Contouring in Sketch Up

An eventful Easter Sunday (no rest for the wicked as they say!) spent playing in the Google Sketch Up sandbox. It appears that it is only possible to import level surveys into Pro which is a good plan for making people buy pro a bad plan for us mere students who don't want both Vectorworks and Sketch Up Pro as there are too many cross overs in functionality and the former wins hands down on overall functionality.

So hand contouring it is, tracing over an imported .jpg file exported from Vectorworks where the levels survey is imported (not so professional, but it works).

The site looks precipitous which makes me think I have something wrong (scale maybe?). More contours make it look less so but then the steep banks and suddenly ending contours make it much more complicated to draw in with the sandbox tool.

Still I am pleased at least to have succeeded with the tool itself.

I think project 3 may find itself with much simplified contours and smoother shapes overall, steep banking is out!

From Project 3 - Rural

Project two ......returns

Marked but grades not revealed yet we have had our A1 sheets scanned in digitally. It seems an age ago that this was done but a mere 6 weeks.

Bubble diagrams: still a bit controlled for my liking, project 3 I plan to bring some artistic movement to it all -

From HLP

Plan view and 3d models: my favorite page, if one is allowed such a thing,. Close up the 3d models really come alive with the rendering and using a focal rendering style focuses the eye on different aspects of the design.

From HLP

Section Elevations: although they look a little bland here, they are in fact detailed section drawings showing key aspects of the design and features incorporated in the clients new gardens. They were the hardest to do, converting 1:100 to 1:50 (manually!) but the most rewarding to complete.

From HLP

So far the site analysis has not materialised, maybe that is a sign that it was not the best piece of work ever done!

How much time ??????

After a recommendation months ago to use this little piece of software I finally got going with it to count up the hours spent on the holiday project drawing up a series of hard landscape projects from plan and image.

Tickspot is about as intuitive as it comes which is a bonus as one wades through the unknown in Vectorworks and Sketchup not to mention construction of even the simplest forms in the garden (butyl liner, geotextile and butterfly wall ties anyone?)

Running the reports makes it obvious that there is a lot more faffing about going on, sorry 'Task - research' than actual drawing up or designing but it is a steep learning process and the tickspot tool is helping to focus my time on the task at hand instead of all the distractions that pervade at this time of year.

So far 36 out of the predicted 200 hours are done, somehow that 200 is feeling a touch optomistic!

And one of my working drawings (from VW) to give those 'construction engineer types' a laugh....

From HLP

Sucess and failure are either side of the same coin!

After a frantic few days I am finally feeling like the deadline of Friday is meetable. With help from Vectorworks whizz OH and technical collaboration with LM, not to mention the man from Brother who sorted out the A3 scanner only scanning at A4 (go figure) I am now on track to complete, more or less (!) in time to deliver the 4 A1 sheets of design work for project 2.

A jaunt south to hand deliver is still looking likely though.

Could you do this in 12 weeks?

A parody I suppose on D's posting could you do this in 8 weeks for our first project. But a mere 4 weeks later and project 2 is in the final stages, i.e. head down panic week to get it all tarted up and ready for submission to D, by close of Friday. The real client will see it at the annual summer show and hopefully chose a design to implement.

Ground plan done and 3d block model done and tweaked. The process is fairly integral in the final stages back and forth between plan and model. Attention to detail is easier to see in the model than on the plan, i.e. forgetting to put in the oil tank or a wall to block it from the road was easily missed on the plan not so the block model. Sketch up continues to be a delight if a bit flaky.

From 2009-12-08 1

3D model

From 2009-12-08 1

Plan draft

Vectorworks is in the wings for the Site Analysis and Functional bubble diagram sheet.

Week VI, already

Busy week this week. Wednesday began with an early start, 04:30, to get over to Oxford in plenty of time for a 09:00 start on the SketchUp training day with Tamsin Slatter. An interesting day and certainly one where I learnt quite a few good short cuts and techniques to improve the existing drawings. Even attempted a spiral stair case successfully!

Thursday and Friday were filled with hand drawing techniques and an introduction to Chartpak Markers. I struggled with perspective drawing technicalities. Jo Chance passed on a good set of techniques but doing it by eye was far more successful for me than all the measuring and planning. No doubt with some practice I can make it work. Thankfully CK sat next to me both days and proved a fount of useful tips - she has taught this particular skill to interior design students for about 13 years apparently!

Rendering, or coloring in, was fun and some of the years of sketching through art A' level and a design degree, came flooding back. I really enjoyed this day, although the scent of acetone had most of us wild eyed and a tad headachey.

From My Pictures

Now I just have to knuckle down and get the UP1 design tweaked and humanly possible to build, re SketchUp'd, Rendered, Elevated and that'll be homework done ready for the next annihilation, sorry crit next week

SketchUp moves into the realms of fairly do-able

I completed a redraw, from scratch, of my revised design in about 3 hours this afternoon, which I am feeling a little smug about. I layered the hell out of it and it made it so much easier to manage amendments. I might even begin to say I like SKetchUp 7, might even say it's fun to use!

From My Pictures

SKetchUp Training

Just completed watching 4 hours, 1 minute and 39 seconds of online training. Feels like a great deal more than that and probably is if I include trying out each exercise, even so it feels like MUCH more time than a day (FTE)

Worth it though :)



......I know, I forgot the clocks changed last night so up too early for a Sunday