Corey is a fellow kitchen designer who I have come to know over Twitter. Since being Twitter buddies, I've had the pleasure of meeting Corey in person at KBIS and Brizo's NYC Fashion week. Corey has a sharp sense of style, and an incredible grasp of Sketchup and LayOut. He teaches Sketchup classes Vancouver Canada. I have written for Corey's blog, Design Kula before, and he has wanted to write for me. In tossing around ideas, he shared with me some of his LayOut documents. As soon as I saw them I was blown away. Check out what he does below:
Presentation Plans with LayOut
As a residential interior designer, and a kitchen & bath designer, I demand a lot from my design programs. I started using SketchUp about 5 years ago (when I returned to design school, again) as a vehicle to create better ways of communicating my design program. When I made the leap and purchased Google SketchUp Pro my complete work-flow and method of communicating my design program changed.
Creating a dynamic and informative presentation package use to involve several applications like PhotoShop, MS Word, MS Excel, and AutoCAD. Not only can the licenses be costly and time consuming to learn multiple applications, but it is a very inefficient way of working. With Google SketchUp Pro, LayOut can help you achieve the same effects as all those other applications - but in one single, lower costing option. With LayOut, you can do it all.
I recently designed a kitchen for a client that presented some unique and interesting challenges. It’s a late 70’s Architectural style home with an amazing view of the public spaces from the second floor bedrooms. The challenge was to eliminate the six traffic patterns that flow right through the working triangle and actually create something interesting that represents the style of the residence. I turned to SketchUp and LayOut (as I usually do) and literally designed this kitchen right in front of the clients. I knew that communicating my ideas to the non-visual thinker clients was going to be tough.
The presentation package
I created a unique set of construction drawings that blended the standard interpretive drawings with a presentation package. You can see that the cover page is pretty standard, as far as cover pages go, but I also included the top view as the first drawing. Not only does this save an extra page, but it help give the clients and immediate and clear idea of what is being designed for them.
My second and third pages are always perspectives, but with a twist. You can see that not only have I included an interpretive drawing, but I’ve included more detailed specifications. The drag and drop functions in LayOut allowed me to insert manufacturer product images taking the interpretive drawing from design inference to design intention. Add some leader lines, fly-outs, boxes, text and you have a complete spec package right on there on the page! Who needs cut sheets?
I always try to mix up my perspectives with different views. I’m selfish, I like to save on work and provide as much overview as possible in the least amount of pages. Whenever I have an obstacle in the way, in this case an second floor and a bulkhead, I always make it a wire-frame so objects below are clear and visible. Again, saving on time and energy is my goal because no one likes to pour endless cups of coffee until the wee hours of the morning to complete a drawing package.
Using LayOut as your complete design presentation tool includes creating inspiration boards, digital material boards, case studies, site analysis, and more. There is nothing that Google SketchUp Pro can’t do. To view the complete Construction Drawing Package, you can Corey's Construction Drawing Package to open the Picsa Album.
Corey S. Klassen, ABKD BFA is an interior designer and kitchen & bath designer located in Vancouver, B.C.