First impressions of Google SketchUp

I’d been itching to digitise my house so I could visualise a deck and generally have a play with different ideas, so after seeing that Google went out and bought another program, 3d modeling software SketchUp, I grabbed it and decided to see just how far I’d get with zero experience, a set of house plans and five spare hours.

I’d read some other blogs where they mention how handy it would be for woodworking projects and the like, but I thought an entire house would be a worthy test of it and my patience. So, armed with the plans and my work deadline I decided to see just how far I would get.

After plowing through the three quick tutorials and noticing that most of the building is done by pushing and pulling surfaces, I decided to start in 2D and draw the outline of my house. This is where I found my first hurdle – the camera is very unwieldly, with three different controls to get you around (zoom, rotate/tilt and move) that you continually have to switch between to get where you want. Because they are tools in themselves, you have to switch from drawing lines to rotating, then moving, then rotating etc, which really gets in the way of getting the job done. The middle mouse-button helps somewhat with a temporary rotate/tilt but Google really needs to simplify the entire camera system, as concentrating on it rather than the design is extremely counterproductive.

The basic outline of my house – the boring 2D slab.

I raised my slab up 300mm to match the real thing, then began cutting the slab into rooms all the time still working in two dimensions. To start off with I found it exceedingly hard to work in anything but a top-down 2D view, but as time went on it got easier and easier to work at angles, which is in part thanks to the interfaces ability to lock directions and angles. Mostly though it’s the ability to point a line in a certain direction then simply type in a measurement instead of trying to nail it with the mouse.

Adding some rooms and a cement texture to my garage floor.

When I finished a few rooms I decided to raise the unfinished section by 100mm and leave the completed areas at the correct height, so I knew where I was up to. This proved to be a big problem later on.

I’ve got a fair few ninety degree angles in my design, and with the plan measurements (I’m no engineer) I was stumped as to how I would get around to working approximate lengths, so I had a few rough tries at it. Little did I know these attempts got buried in the slab, floating hidden in a void until I decided to raise walls and drop floors. When I tried to lower a bedroom wardobe I got this interesting tunnel:

My secret passageway beneath the wardrobe.

I travelled underground to investigate, and discovered a myriad of lines intersecting all over the place, all going absolutely nowhere. I’m to blame of course, but here I learnt two important lessons; just because things disappear doesn’t mean they’re gone, and the eraser is your friend.
After scouring the underside of my slab I thought I was home free, but was soon struck by my next problem. The community floor.

The entire light blue area is selectable only as a whole.

Sketchup got the idea that three quarters of my house should all be one piece, inexplicably even rooms and walls that I’d already defined. After playing with it for a few minutes (even taking a second subterrainian dig) I decided to just plain ignore it in the feeble hope it would sort itself out.

While I’m complaining I must get this out of the way. There is no decent way to use guidelines, aside from drawing regular lines then erasing them after you’ve finished. Not only is it messy, it’s what caused my tunnel-in-a-wardrobe malfunction. There is a ruler though which can be of great use and you can leave little black marks with it.

The two tape measure markers (yes, the tiny dots) and my tri-colour cursor.

The problem with these markers is, for lack of a better term, that they’re completely and utterly useless. Measuring out a certain distance (shown above as an external wall thickness) doesn’t do anything because you still have to perfectly line up your starting point with them. It’s quicker to just draw two lines, anchor the spot you want, then you just have to either erase and redraw the entire wall (which busts the entire object it’s attached to) or leave the two lines in until you go 3D. Please Google, make anchorable markers.

After some painstaking walk-in-wardrobe work I ducked into the loungeroom and added my feature panels, setting them to the correct height as a little reward for my 2D self-restrictions.

My difficult walk-in (half decagon), numerous fiddly 65mmx70mm doorways and my feature panels.

As you can see I also undocked the toolbar, which is a must unless you enjoy reaching north every five seconds to change a tool. Even better; learn the key shortcuts. Undocking gives you a bit more work area, so it’s a good idea in any case.

After that area was done, it was really plain sailing finishing off the wet areas and the living room, and before I knew it I’d completed the interior.

Two hours and one completed floorplan later.

I had a quick look underground, then saw where I was with the community floor problem I’d successfully forgotten about. Almost.

The new improved Community Floor.

Surprisingly a lot of it had fixed itself, and only the bathroom and the exterior half of the house were wrongly anchored to it. I decided to ignore it again.

I’d spent too long in my 2D prison, so (jonesing for that extra dimension) I raised the walls and started throwing textures on everywhere, and using the fairly handy customiser I got the supplied textures close to real-life.

Splashing colour into the previously lifeless design.

Before I go any further let me stress that I said approximates; I have better taste than the colours represent, or I at least like to think I do.

The exterior of the back half the house for some strange reason had no surface (barely visible in the last image), and I could see down into the slab much like the afore-mentioned wardrobe. After trying a couple different ideas I gave up and just drew another surface on top, which (although a perfect fix) probably isn’t the correct or best way to do it. In any case the problem went away.

Happy that I’d solved most of my problems, I finished raising the walls and put in a whole stack of windows, including my cascading door.

More windows, and my stacker doors to the right.

Since it was fast approaching 1:00 AM, I decided to call it a day at this point. All-in-all I’m very happy with what I got done as first-timer with SketchUp. I’ve tried other 3D programs before, but none beat this for ease of use and common sense construction. I can’t wait to see where Google takes this in future.

I’ve still yet to finish the windows, figure out how I’m going to do the ceiling/roof (I’m thinking transparency) and play with angles, since I have raked ceilings in half the house. So stay tuned for part two.