this is all completely subjective, but here's how I do it:
create the main structure of the house, i.e. walls, ceiling, ground floor, then add the floors, then add the internal walls. I end up using the section plane a lot. This method helps me think about the model as I am making it.
For a bungalow, I would start with the ground floor and just use a floor plan.
in any project I would add underground floors, if needed, after adding the other floors.

You can lookup "Sketchup house timelapse" or "Sketchup house howto" on youtube for good guides, here's one I made: http://tinyurl.com/ytccht1

everything has thickness - walls, glass panes, even paper when you make a face on sketchup, it is only a 2D shape which cannot exist in real life. make sure you give every object a thickness

start on components early. groups will prevent you from getting in a mess if you want to seperate 2 objects, and will enable you to select whole objects easily. components do the same, but you can copy a component around, and if you edit one all the others can change.

when drawing shapes, you will often benefit from typing in the desired length. this will help you keep track of things and have regularity in your model. also don't use sill lengths like 147.43528m unless necessary

Components window will allow you to keep track of all components in your model, and see which ones are in the file but not in the model. you can then delete those to speed things up. same with materials. if you use one once, it remains in the file, even if you remove it from the model

soften edges to hide a line, and this will also try to smoothen the face. go to view>hidden geometry to see all lines you have hidden. a curve is actually a series of straight lines, and extruding a curve will make lots of lines.

For accurate selection, you may want to use the views toolbar, and parallel projection

@cadmunkey said:

That door opening is in a seriously wide wall there!

All walls are 1ft thick, what should they be?
I don't know what's normal in a modern house. In our victorian terraced house, there are external walls, partition walls and one more wall halfway along, that are load-bearing and those are about 1ft. the rest of the walls are internal, and about 4in. but I gather this is different in modern houses to make them less likely to form cracks, and to improve heat and sound insulation

@marked001 said:

one small thing that is missing everywhere that will make a huge difference in how detailed the space looks, is trim and molding.. at least get some wall base around everywhere..

don't know how I missed that. you're right - that will help a lot. especially when I add colours and textures. This will be a lot of work to correct, I just got done on the skirting boards downstairs, and I have added edging to every door.
Also, I added the stainless steel material from the cooker to the supports of on the stairs, and made a material for matte white (i.e. white chipboard veneer, painted metal), that isn't the same as the default material. it has a very slight, quite matte reflection to it. And, I sorted out the geometry on the light fittings, and applied that material to many things including the light fittings
Still lots to do!

below is my attempt at adding skirting boards etc.

Timelapse of making here: http://tinyurl.com/ytccht1
First animated render here: http://tinyurl.com/ytccht3

Thanks!
Here's the cooker, one of the most detailed parts of the model, in context.

That's brilliant. Those tubes or wires in the first bit look natural, and I've never seen anything like it on sketchup. if I were you I'd be happy with those seatbelts.

Incredible! good use of photoshop with CGI, and the model itself is very lifelike! I had trouble at first working out which bits were real and which were CGI, until I saw the handy images below

Love it! especially the round barn. very detailed, and elegant curves

very, very good! way beyond anything I can do at the moment. My favourite is the second, though the method you're using may make things difficult in the future (I always find it easier to use triangles).
I'm pretty sure there's a way in vray to automatically make those sides smoother in every render, but I'm also a noob...

You probably don't remember me, but I came along over 6 months ago to show off some of my work. I had an Art Deco storage project, and some abstract vray thing, and a house.

Your posts were very encouraging, so I decided to keep it up with the house and try and improve it.

Many places downstairs I completely started again. I "tore" out the kitchen cabinets, etc, and made new, more detailed components, and I worked on smoothing on things like the cooker. I made a TV, coffee tables, components for sofas, a dining table, components for chairs next to that I made a front door and a component for door handles. And upstairs I made beds, toilets, baths, showers and sinks, though they may need a bit of revision.

I'll post the pictures below and any feedback on those would be nice. as for my questions:

1. I'm working on lighting. At first, I tried wall units with emissive surfaces, but that got a bit ridiculous, so I looked around my house for inspiration and got hooked on spotlights. But I'm finding that a) my render times are now about 8x what they were, and b) it doesn't look very realistic. meanwhile, c) some areas that have a good number of lights in them are coming out quite dark. d)The lights themselves are not visible like you'd expect. the only thing that makes the light noticeable is the effect on nearby faces. I've fiddled about with the vray light settings you get when you right click on the light, and although it makes a difference, I am not getting the desired result. o, if anyone has any reccomended settings on that box, or can think of any box elsewhere I may have forgotten about, your help would be welcome

2. Many materials I just can't get right. I've even tried some off the internet and not been too pleased with them. does anyone have any advice on water for a pool, or stainless steel?

3. If you look in this page: http://sketchup.google.com/product/newin7.html, you see the bit about "scale without stretching". Apparently this is a feature of dynamic components, so I went to the dynamic components window, and I had no idea what to do. could anyone help me with doing this, specifically?

Now for the pictures!

