Forget PowerPoint and PDFs; Use SketchUp to Present Your Designs

Only a 3D CAD tool can truly convey your design—and show how well you have met client expectations.

Most designers and architects know SketchUp for its ability to draw 3D shapes with the greatest of ease. But how many know that it can double as a presentation application? We got a demo of SketchUp being used for its presentation prowess, and after seeing it, we can recommend that you never use PowerPoint to present architectural concepts and designs ever again.

“SketchUp is winning projects and making architecture and design firms successful,” says Kyle Burns, power user and and customer success manager for SketchUp.

What follows is a transcript of Kyle’s demo.

We start with a simple massing model. A handful of five-story buildings. 

We have a site in British Columbia, so there’s an emphasis on nature in the existing landscape. If we orbit around that, we see a lot of adjacent park spaces. Even where there are some buildings, there’s a lot of existing vegetation and there’s a river that’s running through right next to our site. There are interesting bridges, historic buildings. These are the kinds of things you want to show along with your project—to show the project in context and how your design can work in its surroundings so that you can see how it is going to work with what’s next to it.

We’ll add a little bit more detail here to what is still a very, very conceptual modeling. We’re still fleshing out our ideas. Architecture projects start with an idea and brainstorming. Concepts can come and go very quickly. We only have so much time to generate a lot of ideas.  It will take a lot of time to pour the concrete and get those buildings up and running. Scheduling and conflicts and all that can always occur later on. So, we want to make sure that we have a great idea that will drive our project. We don’t want to get attached to an idea at the beginning of the project but once we have a good idea, we want to provide it as imagery to clients so they can understand the concept and provide feedback.

Here we have a 20-story building. We have added a little detail. There’s a penthouse, there are balconies and there are different facades. The project has context. As an owner, I don’t need to be an architect to understand it. I can make suggestions. Maybe we push the glass out further so we can develop that exterior a little more?

As a designer or architect, I’m a lot more open to feedback at this stage as it’s not going to take me much time to make that change to the SketchUp model. I want that feedback. I want to make sure that I’m on the same page with the client. If I’m working for the city, say I’m going to create a new library and City Hall is going to have to get the funds to pay for it, then a model with this much detail is going to help a lot with communicating the design.

Although it is a design tool, SketchUp is also a presentation tool. You can communicate the design so much better using SketchUp compared to the alternatives, like sending them some PDFs to review. Use PDFs, and you risk having disconnects. The client can rush through the PDFs, miss things and misinterpret things. With SketchUp, you can walk them through the live model, ensuring that everyone understands everything.

With SketchUp, you create scenes. Scenes are saved camera views.

Let’s suppose you are having a difficult conversation. “You told us about this really important aspect of the project,” they say. You happen to have a view saved for that aspect. You have just demonstrated how well you listened.

You can save a view from every corner. You can have a view from the southwest, for example. The northeast. You can make sure that each part of the project gets the attention it deserves.

There’s really no backside to this. You can make sure that from every angle, everything looks great. Flipping through the scenes, you can show architectural elements and details, how each floor is the same, views from the roads going by, and how you are not blocking views of a historic structure.

SketchUp can geolocate models. That places the model at its location on Earth and orients it so you can see how the sun affects the design. With tall buildings, you can see where the shadows are going to be. Between 10 a.m. and noon and between noon and 2 p.m., for example.

If we want to see exactly how a shading device works in British Columbia, where it can be super cold in the winter, we don’t want a shading device that doesn’t allow the sun to come in. We can adjust the sliders to create a shadow study for a specific time of day.

City planners and officials can use the design to show new projects that developers are bringing into the city and make sure that the new building aren’t going to overshadow a park, for example. You can show how the building will affect its neighbors.

Other questions a SketchUp presentation can answer include:

  • Where are we having glazing? Transparency?
  • What sort of hierarchy do we want on different materials?
  • What will a perforated screen look like? Cladding?

At this critical stage of the design and development stage, you can iron out ideas. The design does not have to be perfect—striving for that will be time wasted when you have to make changes. The design is going to change from one week to the next for lots of reasons. The budget is looked at and “value engineered” out. It’s important to not be hindered by your own too finely detailed design. If you keep it simple, with just enough detail to show your careful consideration, you can kill two birds with one stone: you can convey your design and still gladly accommodate changes.