Introduction
As we have discussed earlier, many clients have great difficulty reading 2-D plans, whether they be hand drawn or computer generated. In an earlier exercise, we asked you to hand render a two point perspective to help show a client an intended design; in this project, you will use computer software to achieve the same result. The figure below shows what we are aiming for.
The software
You will use 3-D modelling software which is free for non-commercial use - Google SketchUp.
Google SketchUp Pro is a more appropriate tool for professional use as it allows for the importation of 2-D CAD plans produced in AutoCAD and IntelliCAD (and GardenCAD) into the SketchUp environment.
Prerequisites
Before you start, you will need to download and install the latest copy of Google SketchUp. The easiest way to do this is to type the phrase 'Download Google SketchUp' in your search engine. Remember to download the free SketchUp, not SketchUp Pro unless you intend using the product commercially in the near future.
This project
In this project, you will use SketchUp to create a 3-D model of our earleir design for a garden at the rear of a two story house. The figure below shows the 2-D plan produced earlier.
We have asked you to produce a hand drawn perspective of this design (or a similar design) as shown below. The challenge here is to turn this sketch design into a 3-D SketchUp model.
Where are we going -the target?
The figures below show late stages in the developing model. We created the model in SketchUp and rendered using an external rendering program. You will render your model inside SketchUp rather than use an external model.
A bird's eye view
A similar view to that show at the beginning of this article, but we have changed the viewpoint and added some furniture.
We can view the model from different directions and change the time of day.
Add lighting, both spot and flood lighting
We can even add water lilies to our water feature
Preliminaries
We prepared a 2-D plan for this space in an earlier project. In order to refresh you memory, the figure below shows the earlier design.
The next figure shows the design with dimensions shown. You will need to print this figure and use it as a guide when constructing your model in SketchUp.
Steps to take to build the model
Click here to play a movie showing the first few steps to take to create the model.
1. Start SketchUp
Choose the architectural mm template, make a new layer called BOUNDARY and draw a rectangle representing the boundary of the site 10000 mm wide by 13000 mm deep.
We will use SketchUp 7 in this example, but the principles are the same no matter which version of SketchUp you use
2. Create a layer and call it BOUNDARY. Make the layer current.
3. Now place the rectangle representing the site area onto that layer.
4. Create layer decking
Next, make a new layer called Decking (see that you can use upper or lower case or a mixture of both for layer names) and using the base plan as a guide, draw the lines outlining the deck area. make sure that they are closed and and use the push/pull tool to raise the deck by 400 mm. You will need to centre a circle to accurately locate the angled line in the deck area to act as a construction entity.
Now we use the push/pull tool to raise the height of the decking (to 400 mm).
5. Water Lily feature pond
The design calls for a feature pond planted with water lilies.
Create a new layer - we will call it Waterlily, make it current and draw a rectangle for the base of the pond. Use the offset command to offset the wall of the lily pond by 110 mm.
Use the push pull command to create the waterlily pond.
Click here to play a movie to show how the rest of the model is created.
6. Set out garden areas
Next we set out the garden bed areas and include a raised bed at the bottom of the garden.
We will switch backl to the Decking layer and place a step down to the grass area (a rectangle and a push/pull), give some thickness and height to the edging as shown below. Our base plan is complete.
Add some 3-D plants
SketchUp provides lots of 3-D trees in its Warehouse (an Internet store). Let's try importing some of these into our model. We need a couple of tall trees on the norther side of the space (to the right in the figure above).
Add some more plants from the 3-D warehouse
Add furniture
Add furniture, ground cover textures, grass etc.
You may care to set the time of day and render late in the day as shown below.
It is possible to set lights (spot and flood) and an animation path and walk through the design. That's something for another day.
Please submit your SketchUp model (it will have the extension .skp) as an attachment to an email to us: info@gardencad.net
Urrbrae students - produce a similar model for your design of the terrace house garden project (Project 4.5)
This project involves producing a SketchUp model of your design for the rear of the two story terrace house developed earlier. Here are some examples:
SketchUp model terrace house rear (DB)
Rear garden using SketchUp - Tara D
