ATTN: Landscape Architects! Share your workflow & tips...
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Is there a plugin that you can use to create contours at certain intervals from a surface? Basically I want to edit and create topo in a model then be able to run a plugin that will generate contours which I could then export back into a CAD drawing.
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Here is one that should work:
http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?t=31124 -
Here's a must have book for you
http://www.amazon.com/Google-SketchUp-Site-Design-Architecture/dp/047034525X
Daniel Tal put it out awhile ago and I, along with some others, were given copies to review. I'd been working in SU for a few years when I read through it and learned some really great tricks. No magic, just using tools like SU's contour tools in ways I'd never thought of before and that sort of thing. He also has a great list of plugins and walks you through a number of projects. He doesn't deal with rendering but it sounds like that's not your main concern.
Here are some other misc. tips.
-For groundcover you could try the component spray plugin
-For randomizing size I recommend Chris Fulmer's "Scale and Rotate Multiple" plugin
-For quicker building modeling try to model as little as possible. At your stage you've probably got CAD elevations. Try printing them out, going over them with prismacolor markers and then scanning them back in to use as textures for the house model. You could also apply the colors in photoshop as well. If you look closely at the images on http://www.cadplants.com/ that seems to be sort of how they did it, although they may have used photos or added extra detail to the images. You can also add detail into the images after they're rendered.
-for textures check out cgtextures.com
-Try to find a workflow that doesn't keep going back and forth between SU and CAD. Why are you bring SU back into CAD exactly? Maybe there's an issue there that can be fixed or tweaked to save you that extra time.
-Brodie
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I was going back into CAD mainly to reshape terrain because I was having issues shaping terrain with odd geometry made with the from contours tool. I think terrain reshaper will take care of that and now with the contours plugin I should be able to do it all in sketchup then bring a rough grading plan back into CAd when I'm done. That book is definitely on my list, is there a lot more in it than in his videos? I've been using the scale and rotate multiple plugin but it doesn't skew and distort components like I'm looking for and rotate doesn't help for 2d face me plants. I saw a pay-for randor plugin on smustard that looks like it does that for 3d trees and I wonder if it would do anything to 2d components.
I have CAD elevations for new projects and I'll have to play around with some ideas. I kind of like the clean rendered look so I need to model some detail- I'm wondering if there are any plugins that help to automate and speed up exterior house building.
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Don't get randor. I have it and basically it's the same as Chris Fulmer's tool except there are no controls. It randomly rotates and scales the objects you select without asking you for any parameters. I've stopped using it.
It's been awhile since I've watched Tal's videos. As I recall they basically do a good overview of the book minus the detail. If the videos didn't look too applicable then the book probably won't be terribly helpful and vice versa.
Terrain is difficult, and you're correct that SU's terrain tool creates some crappy geometry which is hard to manipulate. I try to use the soap bubble plugin whenever possible which someone mentioned above. For example, if you've got a bunch of circular mulch patches for trees and maybe a couple long curvy ones for bushes you can use it to create a nice flat plane which fills each space, and choose a subdivision level which will produce squares instead of long triangles. Then you can set a further parameter which will push up the mound in the middle while leaving the boundry at the same level as the grass - effectively creating a perfect dirt or mulch mound of whatever shape you have. Similarly if you use this for your main terrain you'll end up with square geometry again which you can use the smoove tool on to create whatever variation you need.
I don't know of any particular plugins to help with house modeling. I do hospital models which are quite large but I pretty much do everything custom for each job for the most part using some of the usual plugins like joint push pull. The only thing I can think of which I use to speed up the process is to keep some standard 3d objects that I use a lot in my component browser. So I'll make a good looking entry door which tends to be pretty much the same from job to job other than the size rather than recreating it each time. Maybe you've got some standard sconces, interior blinds, etc. you could use but you've probably already got something like that started.
-Brodie
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All in all, I think you need to work on finding a workflow of your own and evolving it over time, which is how most of us have refined our methods. There is no real magic here, but rather just understanding sketchup thoroughly and working within the confines of it's logic. (which all plugins adhere to)
It sounds as though you are a little over committed with your new job position and in turn are scrambling to learn everything in a matter of days instead of the years it took most of us to develop our toolsets and modeling strategies. There is no shortage of help here, but I'm just suggesting you take it in smaller steps and work through the precise aspects of each problem as you encounter it. Amassing a ton of information all at once can lead to more headaches and confusion. Just a suggestion and not at all a knock on your general ambition.
It sounds as if your biggest issues are -
- Terrain Management
- Plant placement and lack of plant material as well as hedges and groundcovers and grass.
- Textures
- Building Modeling
Terrain Management - What type of terrain data are you dealing with? (contour lines, grade shots, cloud data, survey TIN, etc.) How accurate are you trying to get? What are your main issues with the terrain you are creating? Sounds like you are trying to retopo the "From Contours" terrain to add more detail. You can use the Artisan plugin to subdivide particular areas. Didier's Terrain Resurfacer plugin works okay as well. I like using TIG's Drape Cpoints and Triangulate Cpoints plugins to retopo my terrains. Whatever is easier. You might also check out Instant Site Grader from Chuck Vali. There has been a lot of discussion on terrains here, so a quick search will probably yield a plethora of answers as will very specific question with illustrated examples of your problems.
