Catalogs in the cloud

A while back, I wrote an article on the theory of the 3D warehouse. I touched on several topics, the Pony Express, Ted Stevens, and the Internet. There's even some information in there on how Sketchup's 3D warehouse works!

So, if you've taken the time to go back and read that article, you should have a pretty decent grasp on how the 3D warehouse works (Unless you got sucked into the link to asteroids that I buried in there)

As more and more kitchen designers discover Sketchup, more and more companies are taking their catalogs and putting them online in the 3D warehouse for anyone to use.

Kraftmaid has recently made a big push into the 3D warehouse. If click here, you can see their main 3D warehouse page. They have have several categories, Universal Design projects, Extreme Home Makeover, and Projects by Achitects and Designers to name a few. One of my projects was featured in the latter category, you can see it here..

You can also browse the individual cabinets that Kraftmaid has posted for you to use in Sketchup to design your kitchen. The design I created above was done with cabinets from this collection. After I placed all the basic cabinets, I drew in the accessories and countertops.

The next entrant in to the 3D Warehouse is Medalion Cabinetry. Their 3D warehouse collection features several different lines of cabinets, some finishes, and a few different door styles.

The last cabinet company to throw their hat in the 3D ring is General Casework. They have a well organized catalog of basic, slab front cabinets.

If you are unfamiliar with Sketchup and the 3D warehouse, you may be at this point thinking "Great, I found a bunch of 3D models, but how do I get them into Sketchup?" Well, there are two ways, you can use the 3D warehouse button right in Sketchup to download models right into your model. Or you can use the component browser right in Sketchup. Using the component browser has several advantages. You can browse online just like you did with the links above, and you can also save "favorites". I find this method very useful for marking commonly visited sections of each manufacturers offerings. (I typically have "bases" "walls" and "talls" marked for each cabinet company) The component browser also allows you to search, and bring in models without having to start your search over each time you bring a model in.

So, these three comapnies have provided us Sketchup users with a selection of models of products they offer. There are several issues that come up with these new offerings... First, are they useful to you? Would you rather use these instead of a dedicated design software (such as 2020)? Do you use these models for just presentation, or are you using LayOut to create construction documents? How do you feel about everyone in the world having access to information that was previously for designers only?

Before I go off on one of my colorful rants laced up with asteroids and YouTube, I want to see what you out there have to say. If you don't have Sketchup already, go get it (its free), search for these collections, and try it out for yourself! I'd love to see what you come with, and hear any of your questions, comments, concerns. If you have a model you have created with these cabinets, I could also feature it in my next blog post.

If you are new to Sketchup, refer to these older blog posts for tips on how to use Sketchup to create a kitchen design.

Placing Cabinets
Using the 3D Warehouse
Undermounting a sink

Layout 2.1, not a one way street

In the last post, I started to tell you about LayOut 2.1's most useful new feature, dimensioning.

After testing the new dimensioning feature on small projects here and there, I took the plunge and created my first full presentation and kitchen plan in it.

I started with creating the Sketchup model, coloring it, and setting up all my views.

Then, I sent it over to LayOut. Over there I was able to create different pages with all my views. I started out with all the perspective views. These are typically the views that you would go over with your customer during presentation.

Next, I added some elevations and sections of pertinent parts of the kitchen. These pages have all the dimensions, cabinet codes, and notes for the contractor or installer. The last few pages contain some detail parts, and the counter top details.

While this may look like just a normal plan generated from any other cad software, there is one really nice benefit with using the Sketchup to LayOut workflow: All of the views are referenced off of the original 3D model. What this means is that the workflow process isn't a one way street. If at anytime during the creation of this document I need to change something, I only have to do it in the Sketchup 3D model once. When I save the model, each and every page in LayOut is updated, so all my changes are reflected everywhere.

Yes, other cad software packages can do this, but Sketchup does it very easily.

See the presentation below for the pages of this document. You can download the presentation right to your computer, or use the full screen button to see all the details. Next week, I will have an in depth video on just how this process works.

Sketchup 7.1 Released!

Today the folks over at Google released Sketchup 7.1. If you are familiar with most software releases, usually when a software is updated just a "tenth" more then the last one, its usually just for bug fixes, and other boring things. This update is certainly far more then a "tenth" useful.

There is a myriad of new features that have been added. In particular, there a few key features that us kitchen designers will find quite useful.

First, large model support. Many said that Sketchup should be reworked from the ground up to offer multi core support, and other advanced rendering techniques. Rather then re-invent the wheel, the Sketchup team has stuck to their motto: "3D for everyone" That means it should run well on any computer, not just high end ones. They got under the hood, tweaked and tuned every last thing they could, and the result is brilliant. Models that were slow to pan and zoom now are fast and fluid. Most importantly, Sketchup can still run on just about any computer! I liken it to the following video, they took the usefulness of a minivan, and tuned it up so well that it can beat the pants off of sports cars!

Dimensions, Dimensions, Dimensions!!