Glass! Yay! so far it all just looks like card and glass. I had problems: I wanted to use refraction to make it look normal, but that wasn't working how I expected it to. so I had to make do with normal fresnel/reflection. You can see how the house works from this picture. 2 storeys, door on the right, 2 main walls divide the space.

Just testing that light was getting in properly. The toilet, at the back of the house

Toilet at the back, staircase supported by wall, wall is for privacy. upper storey at the top, with glass banisters. sliding doors in the left foreground

Kitchen, the most detailed area of the house, along with my second bit of vray material, the granite. Homemade textures, too.

Homemade table and chairs, behind that privacy wall from earlier. in the background is the kitchen, as you can see it will be hard lighting that up later.

Panorama to help you see the general plan To the right is the front of the house, that is, the garden and the big glass wall. above that is the staircase. moving along you see the privacy wall, supporting the rest of the staircase. there's a gap visible between that wall and the upper floor, this makes it seem more open. table and chairs, bathroom. ketchen is over there in the corner, and next to that is where one would enter the house. then, since it's 360degrees, the thing loops

TV that looks like it's made of card

and... context. To the right is the half-wall that seperates things from the kitchen, in the foreground is the table and chairs, and to the left is the beginning of the toilet. I also made coffee tables and sofas. I had to make 2 different coffee table components because I don't know how to scale without stretch

Homemade toilet furnitures. I've made them a bit better since. and, as you can see, I'm going to have trouble lighting this, too.

Homemade bed. As above.

First attempt at lighting. clearly emmissive faces are a bad idea.

Yep, definately no to those lighting units.

Panoramas are cool. I started getting new spotlights in place, but they aren't on.

Sink. made new ceramic and metal materials, worked on smoothing throughout.

Homemade doorknobs - used throughout the model, in various sizes

[img:3dihr1x0]http://i.imgur.com/Xuxax.jpg[/img:3dihr1x0]
More materials, more realistic generic TV

[img:3dihr1x0]http://i.imgur.com/kXJvc.jpg[/img:3dihr1x0]
Lights are on for the first time, and this is where I need help. It just looks unrealistic, specifically, the shadows are too sharp, the cone is barely visible on nearby walls, and there is no glow from the actual units. Kitchen is still dark despite lots of lights within. It just looks like nothing I'd expect from real life. Little help?

Just read this thread, you guys are hilarious
just starting now with vray. it will have a green and brown texture, a displacement map to add dents, and a texture on the reflective layer so that the rust is matte. this may take a while...

I only have vray, that shows up as a toolbar

oh and sorry for the double-post but, I just noticed the WIP section of this forum. I'm sorry for any convenience, and mods or admins, if you're reading this, feel free to move it there.

Well thank you both very much!
I knew there was something that I had forgotten - I was only using those people to make sure the dimensions were ok. I was going to go back and delete them! thanks for reminding me.
I'm afraid my work is going a bit slow, I've been working on a school but it is already getting more complicated than the house (and therefore more resource intensive)
have you got any advice on this? I'm using components where possible, and the walls are mainly curves from a 24-sided circle.

Hello, I just came to these forums after finding it on google.
Below are the three crown jewels of my collection.
I'm 16 now, and I've been using sketchup since version 5 (so that must be for, like, 4 years?)
If you can make it to the end without getting bored, feedback would be appreciated.

firstly a house I made just for fun, it took hours of work. Structurally it could actually be built given land, time and money.

Next, my GCSE project. we had to make a small storage or lighting unit in the art deco style. Being the geek I am, I made a cable storage system.
It has a big box which would hold power adapters, transformers, chargers, and extra cabling, then once you put the lid on that box there is a tray on top which can hold all your devices while they charge, the ends of the charging cables can come out through the nozzle to reach the devices, but they are held in place and don't slip down the back. Therefore it prevents eyesore and holds your cables in place.

And some photorealistic vray renders:

[img:1x8trbp4]http://i.imgur.com/QVl3Z.jpg[/img:1x8trbp4]
[img:1x8trbp4]http://i.imgur.com/C8Bgu.png[/img:1x8trbp4]

The final jewel is not so impressive. These were simply to try out the Vray engine when I first got it. they are eye-candy though

[img:1x8trbp4]http://i.imgur.com/oOkG1.jpg[/img:1x8trbp4]
[img:1x8trbp4]http://i.imgur.com/3EVer.jpg[/img:1x8trbp4]
[img:1x8trbp4]http://i.imgur.com/3oz9c.jpg[/img:1x8trbp4]
[img:1x8trbp4]http://i.imgur.com/hjhwu.jpg[/img:1x8trbp4]
[img:1x8trbp4]http://i.imgur.com/sk2vE.jpg[/img:1x8trbp4]
[img:1x8trbp4]http://i.imgur.com/3yEqW.jpg[/img:1x8trbp4]
[img:1x8trbp4]http://i.imgur.com/WCq0j.jpg[/img:1x8trbp4]
[img:1x8trbp4]http://i.imgur.com/tZVF5.jpg[/img:1x8trbp4]
[img:1x8trbp4]http://i.imgur.com/Bi6YJ.jpg[/img:1x8trbp4]