SketchUp goes down under...

A few weeks ago, members of the SketchUp team traveled to Sydney, Australia. We met with customers, attended the Form & Function Conference and presented a SketchUp Pro Demo to local architects at our Google Sydney office. In the next few weeks, I’ll post some of the work they’ve created in SketchUp & LayOut and include a few words on how they’re using 3D design & modeling in their offices.

For Part I of this SketchUp Pro “Down Under” series, the folks at Collard Maxwell Architects shared their story with us:

SketchUp Pro “Down Under” Part I: Collard Maxwell Architects

Collard Maxwell Architects is a Sydney-based architecture firm with a philosophy that successful architecture is the synthesis of art, technology and building economics resulting in memorable, economic and sustainable building solutions.

Alberto Sunderland, a Project Leader for CM+A, says that initially SketchUp Pro was used as a quick visualization tool of early concept work.

“The models were never very detailed and it was a tool used primarily within the office. It was used as a quick way of understanding massing and scale to determine if the design was heading the right direction."

SketchUp is used to confirm a complex set of egress stairs from a substation.

“As our skill grew we began to use SketchUp to generate models we could show our clients to help them understand the projects and to provide a quick and effective way of trying out changes before updating all our cad documentation."

Hornsby Project - Model was especially useful as the client was asked by council to explore a number of options for the façade treatment. Council signed off the changes based primarily on the images generated from the SketchUp model.

Balcony Detail - Model used to help the owners of the building understand very clearly what their balcony extensions will look like and show the builder detailed information.

“Over a period of time we began to use SketchUp Pro for tender presentations. Although we originally took the images and “dumped them” into Photoshop to create the presentation posters, we eventually discovered the possibilities of the SketchUp Pro’s LayOut tool. Combining LayOut with our SketchUp work has made the creation of simple, effective and clear presentations much quicker than our previous method utilizing Photoshop. We are very impressed.”



“We anticipate that SketchUp will become the primary visualisation tool in this office and, together with LayOut, it will be used to create most, if not all our presentation slides. The speed and ease of use of the software is amazing, and we are coming to appreciate the importance it may have within our workflow.”

Thank you, Alberto and the entire CM+A staff for providing the project graphics and their story. SketchUp Pro “Down Under” to be continued...