SketchUp for Construction - John Brock | The Fireside Chat Series Season 1 Ep. 7

[Music] [Music] [Music] um [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] another head hang slowly the child is slowly taken the violence caused such silence we must be mistaken but you see it's not me it's not my family in your head in your head they are fighting with their tanks and their balls and their balls and their guns in your head in your head they're tired it's in your head in your [Music] someday [Music] another head hang slowly child is slowly taken [Music] the violence caught such silence must be mistaken but you see it's not me it's not my family in your head in your head they are fighting with their tanks and their bombs and their bombs and their guns in your head in your head they are dying in your aid [Music] is [Music] so [Music] it's close to midnight something evil's lurking in the dark under the moonlight the trash is stopped your heart you try to scream but terror takes the sound before you make it [Music] you start to freeze that's horror looks you right between the eyes you're paralyzed cause it's a free life [Music] it's [Music] you [Music] you close your eyes and hope that this is just imagination [Music] you hear the creature that's creeping up behind you're out of town [Music] [Music] before [Music] thrilled [Music] oh [Music] thrill [Music] darkness falls across the land [Music] and whosoever shall be found within the souls for getting down must stand and face the hounds of hell and rocks inside a corpse's shell the foul stench is in the air the funk of 40 000 years with the grilling ghosts of every tomb are closing in seal your doom and though you fight to stay alive your body starts to shiver for no mere mortal can resist the evil of the thriller [Music] [Applause] [Music] see three thrilled now [Music] can't seem [Music] i can't sleep cause my bed's on fire don't [Music] you start a conversation you can't even finish it you're talking a lot but you're not saying anything oh you're talking a lot now i'm super real say something once now why say it again sing it psycho killer just to say [Music] better run run run run run away ladies and gentlemen that was a halloween mashup for you all my name is ben hammond getting things started for this sketchup halloween edition i hope you guys are doing well out there in the world thank you so much for tuning in we are going to tune you over to your gracious hosts who not only look handsome [Laughter] [Applause] you just always find a way to up level when you pulled the bow out i was like what's he gonna do for the last one i don't i don't know like pull a trombone out oh awesome choice man it's good work yeah you're not so good what happened this week you doing okay there you're just barely hanging on it looks like i love halloween it's it's there's a hole in my heart yeah we gotta get through those things so i can eat because i'm i feel like i got nothing in my stomach at all right now you're just a shell of the man you used to be aaron that's right oh man bob says it looks good though that's the important part that's right you're you're you're yeah yeah so check it out everyone big round of applause ben hammond thank you so much ben drop in the psycho killer drop it i mean oh yeah so that was great very that was awesome very awesome very awesome uh so hot diggity dog hey ghouls and goblins welcome everything to the sketchup fireside chat series spooky edition we're your hosts scarin dietsen and the ghost or the goose and if you're new to the series welcome to week seven of our eight week sketchup virtual community experience that is both fun and informative if you're returning welcome back around the cauldron yes that's right this would be a good one this week is i'm totally excited about this because this is kind of the world that i come from our buddy john brock's gonna be here if you don't know john he is i mean he's a renaissance man he's responsible for extension development he's got a book out there uh all about uh using sketchup in pre-construction and construction so this is going to be fun i'm super excited for this show yes me too and for those of you who haven't been here before the format of the show is not your typical webinar the pres the presentation will be in about 30 minutes and as a reminder today's episode will feature an interview a presentation and then a community q a the episode is expected to be about an hour and a half if you pour yourself a nice cup of witch's brew and get uncomfortable man i i my pun game is lacking just gonna let you guys know i can't i can't keep up with him i mean but if you're having a hard time keeping up if your video or audio is lagging in any way click down below you see down at the bottom where it says get audio video help click on that and you'll have an opportunity to turn on compatibility mode compatibility mode is going to just buffer your stream and make this whole thing a much smoother experience that's right and speaking of experiences this is an interactive experience how can you participate well if you look down below you'll see ask a question that's our q a area if you have something that you want to ask our guest today john brock be sure to type it in there uh if you see a question there that already applies just give it an up vote we're gonna bob all those up to the top of the cauldron so that they get asked first and that is that is i just want to point that out there okay those are questions for john brock last time we had a little bit of confusion some people were asking support questions down there john doesn't work for sketchup support so no just clarifying if you want to ask like about aaron's diet regiment don't put it there put it in the chat or talk to us in the forum afterwards there will be a recording of this episode available in just a few minutes after the show has uh concluded so if you if you're missing the live stream which i hope that you're not but if you are just come on back here and hit play we'll watch it all over again last thing is the poll so every time we have an episode we'd like to have an interactive poll in today's poll if you look at the bottom of your screen here a little bit number one pops up i'm gonna click on that right now all right so our poll today is asking what you guys are planning on doing for halloween so and this is a weird one this is not a normal i'm going to a party or i'm going trick-or-treating the world's crazy so yeah yeah here's our choices you'll be trick-or-treating you'll have a party you'll be doing nothing because of stupid comment uh that you will have a scary movie marathon uh use sketchup to design a candy shoot because you don't you don't want little goblins coming up to your door you don't want to like transmit anything right or i don't know yet i don't know yet yeah so i see i see we have a popular pick so far we're gonna let that run a little bit and while that runs there and i'm just gonna take the suckas man you know it's hot yeah so just take off your costume dude it's no big that's not that's not really an option for some of us steve we're we're celebrating put it back we're celebrating halloween this is oh man some of us committed more than a jacket buddy he was just better get back in there i thought maybe you know like you would just resurrect yourself or something like no this is i committed i committed big you're you're all in all right so it looks like uh our polls numbers are still coming in but i would say more than 50 percent plan to do nothing that's too bad i mean i know stuff kind of kind of sucks right now but uh you should take advantage find the positive where you can this year that's that's kind of been my mantra lately is you know try to do something fun maybe i don't know i don't know what that could be but throw throw candy at cars that drive buyers i don't know that's probably good eat the whole bowl of candy that's a better idea okay so we are going to uh do a giveaway during this webinar nice so in a little bit we're gonna pull john brook john brock up on stage uh and he's gonna hang out with us a little bit and then he's gonna give a presentation during his presentation he's gonna drop a lot of facts like we saw a little glimpse into it there's a lot of good information but you got to pay attention because he's going to ask one specific question about his presentation and the first person to answer that trivia question correctly wins a prize what's our prize today goose today's prize will be sketchup for builders a comprehensive guide for creating 3d models using sketchup sketchup for builders is an indispensable source of information for contractors builders architects interior designers landscape architects construction professionals and anyone seeking degree 3d models of design and construction process written by our guest john brockmonster that was a mouthful it was go on here so good book and this is this is actually this this is my copy of the book i've read this book this is an awesome book john did an amazing job on this this is if you do any kind of design construction using sketchup you want this so pay attention pay good attention that's right as long as people are paying attention they should also pay attention to our sketchup community shout out what is it sketchup community shout out there we go i was distracted by the book and took my finger off the thumb