That's right, Sketchup has always had dimensions, but now LayOut has dimensions! Anyone who's used AutoCAD knows that you draw your model in "model space" and you do all your notation and dimensioning in "paper space".

Up until the addition of the dimension tool in Layout, as brilliant as it was, it was really limited to presentations for kitchen design.

Now that you can dimension all those kitchens, you can truly have a one stop document for all the information on your project. From presentation, to construction documents. you can now derive all that inf information from you Sketchup model!

Stay tuned in the coming weeks as I will be posting examples, tutorials, and some videos on how you can leverage this new feature on your next project. For now, here is an introduction on LayOut from the Google team.

Rendering with Sketchup

Sketchup has Style & Speed
By Eric Schimelpfenig, AKBD of SketchThis.Net

In today's world of text messaging, tweets, and high speed internet, we all want things faster.  This, for the most part is great.  Who doesn't want to send their 140 character or less message around the world in less then a second?  I don't want to put something in the mail, I want it there now!  This guy may disagree, however...

The advent of all this technology and instant gratification has been overall great in the kitchen design industry.  It can be a double edged sword though. Customers expect things to be in 3-D, they expect them fast, and they expect them to be impressive.

Old software like 2020, Autocad, and others are all capable of renderings.  Some of these programs could create some quite nice renderings.  The problem with most of these software packages is that the rendering aspect is such a departure from how the rest of the program is used.  AutoCad and even 2020's rendering package is difficult to master.  I find that most people that master the design aspect of these programs are hesitant to really go the extra mile to learn the rendering portion.  I don't blame them though. It's time consuming, and for the time invested and the amount gained, it's usually not worth it.  Black and white pictures, with a little white out and pencil can save you time and frustration as opposed to rendering with these programs.

I liken it to this:  I am perfectly capable of painting a room, or a "color by numbers" painting.  I cannot, however, paint a picture to save my life.  I am sure Bob Ross and I have the same motor skills, but he can paint wonderful "Happy little trees" like no one else.

Since we live in a fast food, fiber optic, twitter world of instant gratification, we naturally need something that is quick, better, and faster then the traditional, draw then "render and wait" software's that we are used to.

This is where Sketchup really comes comes in handy.  Sketchup's renderings are really, really good.  And best of all, you don't have to wait for them!  You can apply the materials as you are modeling and the materials stay on the model as you are drawing.  In other words, you are working with a fully interactive render! No waiting for a render, its all there, live.  Want to walk your customers through their new kitchen with color and texture?  You can, right in front of their eyes!

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Check out this video on Sketchup Styles:

Sketchup School video on Styles

Not only does Sketchup have "Style" in this video, so does the host, Mike!

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The other upside to Sketchup is that you can easily add a little artistic touch to your drawings using Sketchup's preloaded styles.  You can have color, and lines that look like they were hand drawn.

There are some differences between what Sketchup renders, and what a real rendering software does.  Real rendering software's are capable of creating photo realistic renders of anything.  If you are good enough, and have enough computing power, you can create images that look so real no one can tell the difference.  With Sketchup, you won't get realistic lighting effects.  However, I don't think most people designing kitchens should use photo realism to sell their designs.

First of all, as we discussed earlier, it takes way to long, and its something extra that you have to learn.  Next, the closer you get to photo realism, the more accurate you have to be.  If you do a photo real render with wood and granite textures and you sell that photo as a "Photo real" render, your customers are going to expect it to look that way when you install it.  If you show your customers a photo real rendering, I don't care how many times that you tell them its going to change in real life, they will walk away with that picture in their head expect it to look exactly that way. 

If you look at the sample Sketchup renderings below, you will see what a "general" rendering is like.  This kitchen was to have light maple cabinets, and blue manufactured granite countertops with stainless appliances.  Is it a photo real render? No, but it's a pretty good representation of what it will look like.  It literally took me only minutes to place those textures on the drawing.  A customer with that rendering printed out and some real samples in hand will feel very confident about their choices. (An no one needs to know it only took you ten extra minutes to draw the color in!)

In my experience, 95% of the time Sketchup renders are more then plenty.  For the 5% left over, there is some great rendering software, including some photo realistic rendering plugins for Sketchup.  Me, I will stick to my good old Sketchup renderings!

This is a kitchen rendered in the default Sketchup style.

With just a couple of clicks I added these "Sketchy Edges"

This is a rendering with no edges

This one looks hand drawn!

This one is a photo realistic render, and probably took a lot of time to create.  Very impressive, but worth it, you decide.

Using the Dynamic Door

In this tutorial, I am going to teach you how to use a dynamic component that I created to help you draw kitchen cabinet doors quickly, easily, and accurately.

Watch the video here!

When you are done, I have embedded the component from the 3D warehouse below.

**This component should ALWAYS be downloaded using Sketchup's 3D warehouse browser. If you download it from your regular web browser and save it to your computer, you must IMPORT IT, DO NOT OPEN IT like a regular Sketchup file, it will NOT WORK PROPERLY.