Document this!

Scanning the Internet over the weekend, I came across a great LayOut 2.1 blog post by a friend of the SketchUp team, Eric Schimelpfenig. Eric is a kitchen designer and the author of Sketch This!, a blog dedicated to helping design professionals use Google SketchUp Pro and LayOut for kitchen design.

Below are Eric's LayOut images. If you have SketchUp Pro installed, you can download his LayOut file to check it out for yourself.


In the last post, I started to tell you about LayOut 2.1's most useful new feature, dimensioning. After testing the new dimensioning feature on small projects here and there, I took the plunge and created my first full presentation and kitchen plan in it.

I started with creating the SketchUp model, coloring it, and setting up all my views. Then, I sent it over to LayOut. Over there I was able to create different pages with all my views. I started out with all the perspective views. These are typically the views that you would go over with your customer during presentation.

Next, I added some elevations and sections of pertinent parts of the kitchen. These pages have all the dimensions, cabinet codes, and notes for the contractor or installer. The last few pages contain some detail parts, and the counter top details.

While this may look like just a normal plan generated from any other cad software, there is one really nice benefit with using the SketchUp to LayOut workflow: All of the views are referenced off of the original 3D model. What this means is that the workflow process isn't a one way street. If at anytime during the creation of this document I need to change something, I only have to do it in the SketchUp 3D model once. When I save the model, each and every page in LayOut is updated, so all my changes are reflected everywhere.

Yes, other cad software packages can do this, but SketchUp does it very easily.

Posted by Chris Cronin, SketchUp Sales Team