Hey guys, I hope you can help choose my workflow. I started working at a small Architectural firm and these guys have no experience with 3D modeling so they sent out their drawings elsewhere to get simple renderings done.

I’m going to start doing that myself now, I just need to figure out the best way to go about it. I have some experience in Revit, sketchup, 3Ds Max Design but still a beginner at those programs.

Now I will be given floor plans and elevations to use for modeling so which is the best program to import the cad drawings and model a house?

I was thinking to import in sketchup, extrude walls from floor plan reference, try to complete all the modeling and then export to max design to render. I need to do some landscaping as well cause the designs aren’t flowting in space.

Any help will be greatly appreciated so I can know where to dedicate my time. Feel free to post links to tutorials, articles, vids if it helps.

Thank you

Congratulations on landing the job!

Your workflow is going to depend on you, your office and the quality of final product you are after.

Revit is a brilliant design tool and BIM is the next step in the evolution of architectural design; but Revit is really only going to be worthwhile if the whole architecture practice embraces it for production.  After all, why should you alone put all of the effort into creating an entire building information model intended to create a set of construction documents if the documents have already been created by a whole practice?  Revit is also extremely literal, I mean no cheating on anything or big red impassable error windows come up; and you are going to find a least a little cheating is going to beneficial to your renderings and workflow.  Should the practice actually be using Revit already though you can take things all the way through very decent Mental Ray based stills and simple animations, then transfer over to Max to work your raise.

SketchUp is the fast horse that burns out early.  Great bet in a short race, but not so much on the twelfth furlong.  Due to it’s largely free nature (although you’ll want the pro version) SU has been extended well past its conceptual design roots.  Modeling and texturing in SU is fast, intuitive and can be quite beautiful with VRay or other rendering plugins.  Remember though that SketchUp was originally designed and intended as a concept modeling tool.  Going to photoreal stills is already a leap from the origin; anything beyond that such as animation, organic modeling or managing large or complex scenes and the limits of the tool start to show.

Max is the high end tool.  Like Uranium, if you can keep it stable it can do tremendously useful and fascinating things.  The catch of course is that it is very difficult to learn and bend to your wishes.  Oh, and you’ll be asking your boss for a high end workstation after your first week.  Max can import SketchUp models quite well, but they do involve some clean up effort, and then you are going to have to be pretty savvy in Max modeling anyways to handle revisions.

So there you go - simply determine the level of Luddites in your office, whether it’s a turf or dirt track you’re running on, and how comfortable everyone is branching out into nuclear engineering.  Might want to wear a tie that day.

Max 2012 Design
Win7 Ultimate 64, 12GB DDR3
Core i7-970 3.2GHz
PNY Quadro 4000
Long Trail Blackberry Wheat

thanks, the company I work at just uses autocad so it’s basically up to me to do the 3D modeling. The good thing is that the floor plans, elevations, and site plan will be complete everytime I will do a model so I’m trying to figure out what the best way is to make use of that. I found a tutorial for sketchup to work with cad drawings so I may try that and see how it works.

I’m also considering importing to revit and work from there, but you’re right that it’s more work just to do the 3D modeling. If the whole firm was using revit for every project, that would have made things much easier and faster but oh well.

I’ll be taking a class for 3d max design and practice on my own time and I might do the same for revit since it’s improving every year. Right now I don’t need professional quality renderings, just something decent until I improve to an advanced level.

It seems no matter what program I start with, my best bet is to import to 3d max design for rendering.

Ps. This is the design I’m going to practice on first. I have all the cad files done already, after I do the model, I’ll make artistic renderings as well like the pic here and maybe a simple video walkthrough just to get some practice in.

	Attachment

	Video

SU will handle CAD drawings quite well.  A word of advice if you go that route - group each plan, align them all and then only use them for reference.  Trying to draw directly off an imported CAD drawing will only cause you headaches.

If you are going to be doing artistic renderings and your office is on AutoCAD subscription they may also be entitled to Autodesk’s Impression which is great for taking dwg right into artistic renderings (as will the Sketchbook design plugin now although that is a separate license).  If you need a little more on the art front also check out Piranesi which has some great art tools designed for imported SU models.  Max of course will also be adding more artistic rendering options in the upcoming 2012 release.

Max 2012 Design
Win7 Ultimate 64, 12GB DDR3
Core i7-970 3.2GHz
PNY Quadro 4000
Long Trail Blackberry Wheat

thanks man, when will max 12 come out anyways? I saw the preview vids and it looked great. I’m thinking of learning AutoCad Architecture and then importing to max for rendering.

Right now, I’m more focused on being able to model a desired structure. I talked to my employer and he doesnt want anything complex per se. I don’t need to do interior models and in some cases I don’t need even need to do the whole exterior model. Just two corners and some land to get a perspective rendering to show the clients. I definitely want to learn all there is to 3d modeling cause those skills transfer into a lot of areas.

Another thing is that my company uses a lot of the same windows and doors for their projects so if I can create a library for them, my future projects will take a lot faster. I also don’t need to recreate a landscape for each project to match the actual property. If I can make one or two good landscapes, I can use them for most of the projects. Now I’m just searching for tutorials and more info. I don’t know how most designers in my situation have their workflow, but if anyone can give some insight or share some links that you’d think would help, that’d be awesome :)

Try to see this link:

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/item?siteID=123112&id=9861621

You can Download: 3ds Max 8 Tutorials Volume II - Specialized (3ds Max 8 Tutorials – PDF )

Thanks, after playing around with sketchup, ACA and revit, I have decided to focus on revit. There is a lot of resources and tutorials on revit and I can build enough families that should make residential models pretty fast. I’ll use 3d max for renderings and some editing if I need to. :)

wow.. congrats to your new job.

i have created an autocad to 3dmax residential modeling long time ago...just pm me if you need and i will gladly re-post it.

http://renderworks.webs.com/

I highly recommend Rhinoceros for architectural modeling and rendering.

Windows 7 64bit - 3dsmax 2012
Intel Xeon CPU W3540 @ 2.93GHz
GTX 580
GTX 460 for secondary monitors
12GB Ram
150GB x2 Velociraptor RAID BOOT Drive