I would love some more. those look great. I prefer to take cad siteplans into sketchup for landscape plans or anything that requires color hatching at all.

what language is that, German? it doesn't get the point across to me.

Thanks for the input guys. I don't do a lot of renderings like this. I work as the only drafter for a small environmental consulting company that specializes in gas station design and environmental compliance. Most of the drafting i do is with civil 3d and basic autocad, but it is very nice to be able to use sketchup when needed. The only 3d rendering experience I had before sketchup was what little i did in high school using Autocad 2000. Because i don't do this stuff very often, and have never really considered myself very artistic, i have a lack of confidence when it comes to making something look good (for other people, i know what i like) and much appreciate the input from anyone else. these are all great ideas and i will make sure to implement them in my next rendering project.

This is an awesome way to rearrange your home without getting your hands dirty. One of the first things i did in Su was model my apartment and all my furniture. Then i rearranged everything in SU. Its nice to use the position camera feature to see exactly how it would look from say your front door, or standing in your kitchen. you can even set the position camera tool to your exact height.

I tried to open it in AutoCAD 09 and it said the file was corrupt. its kinda wierd casue i can see an image of the file in the thumbnail preview, but i cant open it.

When i tried to import it into SU it crashed.

Maybe there is something wrong with the file.

Here is a site i found while surfin a little while back. Its got a nice variety of free realistic skies.
There are some nice jpegs, but i don't think there are 1000 like the URL implies.

http://www.1000skies.com/partials/index.htm

Im the only drafter at a small company in Northern California. i work under a couple civil engineers that primarily specialize in commercial retail design, and petroleum engineering. Most of the drafting work that I have done over the past 5 years has been in AutoCAD doing floor plans, piping plans, site plans, details, etc. But because we are a small company, we take whatever work we can get, so the projects that I work on always vary. For the past year, i have been using sketchup for fun, and about 6 months ago we started to use it in the office for simple renderings or site/building elevations, and I really enjoy the different, more creative work. Sketchup has made it possible for us to get more planning work because we offer this service. the learning curve is great and it is now possible for me to create a nice looking model in a reasonable time frame.

A few of are clients have really taken a liking to my renderings and they have started to request more and more from us. Im posting this here because i would love any input ya'll have. Any criticism or suggestion on how to make my model look more professional. I havn't played around with renderings to much, but i think thats prob the next step. any recommendations on programs to use. Any good free ones?

Any input would be nice. please give it to me. you cant hurt my feelings.
Thanks

The SU file was to big to upload so here is the 3D warehouse link
http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/details?mid=47d215fe6c0ae7d3c8a04932b17782af

See the presentation tab, for the view that was presented to the client

I've gotten tot he point where i will reverse a backwards face just out of habit. Purple is bad and white is good!! Its very easy to reverse a face, and its even easier to reverse a group of selected face as well. Although i do think its kind of a pain, its gotten to the point where I just do it out of habit, and I love the functionality of faces and materials in sketchup, so i guess i never really thought of it as a problem.