alfienoakes

OK.. Now the title is not the full story.....

On my day job, the boss has decided that we need to get our presentation styles sorted out. He has seen a copy of sketchup.. loaded it on to his laptop and gone away and had a play.

He has produced a house.. not a bad model of it.. but he loves it now. "All presentations from now on could be done using sketchup surely"

What I now have to do, is put together a reasoned argument of the Sketchup tools against the AutoCAD Architectures similar functions; ie the concept modeling tools, the ease at which Sketchup can produce a 3D layout, and walk around it with shadows etc.

What are peoples general experiences with these 2 programs. I use AutoCAD Architecture all the time, but I have used sketchup for 10 mins. It looks like it has a place in the process, but I need to put some facts together.

I would love to hear from people who have used both within the process of design. Just a note as well, we tend to do £2 million plus education schemes, so a small house wasnt really a good example to use.

Pros and cons, pluses and minuses would be great. Just to give me a bit of a heads up really. Oh.. and I have to do a presentation of what I find. No problem with that, except there will be an annoying know it all there who I need to make sure I am well equipped for..

__________________
Andy Wiggins

MAKING COFFEE.
Making a cup of coffee is like making love to a beautiful woman. It's got to be hot. You've got to take your time. You've got to stir... gently and firmly. You've got to grind your beans until they squeak. And then you put in the milk.

Swiss Tony.

chiquito

Andy, I have used the two of them, and I still choose to use autocad, why? I couldnt really tell, model wise, sketchup is much quicker, and if you know your way around it, its much quicker than autocad.

A valid argument for you could be that sketchup is good for massing studies and general information on models, its really easy to change stuff around, but when it comes to seriusly documenting and planning a project its no match to autocad, Autocad gives you a much more "stiffer" model, where its harder to change stuff, also the sharing capabilities autocad has you dont have in sketchup. Your boss can play a little with the soft and get the feeling "he now controls the 3d design process", it can be a start for you to use in autocad.
Learning sketchup is easier to learning autocad, so educaction wise, the cost of training someone to work on that is cheaper, the soft is also cheaper.
I personally compare sketch up to polygonal modeling in max. but for documentation I still prefer autocad.
hope it helps
Martin

Aaron2004

From the little (Stress "Little") experience that I've had, modeling something in sketchup or some other quick-doodle program has proven faster. However, when the time comes to do final renderings of it in MAX/VIZ, I always just end up modeling it all over again due to sloppy polygons.

Of course, this is all under the assumption that Autocad has clean meshes. I've never used the 3D aspect of it. If you don't mind messy meshes, than go for it, I guess.

toxic_box

Well I've Used both of them.

to Compare between them you just like to compare between 2 objects in 2 different specialization...in other world Autocad Architecture includes a Huge bunch of tools specialized from Concept Sketch to final Detail in shop drawing process..it's a pack of multiple tasks of modeling rendering designing and documentation.

but sketchup is a Digital prototyping software....like rhinoceros ....it's a Simple interface and easy to use also every one can use it for free.

I think your boss doesn't know how to use Autocad architecture tools ...So he found a simple and powerful software ...with a Paint-Like interface..(supposing every one knows how to use the traditional paint program on windows).

3DStuff

this is what i would say at ur presentation..."AutoCad is best". Then once you've said that, run out of the room with ur hands on ur head. hope this helps ur arguement.

chiquito

The best argument I can think of for not using sketch up is: none.
Its a good soft. It helps to get a fast result, but it doesnt keep thing going in a stright direction, the back and forths you get in the process will force you to loose production time in rebuilng stuff.

1eo

Skecthup (in combination with Maxwell and/or photoshop) is an incredible tool!!!

We use them in every project to visualize initial concepts and for presentations. For Construction Drawings we use AutoCAD although we are in process to switch to revit.


Anyway, if pictures say a 1,000 words, show this to your boss. (Warning: All of them were done quick and are not meant to be works of art... )

1eo

it's very cool to see these projects coming alive just the way we vision them on the renderings

alfienoakes

Cheers guys..

I think I can see where it will fit it in to what we do generally. Its a good "up front" tool for us, gives people something to see in a very fluid way early on, but beyond that, I think its probably too limited.

However, Leo, great images.. they look really good. Its obvious that you can produce really good works with it. Its just that we use ADT as our core application, so compatibility between to the two seems poor, so for us its front end.

Thanks again..

__________________
Andy Wiggins

MAKING COFFEE.
Making a cup of coffee is like making love to a beautiful woman. It's got to be hot. You've got to take your time. You've got to stir... gently and firmly. You've got to grind your beans until they squeak. And then you put in the milk.

Swiss Tony.

pyang

If ulimately you will use an audodesk base program to do your renderings, I would not recommend using sketch up as the model building program. The transition between sketch up and Max/ autodesk Viz is a headache. The time you have to redraw your nonusable sketch up model is time worth spend on other rendering task. FYI: using your sketch up model straight with just very little modelling management will make your rendering process a lot slower.