SketchUp is a Great Conceptual Software to Start Your Design Process
October 07, 2024

SketchUp is a Great Conceptual Software to Start Your Design Process

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Software Version

SketchUp Pro

Overall Satisfaction with SketchUp

We use it as a design tool to study different massing, skin and materials on buildings. It allows us to also model context of buildings and through Enscape, get renderings for clients. This allows us to pick the best design options and come up with solutions before putting our final design into Revit for documentation.

Pros

  • Quickly models massings
  • Quickly looks at materials
  • Renderings views well

Cons

  • SketchUp does not do well with modeling curved surfaces.
  • SketchUp does not let two people work in the model at once.
  • It is very hard to model complex geometries in SketchUp.
  • SketchUp allows us to study models quickly and when we use Enscape to get renderings, we can avoid the fees of renderers.
  • SketchUp let's you work quickly to get design solutions in front of clients. The quicker they make decisions, the faster the timeline of the project moves. The faster the project moves, the more money the client saves.
  • We can work on design solutions in SketchUp while another team is documenting in Revit, allowing our Revit model to stay clean and prepare for documentation. This allows us to document quicker as we are not disrupting the process and we can more easily coordinate with consultants.
It is very user friendly and easy to learn. It's simplicity allows for a low learning curve so more people can learn it faster. The downside is that most schools are no longer teaching it, so many younger professionals come out of school not knowing it and knowing more complex software and they have a hard time "dumbing down" their skillsets.
To me, SketchUp is better to study designs because it is easier to manipulate than Revit. Revit has each part of the model connected so it is great to "keep your design honest" however, in trying to be creative, you are often inhibited. It is not as easy to push/pull and manipulate quickly to see if an idea works. You also have so many people working in a model and each view impacts one another, so if you are in the middle of studying one area, another person cannot work on that same area.

Do you think SketchUp delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with SketchUp's feature set?

Yes

Did SketchUp live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of SketchUp go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy SketchUp again?

Yes

SketchUp is great for individually studying options for building design. It is an awesome conceptual tool to be able to quickly model and manipulate a building to study different designs. It is not good for complex geometries, especially curves. Surfaces have a hard time registering and cutting into one another. It also eventually needs to go into Revit to be more realistic as it is not good as a documentation tool.

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