here's a neat case study (neat also because the 2nd page shows a plugin used internally by turner which could be seen as a bit of a preview of the type of changes we may see in sketchup itself)

Follow the SketchUpdate blog for SketchUp news, modeling tips and tricks, user stories and more.

these people are building the tallest building in usa (and i happen to have a perfectly framed view of the thing down my street 😉 )..

of course they're not using sketchup as the backbone but they've definitely found a way to integrate it into their company.. and seriously, if sketchup wasn't helping them make things happen, they wouldn't be using it.

there isn't a one software solution out there right now.. even i use a two software approach for the drawings (3 if you count layout as a separate software)..

i guarantee your friend could find a way to use sketchup in a way that would benefit if he so desired.
(ok.. not quite with the guarantee bit.. i don't actually know what he does)

[edit] hm.. maybe they aren't building the towers.. just the crazy new downtown station.. in which case, i don't have much of a view of said project..

Here (in the above export, I did not include the two, eastern parts but you can see how extensive the complex is under the GE poligin. also added to some photos there):
Old Tanner House.kmz

Interesting however that after 1711, it is not subject to archaeology for us here (legally). Previously it was 1686 - the end of the Ottoman/Turkish rule - but then they changed to 1711 (most probably also due to excavations I also took part then lead and on top of a Roman fort we found another one from the first decade of the 18th century when we were fighting one of our almost decennial wars of independence against the Habsburg House)

Merci, maintenant je peux pratiquer mon français!

@tpstigers said:

Sometimes, though, I just want to render a part of the landscape (a house, for instance).

Well, Thea has a really cool feature: region rendering. Combined with the Interactive render feature (where you navigate; orbit, pan, whatever to get the view you want and it is interactively rendering the "final" image - sort of) then make a rectangle selection and there you go; it will render you that part.

If you build the main features of your landscape in SU, you can add pretty high poly plants inside Thea (and later, when the exporting plugin supports it, you can place "dummy" proxies in SU and turn them into full fledged 3D plants in Thea).

Hm. Still selling at 45% pre-release price until the 21st of February (RC2 has just been released).