when you started SketchUp for the first time. You really should look into customizing your template before you read too much into the “SketchUp sublime.”
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I rate your response eloquent and enlightening, sir. Even though many have surmised what you have said here about Sketchup, and even though somewhere it has been published before, your stating it leaves no doubt. And I thank you for this.
I do note that frustrated users have often given the program a verbal drubbing before. And this particular individual's comments on his blog? have moved you to respond.
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This is what I wrote (not too good in English)@unknownuser said:
Saurus says:
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
November 23, 2010 at 9:49 amHi to all.
Thank you John Bacus for that.
To author: What do you think about pencil? There is a BIG difference between my 5 years old boy drawings and drawings of Edgar Degas, but yet, with the same tool. Thank God it was not overpriced.
SketchUp is a pencil for drawing in 3D space. -
Well put John!
It's also refreshing to see that SketchUp sticks to its principles by offering non-elitist software for the common man. That's a very humanist approach. Well done!
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Guys,
I'd like to tell you a little story about the early days of SketchUp back in the @Last days when they used to have beers all-round after selling a copy of SketchUp.
In the early days SketchUp was 'discovered' by people not happy with their current 3D app. When they found SketchUp their initial reaction was. 'Hey!, this is a nice toy!' but after 'playing' with SketchUp they quickly realised it was far more than a toy and EXACTLY what they were looking for, an easy yo use tool for 3D model creation.
Naturally the @Last Guys, Brad, Joe & Co wanted to push sales and bring SketchUp to the notice of more but their advertising budget was not that of Google's. In order to achieve this aim they came up with what looked of the surface to be a great idea! They offered a referral deal of $100 a pop to existing customers! All a user had to do was 'tell a friend / colleague about SketchUp' and give him / her a Promo Code and when the sale was made they were $100 up!
The promotion was not a great success! These days one might be surprised as to why this great deal would not work. The reason was because most that had discovered the virtually unknown SketchUp wished to keep it 'under there hat' as their 'secret weapon'!
I remember having one guy on the old @Last Forums asking how he could remove 'SketchUp' from the top of the workspace! He definitely was not a person that wished to share knowledge only show how 'expert' he was!
Fortunately there was a solid core of SketchUp adopters that thought spreading the good news was the right things to do and here we are today!
Mike
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@jbacus said:
That's my sig- looks like my post is waiting for moderation, too. Here's what I said:
Nice post John (even if it reads a bit like a communist manifesto
)On a more serious note...John Hejduk? I'm so sorry for you. I once had to build a model of one of his houses (I think it was called House 10 or something). Lord knows why, when my fellow students were building models of building by Wright, Ando, etc. I had to build a model of a theoretical house...THEORETICAL - as in, NOT meant to be built! I ended up with a model that was 4' long (there was no scale to the drawings - did I mention it was theoretical? - so I had to assume a 3' door as measured off of a low res image and scale everything else from that which made the house about as long as a football field - literally it was about 300' long). Not only was it long, though, but the thing consisted mostly of one hallway with only a few attached rooms, none of which could be used for any traditional purpose. It was the most ridiculous thing you've ever seen and if I learned anything from the project it was that my teacher was a sadist.
-Brodie
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@jbacus said:
Hi Sam,
BTW, the “…basic, dumb, utterly devoid of expression” rendering style is just a default. And, frankly, you could have chosen a different one when you started SketchUp for the first time. You really should look into customizing your template before you read too much into the “SketchUp sublime.”
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@unknownuser said:
On a more serious note...John Hejduk? I'm so sorry for you. I once had to build a model of one of his houses (I think it was called House 10 or something).
I think Hejduk deserves a closer look than you're giving him. "House 10" was actually by Peter Eisenman, who also taught at Cooper Union. They were both part of a group of architects called the "New York Five."
john
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@jbacus said:
@unknownuser said:
On a more serious note...John Hejduk? I'm so sorry for you. I once had to build a model of one of his houses (I think it was called House 10 or something).
I think Hejduk deserves a closer look than you're giving him. "House 10" was actually by Peter Eisenman, who also taught at Cooper Union. They were both part of a group of architects called the "New York Five."
john
.Probably true. I'm probably more resentful with my professor than poor ol' Mr. Hejduk
Yeah, I'm familiar with Eisenman's House 10 (apparently folks from Cooper Union had a proclivity towards numbering their houses), I'd much rather have modeled that one! House 10 was at least what our teacher called it. I'm not even sure Hejduk thought to name it, or maybe it goes by another name. I had a heck of a time finding any info on it as I recall. I found one website back then that had any info at all and as I recall I was able to find it in Hejduk's Mask of Medusa book (amongst a litany of some really freaky sketches) which we had a copy of in our library (Lord, that things going for $600 on amazon).
-Brodie
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That Hejduk house illustrated above may have been called "Wall House".
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feel like I may have hijacked the thread.Well, it's not Wall House 2 that was actually built (a rarity for Hejduk) but it may have been Wall House 1 which was unbuilt (I couldn't find an image of it upon a cursory google search - which only furthers my belief that some wise soul has thought to scrub the internet of this atrocity).
-Brodie
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