Bob,

I like you have been hunting high and low for a good useable cad system that interfaces well with SU. I have splashed out and purchased SPIRIT. I am still trying to find time to come to grips with this programme, I have never been cad literate, just pen and pencil literate from the old school. The nice thing about SPIRIT is that you can reference a SU model back in to SPIRIT including all components. You can then change the model in SU and it updates in SPIRIT where you can create either 2D plans / drawings or 3D parametric models. We use Revit in the office as well but from what I have seen ....and I am no expert as I don't use Revit either.....it is just as capable. It might not be able to handle larger more complex projects like Revit can I suspect. The work flow suits me as I enjoy working concepts up in SU and then having the ability to produce some good looking preliminary design drawings is all I need. I employ staff to do the detail design and documentation.

I would love to be able to show some drawings I have produced in SPIRIT from an SU model but I haven't got that far yet, all my spare time at the moment is taken up up pulling in work.

Stan

Tobobo,

These look great, nice, simple clean, and uncluttered and easy to read. I have 2 smaller master-planning projects coming up and this is the type of thing I would like to produce. Thanks for showing.

Stan

Ken,

Yes I remember looking at Turbo Cad a while back now. I cant remember why I didnt go down that path. I might have been too bust at the time.

Stan

Kwisten,

Great animation of an old classic. How long did this take as a matter of interest?

Stan

Hi John,

Thanks for your reply on this, I will take a look at the Solid Edge program as well. thanks

Stan

Jacques,

Absolutely superb work. The guys in my office are Revit converts and look down their noses at Sketchup as a bit of a play thing. When I called them all over to my computer to take a look at your great work, there was stunned silence and and a collective shuffle back to their seat with their collective tails between their legs

I love the renders as well, fantastic.

Stan

In my relentless search to find an easy to use 2D / 3D cad system that is interoperable with SU, I have stumbled across Viacad which appears to be primarily a solid modelling mechanical design tool but it now has the capacity / capability to download SU models from 3D warehouse. I was wondering if anyone here has come across this cad package, if so what do you think?

A bit of history about me, I am an Architect in New Zealand and have been using SU for some 4 years now but have become increasingly frustrated with the limitations of Layout. With my SU models becoming increasingly detailed, I am at the point where it does not make economic sense to redo a 3D model in revit in order to get some basic dimensioned drawings with decent line weight variation....ie drawings that also look good and professional. These drawings I would pass on to a Quantity Surveyor / builder for preliminary pricing.

Hopefully, the staff at Google get requests for a companion simple cad system for SU regularly and are sitting up and taking notice or even better doing something about it In the meantime, I will keep searching.

Stan

Problem Solved. Just down loaded SU pro from google again and ticked the repair option, works fine now.

Stan

Thanks for your response Gaieus, very much appreciated.

Stan

Gaieus,

I did as you suggested, still not working.....it certainly is slower with HA off alright.

Stan

Gaieus,

Yep, first thing I did was go back and restore all I had deleted, but still doesn't work.

Stan

Hi all,

I am not sure what I have done but I tried to down load the Skins plugin the other day. I put it in the wrong place because it wasn't working so I decided to go back and delete it..... I must inadvertently deleted something to do with the Shadow settings cos they just plain don't work anymore.

My question is, is there a simple fix for this or am I better off deleting SU from my hard drive and re-loading it? Any help would be appreciated. You can probably tell that computers and me only just tolerate each other.

Stan

Hey Guys,

Many thanks for your responses, looks like I am certainly not the only one with this little dilemma. I think I might have to persevere with SPIRIT. It allows you to reference a sketch-up model into SPIRIT and work in SU which auto updates. I will have a look at power Cad, sounds interesting.

A good example of what I am talking about came in to the office this morning. It is an upgrade of an existing shop tenancy. They want presentation 3D's to present to the Body Corporate for approval as well as a builders Preliminary price. So if I was able to produce some professional looking preliminary design 2D drawings from my SU model I could knock it out quite quickly and effectively along with an outline spec. I look forward to the day where Google are able to offer a plugin or even a very simple cad system designed around SU and as Intuitive as SU. If I had had the time and expertise I would do it myself

Stan

Hi All,

I haven't posted much for a very long time so I consider myself a newbie. I have been using SU as part of my design process in the office for 4 years now and it has paid for itself 100 fold. The problem I am finding is that I am relying more and more on my staff to produce preliminary design documentation where they start the project from scratch in revit. This is a time waster especially if it is for a speculative developer or the like. I use layout extensively with SU to produce my concept drawings but I am not overly happy with the output since line weights cannot be changed and everything looks ....well...very flat. To counter this I went out and purchased a license of SPIRIT 15.1, this appears to be a great programme that interfaces well with SU, my problem is the learning curve on becoming proficient on a CAD programme when I have never actually used one before. Being the primary designer in the office, I don't want to get bogged down learning all the idiosyncrasies of SPIRIT or Revit for that matter, its just not an efficient use of my time. My question here is, is anyone aware of a plugin being developed to produce more quality drawings from SU with line weight variation and better dimensioning. I have checked out the new Rhino plugin called VisualARQ, something like this interface in Sketchup would be fantastic I feel. It is not overly complex, very intuitive and has simple BIM qualities. For someone like me where time is of the essence, this would be an absolute God send. OR, am I better off just switching over to Rhino????

Anyone's thoughts on this topic would be greatly appreciated.

Stan

Hi Rick,

I have my guys in the office working in Revit, I myself have resisted switching to revit since 90% of my work is design. I prefer to work with SU since I find it so quick and intutive. I know a lot of Architects use SU to quickly build components for importing into ArchiCAD or Revit during construction documentation, I see this tool being extremly helpful for me to become more involved again in production of construction documents. I look forward to its release

Stan