Plants - Again, do a search, there are a lot of solutions on here. SCF member Oli made some nice hedges and shared them. Pixero made some nice Hornbeam hedges and shared them. I shared a bunch of landscape 2D plants. Solo and Tomsdesk have plant collections for sale on Solo's website. http://www.Solosplace.com. The 3D warehouse has a ton of plants. There are several other nice commercial collections out there. (Realworld Imagery, Dosch, etc) It all depends on our specific needs. As far as grass, the best is 3D grass, but not really possible in sketchup. (I use 3ds Max with 3D proxies and a free scatter plugin) 2nd best is compositing grass in photoshop. Lastly is textured flat grass. Check around, there are several threads on grass. Not sure why you are so against photoshop and post process, but to get where you want to be, you'll need it. For groundcover, you could also try the Sketchup Ivy plugin and swap the ivy leaf with a groundcover leaf.
Textures - They are all over. Just gotta search. Your best resource will be yourself and learning how to make seamless textures. There is a thread somewhere in the resources section with about 50 links to different texture resources.
Building Modeling - There are several roof building plugins (check TIG & Chuck Vali) and various window (Windowizer 4) and door plugins that will speed up house building. Also check out 1001bits Pro for good tools that aid in building construction. It depends on how accurate you are trying to get. I use mostly native sketchup tools for building construction while utilizing components as much as possible. It's still a very time consuming process. Your best bet would be to set up your camera scenes as soon as you block out your structures and then only add details to those areas that will be in the render view. Again, there is no magic solution, just time and practice.
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Partick, What is your role in the office? It sounds like you work as part of a team. Is your primary job to conceptualize landscape designs, to model a design for presentation, or to model and refine a design with the intent of doing construction documents?
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@honoluludesktop said:
Partick, What is your role in the office? It sounds like you work as part of a team. Is your primary job to conceptualize landscape designs, to model a design for presentation, or to model and refine a design with the intent of doing construction documents?
Right now I am doing a lot of modeling for conceptualization/preliminary design and some presentations. We're not using it for any construction documents but I would like to be able to at least find a good way to use the model to speed up doing final drawings.
earthmover- Yeah I'm trying to learn a lot quickly and I would just like to learn as much as possible so I can work better. Just from what I've learned in the past week with plugins and some new techniques it's all become part of my natural workflow so I see no reason to slow down. I'll take a look at some of that stuff, thanks!
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As far as transferring the info to CAD you can go to a top view with perspective turned off and export 2D and choose .dwg which should give you a great start.
Another thing I meant to recommend earlier which could be helpful with the SU to CAD transition as well as something you said earlier about looking at plants from the top view. People will sometimes use a proxy to shift between low and high poly models of an object. You could do the same thing for your purposes.
For example, you've got a component named Maple Tree and within that component are 3 components all on different layers (let's call them: Top, CAD, and Standard). The component on the Top layer might be a 3d maple tree or a 2d top view image of a maple. On the CAD layer you might have some simple linework, whatever you'd usually use in CAD to represent a maple. And on the Standard layer you'd have your usual 2.5d component. Then you just turn on whichever layer you need for what you're doing. Just make sure as you'd create this overall components that you save them to a component library where you can easily access them again for the next project
-Brodie
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Wow I found instant roof for quick house modeling. This will save me a ton of time...
http://www.youtube.com/user/chuckvali#p/u/4/XZYrM3niFQo
What other plugins can I use to model buildings quickly? Are there any plugins or one stop solutions for quickly putting windows and doors on buildings? Going to the 3d warehouse and modify everything is kind of a pain and it's hard to find collections of all the same kind of stuff. Also I'm sure this is a basic question, is there a way to quickly cut out the shape on a surface where a component intersects where it is glued? So I can just plop windows and doors on and have them cut holes so light can come through?
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Patrick, also check out the TIG's roof.rb script. For everyday gable and hip roofs, it's a breeze. http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?t=3470
Have you downloaded the bonus packs yet? http://sketchup.google.com/intl/en/download/bonuspacks6.html
There are a lot of premade doors and windows that are set up to cut through a single plane.
A lot of time though I have projects with custom doors and windows which I just draw myself and make into cutable components. Most times it's quicker to just draw something than to go and search for it.
If you build your walls with thickness, you will need to look into a hole punching script to get the window to punch through both the inner and outer wall. TIG's is a good one - http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?t=30846
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@unknownuser said:
For example, you've got a component named Maple Tree and within that component are 3 components all on different layers (let's call them: Top, CAD, and Standard). The component on the Top layer might be a 3d maple tree or a 2d top view image of a maple. On the CAD layer you might have some simple linework, whatever you'd usually use in CAD to represent a maple. And on the Standard layer you'd have your usual 2.5d component. Then you just turn on whichever layer you need for what you're doing. Just make sure as you'd create this overall components that you save them to a component library where you can easily access them again for the next project
-Brodie
Something like this. It's a Japanese Maple component I made, which has two layers inside it, one for perspective and one for top. Switch to top layer when doing birds eye view. The attached .skp has the component in it and is set up with two scenes set up for each view. The file size is large because of the detailed cutout of the plant for better shadowing. I vectorized the .png and brought it into sketchup as a .dxf, then ran simplify curves on it before adding the plant image. It's not necessary, but again, just makes better shadows.
