AJLynn

Keep things in the "default" material - the one that's beige on one side and purple on the other. Beige is the "out" side - if you can see purple, reverse it.

I LOVE Sketchup. I did a whole studio in it in the fall. (I was in Italy and didn't want to spend any more time than I had to doing things other than drinking coffee in cafes.) When we need a quick visual in the office, we use Sketchup. When I want to model something quickly for Max, I use Sketchup. A few things get annoying - like when the snaps don't do what you want them to, some surface doesn't end up being flat when you thought it should be, etc. - and doing the groups and layers to make it easiest in Max takes a little practice, but when you want to do a model in half a morning there's nothing else for it.

ihabkal

spent hours working on exported models. sometimes if layers ar enot defined in sketchup everything comes in one piece and you lose all material definition. and you spend hours selectiong faces to assign material IDs to or to flip their normals. I just assign a 2 sided material.

AJLynn

Yeah, it requires a very rigorous approach to Sketchup - which is not at all intuitive for Sketchup Groups, layers are your friends. I tend to have everything in groups anyway so my objects don't automatically weld, so it works out well for me.

ihabkal

I don't do the model in sketchup, but some architects do it there and send it to me, and ask for a huge discount, and it's tough on me...

One Eye King

Hi,

I really shouting to the world this question and no one answer : WHY MAX/VIS DESNT HAVE INFERENCE ENGINE LIKE IN SKETHUP? If you ask me the only advantage of sketchup over max in this manner is the Inference engine, the rest is just playing with editable mesh. The fact that 20 bucks software has so clear advantage over Max makes me crazy.

What is the use of sketchup in interior Design work? Since all the interior walls are two layered I get really hard time to adjust them and more than that to continue working on them in Max.

Thanks
S

mrcamper

We use Sketchup on a very large scale to compliment our other 3d production and they work together very well.

Sketchup models do not import well into other 3d application without massive amount of cleanup work, but for quick layout of 3d geometry it is fine.

__________________
A Noble life demands a noble architecture for noble uses of noble men. (FLLW, 1953) http://www.archengine.org - my Real Time blog - http://www.rtranger.com

One Eye King

hi,

what is your input about Inference engine issue?

Thanks
S

chuck

mirroring things is tricky, i just scale with a factor of -1, then rotate it back to normal. i hope they fix this in 5.0.

i find that moving objects is pretty easy with the snap tools, but grouping and creating good components is essential.

zooming with the mouse wheel can get annoying, but it's usually good when your mouse is hovering over an object.

hope that helps

chuck

BOTS

Like any CAD you have to be robust in your process from the start. A lot of people have mentioned grouping objects. This is a good way of keeping control on the model in sketch up.

Unless you model with care in any 3D application then clean up work will always be required.

AJLynn

Sketchup to Max for interiors is working out pretty well for me. This is one I've been working on lately, modeling takes a couple of hours - but since I'm still learning mr 3.4, lighting takes forever

Walls are coming from Autocad - the cad file has the outlines of the walls, a few clicks are needed to make them come together as surfaces, then I make each wall or assembly of walls a group, go into the group, extrude and check for purple bits. Export to Autocad 2004 format with only faces turned on and liberal use of layers (make sure your group and everything inside it are on the same layer, or it will get wierd on you) and use Import in Max. Then if you want to add or change anything later, put it on a new layer, export a new cad file and import only the new layer in Max.

You need a rigorous system of working in Sketchup, which is counter to the way most people would use it (rigorous and sketchy don't mix well) - and then you get other ppl's Sketchup models, and you have the kind of problems Ihab was talking about.