okay our community shout out is our opportunity to spotlight what's going on with you guys the sketchup community uh in the past we've looked a lot of instagram we looked at some 3d warehouse and today we're looking at something new because we're looking at somebody who is showing extensions for sketchup yeah i'm gonna duck out the way so today we're gonna take a look at medic bim so medic is a series of extensions offered by nathaniel wilkerson who i think is on on here somewhere say hi nathaniel uh and madik bim is a super quick super easy way to draw the framing members in your house so there is a truss extension there is a wall extension and there's a foundation extension that allow you to create the framing of your structure in clicks rather than lots of clicks so i mean this is something way beyond just downloading a component and dropping it in this is an extension that goes in and frames all the stuff for you and this is the coolest thing is nathaniel actually offered a discount so if you go follow the link down below medicbim follow that and you sign up between now and halloween he'll actually give you a discount using the coupon code fireside so check that out wait what a deal yeah well it's a pretty good deal some might even say that it's better than good i wonder if i wonder if john brock's uh brock uses uh medic what do you think i i know that those two get along quite well yeah absolutely awesome well speaking of awesome you know who else is awesome our fireside chat sketch uppers who have joined us here tonight what kind of costume or costumes do you planned did you have plans to wear for halloween yeah so if you're if you're opting out it is okay to say what you wanted to do this year that's that's an acceptable presentation i'm going to type mine in yeah go ahead and type yours in down here and uh i just put negan again yeah you know it's about all i can do these days thanks thanks to jody for letting me borrow his squeaky jacket here can you hear this listen listen can you hear that it's it's i sound like it does not sound like a creaky door hopefully that's not my elbows that are actually making that sound but jody's going as ang that'll be fun i love that that's that's a solid solid uh oh got a day of the deader nicole that'll be good yes sugar skull makeup um i know i don't see see this is the contradiction right we just asked you and more than half of you said you're not doing anything and then we said oh cool what are you dressing up as when you do nothing what had you planned on yeah i know i know uh aubrey did belle from beauty and the beast right is that is that the right one yeah uh yeah very cool stuff uh yeah not a lot of extensions or extensions not a lot of uh costumes out there oh man okay and then nathaniel says the fireside coupon will be will give you a significant discount on the bundle be sure to use it if you decide to purchase the bundle and yeah yeah obviously that's a future huge time saver uh and uh you know aaron i think since a lot of people probably aren't going to be dressing up we should probably just get right into the meat and potatoes yeah let's move in let's let's uh nickname john's nickname in in college i believe was the meat and potatoes so let's bring them up on stage all right ladies and gentlemen here is the man of the hour mr john john brock welcome oh he's coming on stage now i see him he's creeping onto the stage yeah hey john hey you guys hey welcome welcome to fireside chat john hello how are you doing glad you could join us around the fire today yeah i'm around the fire i'm around the fire i'm actually quarantined in my home studio so you can see all my stuff in the background but i'm had a covet test yesterday yay for me yeah that's scary i've heard some mixed reviews on that because i've heard people who had like were coughing or some people even had nosebleeds afterwards i went and got one and it tickled me i i like laughed for i felt bad for the lady doing it because i'm like i just couldn't stop giggling as she only a zombie would laugh it's deep because i was talking to my doctor yesterday morning now i was all sputtering stuff in my throat and i'm a friend of his i was in a band with him for a long time and so he goes man you sound like crap he said get your butt in here and get a kova test and so now i'm nursing some tea my throat's a little bit better this morning so hopefully we'll get through it and we'll go from there well you're a very positive person john hopefully shows up negative that's right i do have some halloween pumpkins back there i see that's awesome and then i'm going as a sketchup geek so you had you had me that was it was i was sold on it yeah definitely definitely all right so mr mr brock we want to ask you a couple questions if it's all right with you go ahead all right so now me personally i don't know a lot about construction i know about deconstruction uh but i do know that uh not only do you know about construction you're quite the musician you're responsible for a number of extensions you're an author uh so let's find out more about john brock like like what was your see if you can go back this far what was your first job and and what did you like or dislike about that job first job i was a janitor after really yeah yep yep yep goodwill hunting style i was during heist during during high school before college then i taught guitar all through college and and then started in the construction world right out of college get after it it's all i've ever done i'm old i'm a grandfather believe i've been doing this stuff for 30 some years so wow that's awesome so goose mentioned extensions uh you yourself are not a developer we should point that out like i am not can't code anything man i'm with you i i tried i thought my brother's a geek he can do that stuff i could do it but now it just goes but but but you are responsible for for launching several extensions into the world how many extensions are you up up for like how many are you responsible for i have five but there's four that people know about that we sell one of them i just haven't done anything with but actually it was you and mark harris and some other ones that got me into it because we were we were talking it i was presenting for you guys at aia like eons ago seven eight years ago whatever it was and i kept talking to you guys like man i need a way i can model this beautiful roof how many squares of shingles are on it you know or how many sheets of drywall and you guys would look at me like i had two heads man we i remember we did a google hangout and all you guys were in boulder and i'm it was my office in virginia you know and i was like i need this i need that you know like well you can hire a developer so i did so we came up with estimator in 2015 and then uh i needed a framing and stick extension that was before nathaniel came out with his i came out with mine about the same time or right before but um so i needed one so i hired a guy to do that um have issue tracker which is a really cool markup tool right inside of sketchup you don't have to leave it creates these really cool 3d vignettes and what the description is and and then pdf importer which is something we use every day so i have two sketchup employees now full-time guys that that's all they do and we bring in floor plans every day because we're working for builders across the country so in our own construction operations we use it but then we're working for builders now with constructability 3d where they send us their architectural and structural drawings and then we build a really detailed 3d model like bob mccarter who's online give him a shout out he does the same thing out in california and so we're trying to change the world of construction by you know everybody seeing it before it's built yeah so we got that passion we're going to keep it going yeah it's a whole lot cheaper to cut a virtual lvl in half than uh yeah dude i tell you we catch so many problems and we we take the actual trusses from the truss vendors and stick them and i love madik's trust plug-in i use it for conceptuals but i don't use it for the actual trusses on a job because i need to know exactly what they're sending me and we'll snap them right on the plate where they go and there's a toilet over a truss or there's you know duct work won't work we catch these problems before they're ever even done and now we're doing it for other builders so we're saving them a ton of money and grief you know and that's how it's how it's supposed to be yeah yeah yeah the future of construction and i dig it i did exactly yeah so now john you can't spell you can't spell brock without rock right right yeah i see a bunch of guitars in the background here can you recall the first concert that you ever went to van halen and i want to think about that huh autographed album 19 i'm a and sadly we lost eddie last week yeah that's that that's yeah i'm a huge eddie ben in fact my first dog my dog's name was halen my first computer this is going to be geeky my first computer password was hailin before you had to go to whatever characters this was before pcs guys this was like mainframe computers in college and had to come up with a password so it was halen no that's awesome that's yeah yeah yeah well but better than my first concert yeah who was that what was yours nc hammer don't tell anyone yeah yeah it's scary i thought