2865 – SketchUp

How was it?

Having previous experience with architectural software in Autodesk Revit, I had high hopes for the possibilities of SketchUp and my ability to recreate my home. Unfortunately, my last experience was in 2017! I found the feel of SketchUp comparable to Revit with the 3d planes of movement and its drawing structure.

There were a few things that turned what I thought would take an hour or two into 4 hours. Starting with the orienting my camera, It took me 2 hours to figure out that I could orient the camera with more than the orbit and zoom functions. I did not use the pan option(The hand icon or pressing Shift while using the orbit tool) for the first half of my work, instead using a zoom-out-and-orbit method to get the view that I wanted. I also found the rotate and scale tools difficult to use, but don’t see them being impossible to figure out in future work.

Pesky Boggs

Many compromises were made for this assignment. I hoped to create great detail on my home including a driveway, detattched garage and chimney. Those are obviously missing in the pictures above. The main reason that a simple draw up of these weren’t added is because of the roof that doesn’t match my home. In reality, there is a triangular roof that intersects the top structure of my home. It is where both the attic and closets of rooms live and create a very different visual than the one shown here.

Weighing SketchUp’s Value

Even with the numerous struggles that I had using SketchUp, I found the software to be a very useful tool of beginner users, educators, and professionals alike. With knowledge of architectural design, engineering modeling, or a school building’s plans, SketchUp could be used to create many different designs for presentation, pre-build modeling, and more things of the sort!