grr..rushing for the design, a ‘habitat’ for myself, yes a space for one, only. honestly I’m not quite excited with not having the chance to design buildings, I mean real buildings… OK imagined real but bigger scale buildings- nevermind, more about that later. so today I decided to compile a list of must-have tools and softwares for the architecture community. and the first one goes to.. *drumroll*… google sketchup!
as an architecture student, I’m sure you have heard sketchup here and there.. but for those who havn’t quite touch it, this is my advice for you; go and try it! rare occasion of yang’s quotation;
“the first ever design tool in architecture before you mingle with others is google sketchup.” says yang
why? because sketchup is extremely easy to use! for me, I only used up one day to master everything in sketchup. disclaimer: your learning experience may differ.
first of all, it provides the most basic, one of the quickest navigational tools in design. how to orbit, pan and zoom to particular object as fast as possible. trust me, as soon as you master this, learning navigation in all other CAD softwares will go much smoother.
not only that, google sketchup featured the method of easily pulling 2d surfaces to create 3d solid objects like no other (process commonly known as extrusion). after discovering this, you’ll go and wonder why all those complex CAD (autoCAD and archiCAD) softwares complicate this simple function of extruding surfaces. by that time, you’ll miss sketchup a lot.
plus, you’ll also love how sketchup pour materials and texture into surfaces using paint bucket. it’s like having a magic wand to point at a certain surface and say, “I want this surface to become a beautiful concrete wall” and puff, you’ve got a concrete wall just within a click of your sweaty finger.
I can describe whole lots of advantages of sketchup, but well, I prefer to only say 3 important points in all my reviews and evaluations. but of course sketchup has its own cons. it can be quite.. emm very.. or should I say super annoyingly laggy when youre modelling extremely complex projects. also, you can’t demand beautiful renderings from sketchup if you wish to export to other visualization softwares.
anyway, it’s just sketchup! so use it only to illustrate basic concepts of your design. not to the point of modelling every interior spaces of the entire empire state building!
so.. WHAT are you waiting for? get sketchup loaded in your screen!
- download google sketchup
- wondering where to get google sketchup pro?
- peek into models uploaded by sketchup hobbyists from sketchup 3d warehouse
p/s: the pictures of the sketchup model is drawn by me in 5 minutes. and while figuring the name for the structure for 10 minutes, I simply called it ”theL”. why that name? oh.. cause the word google has one ‘L’ in it. like you’ll believe me, lol.