maybe it could be share or something um so i i just i got a question for you because we were just talking about moving construction forward you know bringing into the future i think that was the term that came up uh i gotta say from my own experience construction just the whole industry is slow to change um are you seeing that are you having people your customers pushing back on you trying to do this level of work or are you having seeing more and more people embrace it i'm getting more and more people embracing it but bob and i can we have this conversation a lot we're trying to get people to understand that we're not costing them money they're going to save money it's kind of like a form of insurance they just think it's an upfront cost when really we're saving them money as soon as they see it they get it and the smart ones are doing it they're putting it above the line it's just another job cost and they're saving money so we're making headway but it's i've got a core group of builders that we work for um and we're trying to grow that now so i've got a full-time employee that that's all he does now he manages constructability uh he manages the you know works the liaison with the builder so i'm trying to just get more of them so i could have more technicians and more sketchup licenses right that's right yeah worse for me i think bob just nailed it dragging the custom home industry kicking and screaming into the 21st century we have a lot of conversations about that it's it's getting there though i mean people think it's cool and we're you know we're taking out in the field now i mean i take my ipad out and we're framing a roof right now and i'm going out there and going guys that rafter is you know this to this it's it's whatever that dimension is from long to short cut it and they're like getting out there framing squares and doing an old school stuff and i'm like i'm telling you right now cut that it will fit that's awesome we'll get there it's like magic someday yeah yeah i want the big job site kiosk or job site you know like a big screen like because you told me about apple tv would work with it it works great you can just sketch a viewer you can sit there and cruise around your phone but show it up on a big screen yeah yeah i'm in west virginia so trying to get a bunch of carpenters [Music] yeah and you know that's one good thing about about having uh people like you john like uh you're such a close relationship with our organization you know with sketchup because uh you know uh you're full of great ideas and you know maybe things that we hadn't considered yet and we'd love to hear them and if there's people out there watching who you know want to help contribute to us you know building a better product go to the forum let us know you know yeah yeah yeah i got lots of ideas indeed and you guys you guys have heard a lot of them and me and my buddy dwayne addie driving you guys crazy so yeah but we love it we love it that's good stuff yeah man yeah good deal good deal yeah i i have one more uh a question that's that's a little bit off off uh topic here if you could have a celebrity best friend what celebrity would you choose and why not eddie van halen well you took it yeah um keanu reeves he plays guitar yeah he's badass too you know i i would have said eddie just because of somebody that was inspiring to me as a kid to learn from yeah yeah for sure that's a good answer that is a good answer that is a good answer yeah good deal one last question because it's just something you mentioned uh i do remember when it was you doing this this was a service that you personally were working on you subcontracted some extension developers but brock works was john brock and you were actually doing framing while trying to get this thing up and running but now you actually have a team how big is how big is rockworks nowadays well we we are the construction company is um i've got a vdc coordinator virtual design construction coordinator and he's like the gatekeeper for the models the guy can model anything i give him he goes to our client meetings the client picks out this tile this border this accent tile whatever this hardwood this paint color it goes in the model and then he controls what goes out to the field purchase orders and things like that so that's on the construction side and then on the constructability side he works on that side as well but otherwise i have just the one guy that's in charge of that so we're hoping to add some more guys as soon as we add more builders that's awesome so it's just three of us right now uh and uh on the construction site we have a field superintendent so there's four total that's good that's good yeah man but construction-wise it's it's slamming it's we've got a ton of houses coming up which is keeping me out of the office and away from sketchup more but it's all good dang it yeah dang it ruined hey uh you know uh aaron uh scarin uh yes uh john brock's a pretty sharp guy i think i think that we should hit him with a game what do you think i think it is game time that's right john brock today we're going to ask you to review haunted houses and tell us what is wrong with each of the models oh boy i'm the inspector now this is it this is going to be good so uh i'm gonna goose i'm gonna ask you to duck down duck your head thank you well i can show this to uh to mr brock all right john i'm gonna bring up some sketchup models and you're gonna do on the fly reviews of these models to tell me what is wrong are you ready for this i guess so all right you got this you got this i know you i know you do all right we're going to start with some trusses all right so you see a model like this what's the problem here john you're missing a sky hook [Laughter] [Music] that is correct trusses in general should have at least two bearing points that's right that's not gonna work okay moving forward here i got a nice big garage door header about 16 feet across there uh you see anything wrong with this issue there are no jack studs that is also correct yes much like trusses uh it is good to have headers get supported as well um hey hey everybody watching if you guys if you guys spot it before john feel free to throw the answer into the chat so he's he just said he's he's looking to expand his workforce so maybe if you're really good on this this could be an on-the-fly job interview nice um as usual nothing i said should be taken as truth okay moving on here we got some i know you work with floor trusses primarily these are eye joists but uh do you see anything wrong with this uh with this span right here it's about 10 times longer than it possibly could be that is right despite being 16 inches deep i just cannot clear span 171 feet okay yeah that's right a couple people call that out as having no rim board that would be an issue also um yeah but my mind went to the stand first but yeah i i would have the bigger issue with shipping that 171 foot i joist probably before i worried about getting the rim joists on there all right here we have a cantilever condition and i wouldn't doubt if you've actually seen this because i've seen this in plans before uh what's not good about this if you flip that other way around that you've got to be at least twice or if not four times more in than you are out and they've got the other way around that is absolutely correct the back band should be at least twice of the actual cantilever length um i'm surprised that i that that is still a thing that that gets called out by people all right [Laughter] that's what trusses look like when we used to install them before we had cranes big long two by four with a little another two by four attack to it push it up to get it vertical that they're upside down that is right the the general rule of thumb i was part with trusses is pointy side funny side up nice all right you're doing good i think i think you're six for six so far john i'm i'm sold on and deliverable but uh let's let's grab a couple more questions and just see okay here we have [Laughter] what could be a potential issue for the plumber what do you see here you can't cut an eye joist or a truss if there's a toilet above it like that and has to be headed off or engineered if you do any kind of cutting so that is true also you should put the toilet in after the sheathing and not poking you pretty much [Laughter] why is there a zombie under them yeah this is the constructability in me because that's how we show it but that's right yeah absolutely all right let's keep moving forward all right what is the problem with this floor system is that goose trying to hold up the other end of that meme that is right i could do it for a little while the problem is a goose can only be used as interior bearing he's not rated for exterior support [Music] all right and here we go this is going to be our eighth and final question what is wrong with this structure what is right with it boom everything is wrong that is absolutely correct well i i gotta say uh you know if if i was looking for somebody to review my plans you've proven it to me you you got the goods i'm i'm i'm very happy with your answer answers though excellent good deal well uh that was that was you were eight for eight i'm i'm very impressed i'm not surprised though uh and uh and i think we're getting ready to get into the big juicy part of this uh this this awesome presentation here so first