Modeling homes

Jgardner

Hello, my name is Jeremy and I am a fairly new sketchup user, about 7 months now. I have watched a lot of you tube videos including all of Nick Sonders videos, which I love!!! I have read architectural design with SU and rendering in SU. Plan to order Nicks new book very soon. I do residential design for work and have used autocad and architatural desktop my entire career. I would love to ditch them completely.

One of my clients pushed me to tryout SU because they have a library of standard plans that they want to do some 3D work with for their new website. After 7 months, I have some models completed but since reading the books, I have made some changes. After reading through the forums for a couple days now, I see I should be doing more differently. Lol. I have some questions and would love some input.

Do you model everything in its raw form on layer 0, then only put groups or components on specific layers? My cad mentality is strong here and I'm trying to draw everything on its correct layer and it sucks when you forget to change layers and start working on a new part of the model.
Dynamic components...I've been familiar with components from the beginning but only really used them for doors and windows and any other small repeating type object. I was not using wall components though. I would import a cad floor plan, then trace over the walls until I had an area shaded in, then push it up to the plate height. Once all the walls were up, I would group them together. Since reading the arch design book, I have created some wall dynamic components. Now creating all the walls for a floor plan takes forever, and I have only done the exterior walls so far. Copy, make unique, stretch it to length, angle all the ends so the corners meet up nice and don't make extra lines. I could have all the walls, interior and exterior up in an hour or 2 for a 5k sf home my old way. Now it's taking 2-3 hours doing each wall individually. Am I overthinking this? Should I keep it simple and keep doing walls the old way?
I do most of my work in Phoenix, AZ. So tile roofs on about every thing. i didn't think the flat surface of the roof with a tile material on it looked very realistic, so I created a roof tile and copy it hundreds of times to cover all the surfaces. Lots of cleaning up to do and to tile an entire house takes a long time. am I over complicating this?

Those are my 3 main questions for now. I really appreciate any input you may have. I wish I would have found this forum a few months ago.

ely862me

I am not proficient with architecture stuff but I can partially answer you.
1)You draw all the geometry on Layer0 and if you need to hide some parts to have better visibility working on other parts then you assign groups and/or components to a specific layer. In sketchup the Layers only works for hiding things, they don't separate geometry.
You would put your ceiling or roof on a different Layer and when you need to work inside the house, you just unthick the visibility of the layer and there you are.
It is best to keep all things grouped in groups or components.
2) I would just trace the walls on the plan and pull up, doing all the walls components it is really a killer. As you said having all the walls grouped would help you in the future to make adjustments without having all parts glued together.
3)I think there was a thread where we discussed a bit about this tile issues. If you ask me, I believe you can create some wavy surfaces and apply a texture to it. This way is not flat but not that tedious to cut at corners and stuff.

Jgardner

Ok, gotcha! Thanks for the replies. I will start doing all modeling on layer 0. Thanks for the other pointers ely. I had considered the wavy surface, haven't tried it yet. I'll give it a go.

pilou

Edit Damned Elisei was more speed!

1 - Modeling on layer 0?

Yes it's the ONLY GOLDEN RULE on SketchUp

Because Layers on Sketchup are Layer of Visibility and not Layer of Geometry like other Programs!

pbacot

Yep. You begin to organize with components or groups. Sometimes you make layers sort of follow the groups or components. Scenes help to quickly show the layers (with the components you put there) that you want, in the style you want for different uses (e.g. "working" scenes to simplify and isolate parts, drawing-output scenes like each exterior elevation)
I use dynamic components for windows--things like that only,so no help here. Just use the most natural or simple method for the walls until forced or inspired to something different.
Look at Valiarchitects InstantRoof Nui. Once you get the hang of it, you keep a horizontal plane in the model (study the height for the plane--its' not the top plate, so that's odd), you can quickly rework the roof and details for changes to design, save roof styles.