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Thanks. Useful component.
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Anyone use Land F/X?
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for place cars on parking or any vegetal or anything you can try Replace Randomly Components by Sdmitch
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How do you guys use styles in your modeling?
For me I have found most of the styles other than the basic ones kind of pointless for my purposes. I pretty much just use standard and some of the night ones that go along with Podium. Other than that am I missing anything by not incorporating styles into my renderings?
I also find myself not really incorporating scenes into my workflow and I'm sure I could benefit there, it's just not something I ever did really. I will occasionally add one for night but in general I wing it and just place the camera in various spots and render. I'm sure I could benefit from setting up some standard views. How do you incorporate scenes?
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If you're rendering, I don't think there's much purpose in styles. I'll swap between the different face styles sometimes but that's about it. For example, going to monochrome to and turning hidden lines on to get a better idea of massing and polygon count, that sort of thing. And on a rare occasion I've turned on Color by Axis to be sure certain lines are on axis. Sometimes I've used Hidden line mode to create an image I'll overlay over a rendering to display the edges - not very photoreal but can be useful.
I don't use scenes much other than to pick a view to render and then keeping it. It helps to choose a few options and then quickly switch between them weighing the pros and cons of each view before picking a final to render. If you ever have to give your models to someone unfamiliar with SU, I also use scenes to help them navigate and turn layers on and off.
-Brodie
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I also work in a landscape firm (Hong Kong) and my workflow for a usual masterplan with 3 days deadline:
- Importing CAD file. About 1 to 5 min. depending on scale.
- Putting CAD layers to one layer, deleting unnecessary stuff (retain those for reference, to be hidden later)- about 5-10 seconds
- Group & flatten (free plug in) the site plan, delete old one- about few minutes (save first, I can sense a Bug splat coming!)- This is my base plan later on.
- [option 1] search and close all broken lines, what used to be a smooth circles that became dodecagons, a trial and error procedure that will test every man's patience
. zoom in and in till you see those microscopic broken links.. and sometimes it's not there, so go somewhere else. Oh man, I really hope SKU team and Autodesk team will have a small chat to improve this mess. -takes about an entire day for a big site - [option 2] if CAD is really too messy- I just lock that flattened layer and redraw all the lines and curves- if you are fast, lines appear to be more neat, and faces look cleaner, born from sketchup I call this my brute force manual method.
- After the hard work comes the easy and fun part- sketchup modeling:) From this neat base plan, I will derive all other site components- roads, kerbs, buildings, pole light, bollard, site furnitures, etc. with proper layer names. I work on it from other sketchup instance (I call it parts/temporary file). Once a part is finished, I'll snap it back to where my base plan is- (I call it my assembly area). In this process, I just use simple scene style, showing only the layer I need. - composition takes about a day.
- Boss comes in finally either to select views or do his favorite revisions
- Softscape. All got individual layers. Hedges (if any) takes time especially on curved/classical English garden style.
If I still have time, I round/ bevel top edges (free plugin).. it appears softer. - Scenes and export to JPG/avi.
In short, cleaning up CAD file is the hardest part and modeling is the fun part:) Actually, I tried once to do all roads and kerb/curb modeling first in CAD, then import to SKU (since those are my usual bottlenecks). But it didn't work for me (image below).
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Hello,
Thanks for sharing your views.
I use SketchUp for architecture purpose and as I'm new here with limited knowledge of Sketchup i'm always eager to learn new things here. Hope you will share more things with us in future. -
@patrickbateman said:
I consider myself a good sketchup modeler but nowhere near as advanced as some of the stuff on here. I just started a position where I do a lot of sketchup work for a [anchor= goto=http://www.edgedesign.ae/2016/02/28/dubai-architecture-firms/:fhp7w6k7]Dubai architecture firms[/anchor:fhp7w6k7](I was mainly hired because of my sketchup skills and experience). I am trying to get as advanced and efficient as possible and am looking for new techniques, must have plugins, extensions, and general things to make my life easier and models looking better. There are so many ruby plugins I don't know which ones I should install.
Right now I am using SU Podium extensively for rendering. I have been playing around with Land F/X and haven't really explored it yet but I have been using it for CAD cleanup before importing to sketchup and it works well. When working with topo I have had to go back and forth between CAD and sketchup a lot since editing topo in sketchup is difficult so I find myself importing topo, running sandbox tools, then going back to cad to fix things and doing it again a few times to get things right. I'm sure there's a better way.
I am really impress after reading your work and experience your write in your post that you do lot of sketch up work for a landscape Architecture. I am pretty sure after you visit on the above given blog you can suggest us some different thing and different work that we can do in our Blog.
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