SketchUp v. AutoCAD: SketchUp as toy?
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I am more a mapping/GIS person than a modeler, but I am a casual SketchUp user. The recent acquisition has sparked a number of conversations, among users and non-users alike. A colleague of mine mentioned his personal belief that SketchUp does not have the architectural cojones necessary for full production work. His opinion is that SketchUp is a fine tool for preliminary drawings and presentations, but AutoCAD is necessary to produce the kind of drawings needed to actually construct things in the real world.
My question to you all is: Is my colleague right about this? I don't personally believe so, but I don't possess any first-hand knowledge I can bring to the table.
And if my colleague is incorrect, can any of you point me to any links that prove it?
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As it's a polygon modeler, a circle or arc of circle will be always polygons
So bolean operation between a cube and a sphere will be always critic
and measures of them will have some little no accuracy
So your friend is half right
Except that, it's a super toy! Creative fun and easy!
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He's also half wrong.
When combined with Layout Sketchup can produce whatever Construction Docs you want.
OK it's not BIM with auto-door scheduling etc, but neither is AutoCAD!
To suppose that a set of AutoCAD drawings is somehow far more superior is a fallacy.
I'm old enough to have produced entire working drawing packages drawn by hand, in pencil, with hand lettered notation etc.
OK, CAD allows you to make changes very quickly, and it can be clear, but it's easy enough to make a set of CAD drawings that look impressive but are full of dire issues - just as you can in any medium.
Also many CAD-monkeys over polish their drawings, over hatching and over annotating, repeating information at inappropriate scales and so on; a proper set of drawings needs careful structuring and a logical arrangement - like layout drawings with call-outs to detailed drawings and other sheets of related information.
It ultimately comes down to the guys producing the information.
I'd prefer to have a clear and correct hand drawn sketch on the back of an envelope, or a screenshot from a SKP, from someone I have confidence in, than a stack of 2d CAD drawings from someone who I don't ! -
I find it interesting that this paradigm persists... that construction documents need to be just floor plans, sections and elevations, and that to convey "depth" you need to spend hours using different thickness in lines... thicker for walls closer to you, thinner for those far away. What a waste of time. In reality, this information is more efficiently conveyed by using shadows in said sections/elevation, and by complementing them with sketchy-style perspectives. And SketchUp excels at this. Sure, you can manually add hatched shadows to your CAD drawing, but it's gonna take time.
It's 2012, people... plotters with restrictive physical pens no longer exist. Color printing is cheap. Gray scale printing is even cheaper. There's no need to be restrained by those old paradigms when creating construction documents.
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I love sketchup, but I have to think your friend is basically right -- in that AutoCAD is needed (or similar) but not that sketchup is JUST a toy.
Layout is no substitute for serious detailed drawings. Maybe you can do them in LO but it seems more oriented towards making it possible to document a sketchup model than to replace traditional 2d CAD. With the understanding that I DON'T use layout but have only experimented with it in the past, I would compare LO to photoshop before autocad. Both let you place drawings and add text, lines, etc. LO is just optimized to use SU files.
CAD is still required for its speed, accuracy, XREFs, blocks, and interoperability with other software and consultants.
Sketchup, to me, is more for marketing and exploring design ideas. Possibly even exporting back into autocad, but the line quality for this is so poor I would just use it as a template and draw over the SU linework. No disrespect to SU, but it's still just a hammer and I have to deal with lots of screws and bolts.
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The way Autocad goes as leader in CAD went over years, so it is a standart. Time to change the way we were thinking about plans, blocks, xrefs...
Sketchup can do all things we need for design, construction and making plans. It is you an me who decide what is important ... not Autocad nor any standart which makes life easier for just a short period.
The most things are grown complicated by our own sights and that's Autocad within the years too.
The reason why Sketchup is simple and so we love it.
If someone can not leave this way of thinking ( forced by business ) he will miss a lot of things in Sketchup. But it is not a Toy
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Well, there's also DraftSight if you need construction documents. It's free and less cluttered than AutoCAD, plus it handles DWG files as its default format.
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WRT doing dimensioning, it seems to me that SU is waaaay less capable than it could and should be.
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been creating drawings of things that get built in sketch up and layout.
before that auto cad. before that pencil and drafting board.its a tool. make of it what you will.
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yes.. it can be used as a toy.
..a fun one at that.(but I guess the same could be said for a lot of modeling apps.)
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@tpstigers said:
His opinion is that SketchUp is a fine tool for preliminary drawings and presentations, but AutoCAD is necessary to produce the kind of drawings needed to actually construct things in the real world.
basically.. it doesn't matter what he says or his opinion (other than using his opinion to build a workflow that suits him)
i mean, very real world things have been constructed with sketchup carrying most of the software weight..
the facts negate his opinion.. -
Having said that...
Yes there's room for improvement in SU / LO for Construction drawing 2d features.
NO AutoCAD is not the answer. There's many more direct ways of doing it--or
BIM is the future.
@Ecuadorean: Yes SU Can make good representation of depth:
Having said that, NO, decent line work is not a waste of time. It is expressive and clear. Just in the wrong programs it's a PITA and it shows in the general lack of good drawing.
So in short. NO and NO. i m H o. Peter
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here's a neat case study (neat also because the 2nd page shows a plugin used internally by turner which could be seen as a bit of a preview of the type of changes we may see in sketchup itself)
http://sketchupdate.blogspot.com/2012/01/sketchup-pro-case-study-turner.html
these people are building the tallest building in usa (and i happen to have a perfectly framed view of the thing down my street
)..of course they're not using sketchup as the backbone but they've definitely found a way to integrate it into their company.. and seriously, if sketchup wasn't helping them make things happen, they wouldn't be using it.
there isn't a one software solution out there right now.. even i use a two software approach for the drawings (3 if you count layout as a separate software)..
i guarantee your friend could find a way to use sketchup in a way that would benefit if he so desired.
(ok.. not quite with the guarantee bit.. i don't actually know what he does)[edit] hm.. maybe they aren't building the towers.. just the crazy new downtown station.. in which case, i don't have much of a view of said project..
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