before we do that let's get some housekeeping out of the way again if you have a question down below where it says ask a question just click on that type in your question or upload the ones you like uh and then when this whole thing is over when the show's over be sure to join us at the fireside lounge john brock will be there answering questions that we did not get to before the end of the show can i take my guitar in there you can do whatever you want just kidding that's right so we're gonna hop in uh again i'm just gonna stress it i know you guys are asking great questions in the chat that's awesome but uh john's got a lot of content to get through he's not gonna be able to watch the chat that way so drop him into the ask a question at the bottom and we will ask him those questions at the end those questions are questions for john about what he's presenting uh not necessarily support or anything like that so with that take a great handover remember pay attention because john's going to ask a trivia question at the end keep keep your fingers limber see you soon all right can you see my screen yes yes okay so i'm i will hide this all right so sketchup for builders as we're talking about um i think i've already told you guys all this stuff um been building for a very long time i am a grandfather i don't look that way but i'm a grandfather um author of sketchup for builders which they showed you i do have an accompanying website called sketchupforbuilders.com the number four i'm meant to be a resource site for people to check out and learn think more things about sketchup it's got a bunch of heavy players on there that you can interact with you've got nick saunder mike brightman dwayne addy um daniel tall and team zachary engineering so you can actually ask them questions directly inside the website which is kind of cool and if they don't answer let me know we should point out that uh david zachary engineers using sketchup there's not a whole lot of them out there so he's he's an amazing resource to use yeah and it's actually his whole team so you have you know the other guys on there that can answer questions so um meant to be meant to be a resource site for you guys um also sketchup developer uh we mentioned the the products i'll go and show you those as we go uh and also mention the consulting that we're doing called constructability constructability3d.com so that's sort of the things we got going on brock works is a custom home design build company brock works tech is the consulting and the products side of things so getting started if you saw nick saunders awesome fireside chat he talks about how he takes the uses the site to develop the uh the design and then bring it all to life and construction drawings but the reality is for us on the i'm going to take it from the building side so 99.9 of builders don't get a cool nick saunder set of plans and and a model and you know everybody works off of 2d drawings still for the most part there's some cad out there there's some i mean 3d models out there but for the most part most builders are working on the 2d so we want to bring those things to life we'll talk about some need to know tips and tricks and extensions along the way and then finally how we share our models with our clients and with the other stakeholders in the process and the projects [Music] construction phases uh we use scenes in sketchup to phase everything in scenes because our clients and our trades can click through scenes a lot easier than worrying about how to uh um how to cut layers off and on or tags but we do site modeling which is really can be the most difficult thing to learn i'll show you some of that stuff but it's certainly not something to demo in this time frame uh foundations uh framing where we get the trusses from our vendors exterior finishes where we actually will apply the finishes that our clients select onto the models interior selection interior finishes is the same way if there's an interior designer involved we work with them uh to try to bring even their sketchup entities so tammy cody did a great presentation on her fireside chat so i'd love to be able to work with somebody like her to be able to bring her stuff as another fellow sketchup person would be great and then finally virtual tours renderings and animations and the deliverables that we provide are people um just a little aside you know we were talking about the music thing when covid first hit and i play in a popular 80s band around you know everything shut down all the venues shut down all of our gigs were canceled we're everything's pushed into next year at this point and um so it started out during the corn tunes i was just me on my acoustic and i'd post a song on facebook every weekend or whatever then i finally started bringing some friends over and it sort of took off to where uh past bandmates or current band mates would come over and we would do you know a song and put it on facebook for everybody and um this one particular episode a former bandmate wanted to do a thin lazy song and the boys are back in town and it's his bucket list to sing in a pub sing a thin lizzie song and a pub in ireland and so i thought wouldn't that be cool to have a virtual stage and use our geek skills in sketchup so i reached out to my my dear friend duane addie up in canada who is irish and said you don't have to have a pub model laying around do you next morning he sends me this model this most killer rendering photo reel the guinness bottle so i dirtied it up i threw some brick on the wall and a bunch of photographs and stuff and um and then ampeg amp aaron aaron's a bass player by the way you see the amp tag amp there's two marshall amps on stage that i got off a 3d warehouse that's a big one yeah and then um so render did an animation coming in but then green screened us in there so that's us with brock's pub so everybody came over at different times that's how we work these things um my other drummer and the current man i'm in now is he'll send me his video and audio tracks and then i just start building the song from there and having guys come over but so it's brock works music if you're interested in checking that out how we use sketchup and enscape to bring that to life it's worth checking out it's definitely a fun thing to see yeah it's fun we've been we've been having a blast with it so um all right so here's the workflow and excuse me my throat goes out this throat's not been the best shape the last couple days doing good so far but having that q-tip stuck up and piercing my brain yesterday morning for a covet test was not fun all right so the first thing we do is we import our main floor plan all right and we don't use raster image for the floor plan it needs to be a vector base something we can snap to and measure and so there's some free ways of doing it i've tried every other way under the sun i finally found a developer to help me out by doing pdf importer so pdf importer if you've heard about it is our plugin uh that's available and what that does with input imports a vector-based pdf directly into sketchup and but you can also do it for free if you have inkscape you can open up that pdf and convert it to a cad file um you could use adobe illustrator which i used to pay all that money for adobe illustrator just to open up a pdf export it as a dwg that was the only reason i had it so i saved money by going to the pdf importer um but it it won't bring in the text like if you brought in a dwg you get the floor plan from an architect when you bring it in it's just a bunch of lines and maybe boxes where the text is so it's really cool to be able to see you know that that's a 2852 window or see that dimension so that's the first thing we do but importantly we clean it up we get rid of unnecessary title blocks and text things you just don't need to see because uh as any purists will tell you that that's not text it's edges and thousands of them and it can really slow down sketchup so we clean up any unnecessary stuff and then we scale it so this comes in as a group and so you just double click on the group pick two dimensions that you know and type in that dimension hit enter it'll resize it and then finally i center the floor plan at the zero zero zero and uh i could just move it roughly but i use chris fulmer's just to give him a shout out his free plugin called center on origin so for me it's uh alt c we'll just take it and move it right to the center and so that puts the floor plan at zero zero zero thanks nice all right the next step is we create what else old carpenters call a story pole and i use guide points so i find a common corner what you're seeing is a looking down in the perspective view find a common corner to each level in the house in this case i used a corner on the x on the interior but on the rear of the house and then i'll go up with a guide point that's right where subfloor will be i go up with a guide point whatever the wall heights are so you refer to your section drawings and your elevations so in this case nine one and eight up i go guide point down three quarters for the subfloor then one down nine and a quarter because i got the two by ten band on the truss mid cord bearing truss then inch and a half still plate and then a down 10 feet for the bottom of the foundation coming up four inches because i got a four inch slab and then finally on the back of the house