The power of Sketchup

Recently we've invested a fair bit of time as a practice getting to grips with Google Sketchup. So far we've mostly been using it to produce almost photo quality rendered images of the interiors and exteriors of our projects, but recently it has come into its own for us when we have been using it to make a co-ordinated building model for one of our more complex new builds.

The underlying steel framework


The joists installed and some of the infill timberwork in place



The roof joists installed


The glazing in place, and some of the blockwork installed

Weve been checking the stages of the build and modelling them at the same time to check our understanding of what needs to go in what order, to assist with providing the cleint with a construction porgramme. we've also been using it to coordinate all the serives in the house, which because there is quite alot of steelwork in this particular build need to be thought through carefully to ensure there are no awkward clashes that could result in unsightly boxing out of areas in the house. We've been working out pipework runs for the drains and ensuring the setting out of the recessed lighting does not clash with any of the underlying wood work.

Whilst this might seem time consuming just now, we are hopeful that it will decrease the number of site queries when the project comes to be built later this year and should assist with shortening the construction time period as a result. Hopefully this will go some way to ensure the build progresses as smoothly as possible and we achieve exactly the quality of outcome we are striving for.

The best thing about Google Sketch up is the cost versus the current BIM software available on the market. Autodesk are wanting £4500 per seat in our office for a licence of Revit, which given there are six of us that would need access to the programme is a huge amount of capital expenditure for us as a small practice. Meanwhile the cost of Google Sketch up is... wait for it... nothing! Unless you get the Pro version, which has a few more useful things it can do, in which case its about £350 per seat - a tenth of the cost. Plus it is pretty straightforward to learn, which given a few of us in the office having been doing CAD for longer than we'd care to admit, is a bonus!!