“It’s one of those programs that you can start off and add to your knowledge as you work on it quite easily. You can add to it quite quickly, and if you’ve got the skill to apply a render, within hours you can have the design solve. “You have some ideas and you can put them down on SketchUp in conjunction with some AutoCAD drawings. “The beauty is how quick and easy it is to use,” notes Tasman Storey, design principal at Sydney-based Tropman & Tropman Architects, who says the platform is a great initial design tool that can generate a whole series of interiors and exteriors, elevations and fly-throughs. Today the latest version of the 3D modelling platform, SketchUp 2013, features various capabilities and tools that allow users to explore, modify and share design ideas in 3D, import CAD plans and photos, and even develop communication and planning deliverables.īut, despite the improvements and changes, the core of the program is unchanged: simplicity and accessibility remain the elements that set SketchUp apart from other BIM software. Under the hands of the internet search giant, SketchUp grew in size and scope, so that by 2012 – the time of its acquisition by surveying and navigation equipment company Trimble – it had approximately two million active users every week.
The idea was that if architects, designers, builders, makers and engineers were not unnecessarily bogged down by figuring out how to work the interface, they could focus on what they could create with it.Īttracted to its Google Maps plugin, Google bought the program in 2006.
SketchUp was originally developed by startup company Software in 1999 as a general-purpose 3D content creation tool, envisioned as a program that would allow design professionals to emulate the feel and freedom of working with pen and paper. So where does SketchUp, a 3D modelling software that claims to be the “antidote to complicated, expensive CAD software”, fit in? Synonymous with computer-aided design (CAD) and Building Information Modelling (BIM), which is the digital representation of the physical and functional characteristics of a project, these systems are the virtual cornerstone of buildings a shared knowledge resource for information about a facility. Have a quick browse through the computers at any architecture practice today (without getting thrown out) and you’ll surely come across the programs Autodesk Revit, AutoCAD or ArchiCAD.