they're 18 inch floor trusses they're mid cord on the front bottom quarter on the back so i'll come down 18 inches from under the subfloor for the floor trusses and that gives me my story pole that's where i know all the elevations need to work out too and i i've locked that in a group with the guide points but we use guide points and guidelines constantly and control g is our edit delete guides right well it would delete these guides even though it was in a locked uh group so i found a free plugin called locked guide saver so i use that instead of edit delete guides my shortcut runs that script and it'll delete all the guides but what's in that locked group so so that was pretty cool all right and the next thing we do is we'll import the other plans so i usually do that and i always do that in a clean file um because if you keep importing plans it can really start bogging things down so i'll go into a clean file import it in this case i only had one other level that's the lower level do the same process by cleaning it up scaling it and then i'll actually copy it and then paste it into the main model and move it to where it's supposed to be on that level in this case it'd be on the top of the slab so i'll move it to that same exact corner and then i usually go top view parallel projection and go around the perimeter to make sure that the walls align because as bob mccarter will tell you there's times where you know the architect may move a wall on one level and forget to move it on another level it's happened and so that's a way of discovering that so that's how we verify that's how we got our stack okay so then it's kind of like what nick showed with the contours we work on our sight planes and our sight models because there's no sense in modeling a foundation with just a simple stepped footing for frost depth or whatever you're doing it for if you don't know how your terrain is you may have some sub foundations to deal with so in this case what you're seeing down this came from my surveyor actually they send me a dwg or dxf that has the site or the 2d plat down down at the bottom and in our case we're building on a lake that the full pond is 7.95 our contours 800 feet elevation is what the property lines are at uh power company owns everything below that so all these contours are floating 800 feet up above the ground now i think in uh in nick's case it was like 6000 feet or something so so he moves them down i generally just to keep the map easy i'll keep them at the 800 at least at first and so what i do is you'll see you want the site plan to have obviously the house located um if it's got the driveway located and roads and stuff you can actually trace those use that to create faces that you can then drape on your site which is really handy sidewalks and things like that but you also wanted to have the elevation specified for where the finished floor is going to be whether it's main floor usually it's the slab elevation so what you're seeing is these contours that are two foot apart and they're just lines right so the first thing i have to do is actually make a site plan or a site model and it's got to be in 3d it has to report as a volume or report of volume so it has to be a solid and you can't just do a mesh if you want to know what your cut and fill is going to be which is very important to us so in this case i use freddo's topo shaper which is a free extension but it doesn't make a solid right away it will put that skirt on there but you have to actually edit it to make that uh a solid lately i've been using christina interros terrain volume which is a free plug-in and so you can use from contours to take those contour lines to create the 3d mesh and then run her script and it makes a perfect solid chunk that had reports of volume all right so once i have that existing site modeled it's important that i take the site into the main model and i align it with the house the main model i don't align the house to fit on the site because you want the house to stay in red and green axes right so what i do is i'll take i'll take that house that you see down on the bottom here the uh one of the corners i'll take from the house here and actually put it onto the basement floor plan in our main model find a known corner and then q to rotate it to a line to stack to fit perfectly and then simply take that whole thing it was specified at 821.25 feet is where the slab elevation was just moved it straight down in the blue 821.25 so you can see the basement floor plan is sticking out of the ground a little bit and the rest is underground as you would expect and so now we've got the site aligned with the house perfectly so one of the next steps i do um is use a free plug-in called solar north and i think it used to be included didn't it aaron in sketchup uh it's always been an extension uh from the sketchup team i thought years ago that it was part of it anyways so i use solar north if you've got north arrow on your plan see i don't use geo-locate because i'll use it for a quick quick test of a house or if i haven't got topos yet but once i have good firm topos from the surveyor or we generate them i failed to mention we have an rpt600 now and we can go out and get our own uh shot points and create our own topography now as long as it's a cleared lot but we set solar north because you just simply you you use the middle tool to set solar north and i just picked the south end of the arrow and click to the north end of the arrow and then it then you could toggle solar north off and on but we use that so we can do sun studies with the clients later because we put them into enscape and they can do you and i on their keyboard and see where the sun's coming in and going oh it's going to be right in our eyes at 6am or 7am or whatever so it's a really cool powerful tool um as i said in number one here i might be the only person on the planet that would model an excavated site like this and mike brightman i think if you're on there you're rolling your eyes at me he gives me so much grief about this stuff so this is an excavated site i actually use dale martin's profile builder i could not work without it so if you don't have profile builder just get it you it's the best plug-in that's the one i use every day and i use an assembly for the silt fencing that has the stakes in the fence but what i'm getting out of that is my budget not only am i planning out where the silt fencing needs to go so my guys know where i want it to go but i've got my budget instantly in estimator um i'll do my construction entrance for the gravel there i've got a job sign i'll show you in portable toilet was just a um i could use that as a quote but i just threw one in there as a component i got off the 3d warehouse and put a dollar amount to it and now i got my estimate perfect um but we'll do the excavator site because this particular job is the house i just actually moved the people into two weeks ago and i had 300 cubic yards of dirt to get rid of from that i needed to know where i was going to put that so it helped me to pre help me to plan this during this early stage of construction so this is uh not a step in the process but we actually do job signs for each house a custom 24 by 36 sign that we post out front in this case we're built on a lake uh these signs are like 30 bucks phone course signs 24 36 so that was done in in lumion and um so we got our job information on there and then this one was down by the lake because you've got both ways that you can see the house so um so we put those up there for the people and usually i get dwayne addy to do it because duane is like the best rendering guy i've ever met so uh we do a lot of work together so sometimes i'll pawn that off on him um yeah so this excavated sight thing you can see in this drawing maybe that the foundation wall i didn't design this one the architect that did stop the foundation wall sort of midway but you can see that's well underground and unless you're going to use retaining walls we needed to extend the concrete down and so i caught this when i was i i modeled these houses to estimate them right so i was able to know that my foundation needed to be extended versus finding out in the field that i was going to have to do that so that really comes in handy and all this is is a three foot over dig around the perimeter and if you've ever done site modeling i basically take the existing site and i do it i copy it and paste it in place immediately and while it's still selected i change that from my site existing to my site excavated so it's two copies of the same thing cut off the existing site and then modify the excavated site to suit my needs right and so you basically cut on hidden geometry and you delete all the surface that you're going to be disturbing and then you have to build it back up and it's way too complicated to discuss in this one but i am working on a full video series now that i have a new superintendent that i just hired this week it's going to get me back in the office and i'm working on a full video series on how to build a house in sketchup not just from the book this would be a step-by-step video i used either native sketchup tools or profile builder to model the footings now that we're doing this stuff for guys around the country we're getting into a lot of crazy different footing sizes and piers built into the footings where the parametric