Interior Elevations vs. 3D Perspectives

JQL

There's a recurrent story here about a studio that delivered the renders of a preliminary version and the full CD of the final version. They built the rendered output and disregarded the CD's.

kyeric

@jql said:

There's a recurrent story here about a studio that delivered the renders of a preliminary version and the full CD of the final version. They built the rendered output and disregarded the CD's.

And therein lies the problem. The CDs are contract, but the renders are infused design descriptions. Unless both are referenced or linked to one another dynamically then architects open themselves up to errors and omissions. This is where BIM makes sense. The difficult part, especially for me, is navigating the strict nature of BIM implementation versus the flexibility and speed of SketchUp.

And yes, I have followed so many approaches to utilizing SketchUp and LayOut as another method of crossing this divide, but I continue to find that most of the time, the client and contractors constantly refer back to a 3D view.

The hope is to have LayOut become more of integral part of SketchUp and not so much what I think it is now, which in my opinion is a bit too slow and precarious as compared to its older sibling.

I would really like to see that thread, JQL. Do you mind linking it in this conversation?

JQL

Sorry, it's not a thread, when I said "here" I was talking about a story I heard here in the country I work.

It was at the dawn of rendering too, not with the photorealist rendering we have now.

I think you should look at Layout again and take give a chance to Sketchup+Layout+Thea render as I do.

With these 3 I have a workflow where I achieve that sync between project iteration, CD production and 3D communication, still or interative, including photorealistic representations. (Of course I can only do this because I don't leave my hand sketchbook.)

The next step would be realtime rendering but that isn't convenient to create or the quality is not on par with the light studies I can achieve with Thea.

I've been moving away from photomontages or collages and physical models, because, as you said, I tend to feel that I'm working for the representation, not actually studying the building itself.

What I like is to keep iteracting with the building not it's representation. The more I pursue the building's representation the less I'm exploring architecture itself.

kyeric

I would love to see or even start another conversation with other architects on how they use SketchUp and LayOut in their personal workflows. The closest that I have seen the promised land was from Nick Sonder, Matt Donely and Mike Brightman. The approaches are somewhat similar, although Mike’s team developed plugins specifically built for documentation in LayOut.

I found both books, plugins and investigations fulfilling and worthwhile, but I have gravitated back to more of a hybrid Nick Sonder approach, as I still find it easier to iterate and share plan work in CAD but utilize LayOut more and more as it is becoming a better end-to-end solution with SketchUp.

Maybe we can get a small band of Sketchucationers together to share a Google Drive folder of projects, templates and workflow examples? I would be willing to share with a select few the things that I know work and the things I struggle with that could use some enlightenment. Or, just fly me to Europe and I will be an architectural intern for you, JQL. You wouldn’t mind a 40+ year old student, right?

JQL

@kyeric said:

Or, just fly me to Europe and I will be an architectural intern for you, JQL. You wouldn’t mind a 40+ year old student, right?

I wish I could, but it wouldn't justify the trouble. I have little to teach and most probably couldn't afford your fees... I have a very small office with very small projects.

kyeric

I was only joking about the Intern part, JQL! Although I am not a regular contributor on this forum nearly as much as I used to be, I still read and learn from it almost daily. Your posts and insight, in particular, are more valuable than you give yourself credit for. I will think about the best approach on the possibility of resource and workflow sharing as my tiny office is taking on more work and I need to think about how I will want to get even better at what I do.