New User here.

I am a graduating Civil Engineer and have been using Sketchup for a while now to create basic layouts and photo-realistic renderings. However, I believe my abilities can be greatly increased when it comes to the presentation of my Layout designs.

I was wondering, how is it that you're able to get rendered layout designs? Most of my layout designs are using the basic Sketchup model details; all the layouts that really impress me have great material/photo-realistic properties.

Furthermore, as an Engineer our curriculum does not revolve around nice layouts - they're usually cut-and-dry (see autocad dwgs). Is there any rule-of-thumb that might help make my layouts more appealing (e.g isometric views, etc)