stuff um really just is too hard to work with and i really need to work with nathaniel on his we're going to be talking after this but there's still some things where parametric just doesn't get it perfectly and i got to do it the old-fashioned way but in this case i use profile builder for my footings and i use an assembly that's got my rebar already in it so there's two runs of rebar in it all the rebar that you see i modeled using profile builder just the one piece and then moved it around or the horizontals i just traced around but this not only is how i have to build it and my guys see what they have to do i've got my real time quantities an estimator which you know is priceless um foundation walls some people may have seen this uh this profile builder assembly i did years and years ago but that one assembly and profile builder just by tracing the perimeter will give me my footing with two runs of rebar at it a my foundation wall with expansion joint on the inside waterproofing on the outside drain tile and drain tile gravel a sill plate that's sitting a half inch in so sheathing can flush out and then anchor bolts within a foot from the end and six foot on center all that crap from just tracing one simple path um so if it's a simple foundation this works well in this case i had some stepped walls and so i have to modify those and i know that medic's got a way of editing his walls now that will allow for these steps and so once we've got our foundation in i put it back into that existing site just to make sure that those steps worked out right as a verification slab prep i put actually the gravel underneath the basement slab and we'll put the foam insulation and again that's a profile and profile builder that as i trace that around uh it's a once and done thing and it automatically goes in my budget uh basement slab i've got a slab tool that comes with estimator or you can just simply trace a face going around the perimeter pull it up four inches make it look like concrete put it on a group now in my case in my template file i've got a basement slab layer or tag now and that simple action modeling that slab as soon as i do it i've got all my costs associated with it in seconds so at this point i could actually run a report for how much my foundation cost just as i've modeled it i'm not having to go and model something and then go measure stuff off the plans it's it's all real time if i made any changes to that i just rerun the report because it's a real-time estimate um so then i frame the wall so in this case we're framing it right on top of the uh slab just like you would in real life just like you've chalked walls now we use framer for sketchup which is one of our extensions we're able to use whatever sheathing we want zip or plywood or osb or dense glass you can make up your own you can make up your own thicknesses and sizes any kind of stud size you'd want not metal studs but any kind of wood studs and plates and headers with whatever configuration in your quiz erin you mentioned about no jacks in there so in our plugin you can say how many king studs you want which is beside the header how many jacks you want and then again it all works with estimator so our vdc coordinator will then take that lower level framing package when our superintendent calls and says hey i need the first framing pack he's already got that generated and that's the purchase order of the materials that's being sent out um what you're seeing over here off the side is actually wall braces how am i going to model wall braces right how do i get a quantity for that so i just did a stack of 12 foot two by fours 30 of them because that's about what it takes on a given level and throw that into the model so it's not a perfect way of doing it and i don't know how revit or any of those other things are going to be that perfect either you know it's one of those things that you have to use some some judgments but it's it's still i mean it's still a huge step in the right direction right i mean it's it's never going to be perfect but it's going to be better than the old way oh yeah yeah and so you got to find a place to work with so uh floor systems like i said i use nathaniel's uh trust when i'm designing a house and i want to figure out okay i've got trusses here floor truss is here roof dress is there but when it comes down to the actual job i need to get the actual trusses from the vendor and what they can do is they can um when they're in something like my tech if they use my tech you are in there viewing their 3d trusses they can do view save as and call it floor trusses or roof trusses whatever and that gives them a dxf or dwg file that they send us then we basically bring them into sketchup we used to have to scale them now they seem to come in on scale and we'll make they come in as just white you know default white sketchup color and so we'll make them texture them to look like wood the gang nails to look like gang nails and then we snap them right on the plate where they go like literally it's supposed to start here and in this case uh just like your schedule your uh trivia thing both end of the house had toilets sitting on top of trusses and there was a chimney flue coming up through here that was hitting a truss square on and so i had to this is the second revision or third revision of the trusses so i had them correct that otherwise that would have been a total nightmare uh decks i normally will do with joyce's components and all the rim boards and band boards i'll do with profile builder and then estimator takes the total linear footage divided by 16 and i'll just order 16 foot material typically but joist hangers and tint deck tension kits and all that kind of stuff are modeled in uh exactly how we're going to build them another thing we do with with is expecting inspecting hvac systems with our i get my technician to come out and like you see the duck chases are aligning here and here when i first got these they were all over the map and so we take the time to work with these guys to align the duck chases we had a system going in this space because we had two zones to deal with one's the lower level ones the upper level two systems so one of them's going in this storage room one of them's going in this storage room so we're having to figure out how we can get it all up in the trusses without having to drop ceilings and uh so he'll come over and we'll plan all this stuff out in advance which is hugely helpful so that's that's he is your your the trust designer comes over does it with you mm-hmm i i study that without hvac yeah i guess the hvac guy comes out we do pre-construction meetings with all these guys i get the trusses first i'll do my evaluation like the toilets and crap like that get them to send me another iteration and i also look for the duck chases to align but then we look at things like where's the return air going to go i mean i'm getting really into the into the weeds unless you're in construction you know what i'm talking about but i can't too many times people plan return air ducts and stuff like that like where we're gonna put it after it's already framed right no and nobody ever thinks about that stuff and then you end up with a nightmare or things that are in the way so by planning all that stuff out it's just it's just hugely helpful now you're going to see a lot of this is common in routine and commercial construction and reddit and clash detection and natus works and stuff like that is probably a lot more you know very common but it it's not in residential yeah until nathaniel and bob and the rest of us try to make that thing happen all right so then i put the subfloor down and i cut out the holes for the toilets um i usually just do main drains like that like a toilet or a uh i know a tubs got a drain in a certain location um any flue pipes and that sort of thing and so what you're seeing there is essentially just as if the slab is or the the chalk the walls on the subfloor and you're ready to start framing walls so that's when we go in and actually use framer again in this case uh we had a taller wall in the great room and we had the garage walls had to align with the top the walls in the front of the garage stepped up because i actually stick framed this one bay he wanted a car lift in there so i was able to model that with rafters and make sure that put a car lift in there that i found off the 3d warehouse and two little sports cars in there stuck them in there made sure it all cleared and um and so that's the main level framing just like we do with floor trusses we'll bring in the roof trusses um and snap them where they go and as you can see here there's plenty of areas that they couldn't trust and a lot of builders just get the truss drawings and go oh cool i got it yeah we're good and then they see this and go crap now i gotta order you know thousand dollars worth of lumber to fill that in you know so by getting the trusses first then we can do uh the field framing on top of that so i go in and this is a time consuming thing and i know nathaniel is working on complex roof tool um there's just no easy way of doing a roof this is what slows us down more than anything and and i've seen a lot of parametric stuff and it's maybe just not perfect it looks like it might work but i need these seat cuts to be exactly how they're going to be and that sort of thing so we take the time to model these rafters uh valley boards things like that so it does take some time hips hips take a lot more time um again breitman's rolling his eyes at me because it's you know it's that detail sub fascia and stuff like that i have a profile for all the different roof pitches in sub-patient because we've double cut them and so that's super easy we just draw that stuff around and anything i do like that which i'll show you when we get to exterior trim but there's some methods for keeping that uh estimated nice bob and tyler were just commenting on how beautiful and and how detailed your work is so thank you yeah well we try to make it look realistic and that's that's where that's what drew me to sketchup because i was a soft plan guy for for a number of years and i i really wanted the realistic renderings and i was obsessed with that and sketchup i would use to uh to do certain things like i had a house that i need had a cathedral ceiling with a dormer that was a barrel vaulted dormer coming into the cathedral ceiling and in soft plan for me to try to create that ceiling would have taken me a day or two if it could even do it so i went into sketchup and modeled it like five minutes and then imported into soft plan and um but i just became obsessed with wanting higher quality renderings and a more realistic look and i like flying around in 3d i don't like the i can't stand parallel projection and the whole 2d to 3d back and forth thing just i i live inside of 3d with my 3d mouse and that's that's how we see things right so but thank you we try to make these things look realistic like the zip system i know that purists out there probably giving me crap because these scenes are lining up and they never would like this but i know that so don't throw crap at me no i i think i think something that you mentioned before that i just want to mention too john you said uh you know commercial buildings are doing this kind of work and it's not a big deal for them but they're not doing it for residential and i mean the the issue with that is you know in a big multi-million dollar huge building they justify that time up front to design it but they don't want to do that in a house that they're turning around for less than that and these steps that you guys are taking i say you because you and the other members of the community you've been calling out are reducing the time that these steps take every time you do it it gets quicker and quicker so it's easier and easier to offer more and more of that advantage uh in something like a residential structure right right absolutely all right and then so um exterior openings now i used i used a lot of anderson windows almost exclusively and anderson had a free plug-in that that i used up until 2015 came out and it stopped working and the plug-in stopped working and they kept saying that they're going in a different direction and blah blah and i'm a certified anderson installer i went up there for a training thing and i was like give me your head computer geek because we gotta i want i want my sketchup plug-in working because i could do any any configuration a cxw15 with six and nine sixteenths jams and santone color and all that kind of stuff so anyways i kept the version of 2015 on my desktop until about a year or two ago and then that stopped working so um so but anyways i had so many of these in my library that i've started just using them but i've started using fredo scale i'll just take one simple casement or a simple double hung and um and if yani's out there he's probably going to kill me for you know well we'll plug yani we got to talk because i got to make this thing uh work with your plug-in as well and um but i'll use fredo scale and use the box stretching because you know if you went to scale one of these windows and if you go like you can say you had a one inch frame and you scaled it left and right and made it go from three feet to six foot where your frames get distorted on the sides and they stay the same at the top and that sort of thing with fredo scale you can box stretch those to fit perfectly and i use that we'll just take a simple casement and drag it around quickly because i don't price the windows i know i'm anal about all these other things but the windows i get quoted so i don't care about pricing every single window in here and uh so i'll just have them as one big group and then that that component gets priced by the quote but fredo scale is a great plug-in uh for making those fit uh yani's flex tools uh definitely check it out it's got some really cool features that he keeps adding more stuff all the time so we need to talk to you yeah yeah johnny's in the house i think i think he's yeah all right cool cool i haven't been able to look at the chat thing all right so exterior trim and siding um you know i have to model the stuff like i'm gonna build it right so i can't just mass model the trim i could and again mike's rolling his eyes at me but to do all i've got like a a five quarter by ten band here i've got a five quarter by six freeze board five quarter by four and five quarter by five corner boards a five quarter by four band down here all the window trims five quarter by four you know one by eight for my uh fascias and soffits are 12-inch you know hearty soffit and then i you know all that stuff has to be done i do it on individual layers for each one so in my template or my i'll show you guys if you want to see it but in my template i've got down z underscore so it shoves it way down in the bottom i've got all my lineal footage of things that i need to take off so i just in profile builder they're assigned already to my proper layer or tag you guys are killing me and real quick we got 10 more minutes okay buddy okay cruising all right so what i do is i do all that trim that you're seeing here and all that's in a group like if you were to double click on any piece of that trim you would see this wire frame mesh of trim work all right and but all those are on their own layers or tags so that estimator is instantly giving me my quantities of all that and then citing in this case i used you know you could use a siding texture and it'll render really well but it's kind of hard to match a perfect color so what i like to do is um and it's realistic too is use chuck valley's instant cladding and then i can texture it with whatever color this is the actual benjamin moore color that the homeowner picked out and that you saw in that rendering over there and the shakes i wouldn't even tell you how i did those because everybody would roll their eyes at me um and then the shingles um uh just texture now that's that's how we get our quantities for roots because you know everything's on an irregular plane and uh bounding boxes in sketchup are not on those planes so we use the texture inside of sketchup so all that you see of that surface you gotta be careful to texture just the one face right but then estimator reads that total square footages and we'll figure our sheathing our underlayment our shingles and everything associated with that amazing and then in this case i didn't do ridge caps but i normally will offset and do ridge gaps as well all right so then i'll put the stone veneer on just like i would normally in building the house and these gutters and downspouts are all done using profile builder and it's really important for me that it's like i can't stand seeing a gutter wrapping around a column or you know or if you just left it to these guys they'll put them anywhere so we actually will model the gutters and the downspouts i use a plug-in that i have called spin 360 which i don't have out on the market but you go right in the center of the house pick your center of the house radiate out to where it's a good viewing angle tell it how many images you want going around that circle and say i usually do about 30 and then it'll create 30 scenes that i can batch render in an enscape if i want a good quality one or just export the animation as files instead of an animation video creates those 30 images that i can then stitch together as a 360 spin and then i just send that to my gutter guys so they'll stick up my server and i'll send it out to them and they can spin the house around and go okay that's where my downspout's got to go and anybody can view it from any angle we use a trex rain escape system so that's in there decking using profile builder or i use it to make what would be a component for decking the railings we have as components in our system so we get down to using the actual product this is an rdi avalon railing system things that are in our library that i can then get instant purchase orders based off that uh moving inside um i use these electrical uh somebody came up with these it was on the warehouse and i just kind of morphed them to be my own but light switches outlets they're spaced off a half inch so that when you're rendering they look realistic as hell but we put a 2d symbol to them so as we move them around we're getting our 2d symbol for our electrical plan uh we'll insulate with now i know medics tool has the insulation built in i do not in our tool i just simply draw these planes texture it with a different we'll use pink insulation for sound attenuation and stuff like that blown in phone cellulose or foam and that way the client can see what it's going to be and those textures report in an estimator um we'll add drywall my plug-in and medics plug-in will add drywall i tend to leave the drywall off and then i'll go back and actually model the drywall in each room um and just by drawing a face it's a half inch around the perimeter of the plates i'll set it a half inch delete that inside face pull it up blah blah texture the back side with the texture that i have called drywall 48 or drywall 54 because you got to know what size board you're cutting it out of right i mean you can't just you know it depends so i've got two different ones that i make that judgment call but then i texture the inside with the color that the people picked out i did not pick out these hideous colors i was just in that house the people love it so the cool thing is these people lived in new york while i was building the house so we did all the colors that they want sent them an enscape standalone executable and she's able to walk through her whole house and yep colors look great right so now they love it that's all that matters all right so we do the drywall ceilings um as well and that's on a separate layer so we can control visibility you can see that watermark that i got on there drywall48 and that gives me all my drywall board count and it's been really really accurate on on all these jobs uh interior finishes this is getting into a lot of this is where the the model starts to really get bogged down because we're putting in you know kohler toilets that they pick out the cabinets now cabinets we don't model them ourselves if we don't have to um our cabinet guys typically use 20 20 or something similar and they'll export those files as usually it's a 3ds file um but then we'll bring them in clean them all up texture them the way they're supposed to be and then put them in our models but that way the clients get to see the exact cabinets that we're not just making it up i model all the interior trim the same way as i do on the exterior they're each their own profile and so as we model it we're getting our real time estimate and we'll do all the all the floor coverings um whatever they specify we try to match the tile best we can um like in this case she had an inlay that she wanted in the floor with this very very specific we had this custom shower with the pebble floor the bench the heavy glass we literally stuck her in here in enscape and she was standing in her shower looking around and on the oculus yeah that's exactly right that's what we want and so when they move yeah she was really close okay but but yeah so we try to match everything as close as possible uh you know because we want to match their expectations so um and then so that's that's all on um and they will render that out for our job signs and so forth but then i can select everything you know select all and then i've got my full estimate for the house and if they change something or move something it's going to get changed for us we don't have to go back into excel and and change something deliverables um renderings and animations and virtual tours we use enscape and lumion we're getting more to enscape now because their interior renderings um you know i always use lumion for renderings and uh especially their exteriors and for animations and i was doing this huge job uh for some canadians and dwayne addie was working with me on that and he did some renderings inside that i thought were lumion or something better they were just astonishing that he's figured out how to do it with enscape now so we're doing a lot more uh with that um the 360 spins was kind of cool um because you know that's something they can view it from any angle and i can show you guys how to do that i never did put that plugin out on the market just because just one more thing to deal with um but it's still pretty cool and then one thing is i want to get out is the 360 cameras if everybody's used one of those i've got a insta one or insta 360 1x camera that i go out with a little selfie stick and i go out where the center like say the great room is and i'll do the 360 shot like that come back and enscape and use that as the background and then i'm showing them the actual view this is not a very good rendering because it's one of mine not one of duane's but uh and i cranked it out right before this thing but that's the actual view out of their window so as they're walking around in enscape they can see what their view is now it only works if you have a cleared lot but you want to see something that drops people's jaws man that that gets uh that gets the homeowners i would imagine yeah so so that's all i got guys oh wow okay all right well i mean i can show you more but that's the well you know let me clean that's yeah just that i'm gonna need to watch that four or five times just to i thought you were gonna bring the hook out on me so so what i i got a quick question john because this is this is something that come plays in my mind um obviously you've you've spent a lot of time and energy customizing and arranging this for your workflow how much of of your process do you think people can uh can adopt themselves and customize for their own method of building or location that sort of thing i don't know i think it's i'm hoping that more and more people are going to adopt it the people that i talk to i've got several clients that started out as my customers um they bought the stuff they can we're going to do this in-house and then i'll start doing something for them and they're watching me buzz around they're like oh screw it i don't have time to learn this stuff it's no different than me trying to to do it to code an extension right i spent hours trying to do that i don't know how nathan does it tom tom chris fulmer tig christina i don't know this is a whole nother brain and i think that's what this is it's a certain passion obviously i you can't shut me up on it so i'm passionate about it um but a lot more people could do it if they had the resources and that's what we're trying to get out there slowly cool all right well as we promised we do have a trivia question john's gonna throw out now and see who wins a copy of sketchup for builders i'm getting my fingers let's do this all right so what was the name of the tool that we used to stack our floor plans to make sure everything's aligning that was it do you guys remember what that was called here's one of the early slides it's early on okay let's see here we get some people oh [Applause] wow more people followed it than i i would i mean there was so much information that that was that was uh it's amazing that people uh wow that's awesome yeah yeah yeah yeah there was no add in this audience they are just hyper focused man that was awesome thank you so much so we did we did have a handful of questions we had questions kind of come in a little later there but we do have a handful of questions like to bounce a couple of them off of you john um guys just stop sharing this green or what yeah sure bring your bring yourself back up here we go um so we're going to run through a couple we only got we don't have a whole lot of time left but we'll get through maybe two or three questions a reminder john is going to head over to the forum to the fireside lounge i will link to it at the end of the show you can hop over there so if your question if you typed in a question we didn't get to it take it over there and put it in there and uh john will try to get to it there also um all right so let's hop in here first question guys from dave pemberton uh he's in australia uh he would love to hear your thoughts on ticks and trips chip you know sorry it's my uncovered dude my unbed tongue is is tripping up on on those words uh but he has wonder if you have any input on prefab or modular housing design or any extension ideas or experience with that uh actually we are getting ready to uh panelize our first house um that we just dug the hole for a lot of it is just from time constraints and manpower because we're building another one right now and i'll be ready to frame before he's done framing the other one and so we're panelizing it for the first time so i'm looking forward to that um they have their own and they're taking our drawings and right using their own software to do the panelizing but anxious to see it so i guess i guess your tip would be let someone else do it maybe maybe you know that that might be something that you know nathan may be working on something that nathaniel may be working on that with i don't know about wall panelizing that was a that was something i ultimately wanted framer to do was to be a wall panelizing plug-in that would kick out all the elevations of the walls and stuff but who's got the time and the money for that you know yeah that's a big one yeah yeah all right let's see if we get do we have time for another question yeah all right so nuvera says hi john any chance that we could see your list of tags and scenes organization please how often do you have to handle change design and what is your best method to manage them i'm going to throw this in there uh john maybe you can take a picture and share it in the forum that way people can actually look at it and study it um and maybe you can hit the end of novera's question um how how do you deal with changes in design yeah that's that is the hardest part of you know if you don't have a parametric system like when the client goes hey let's go to a 1012 pitch instead of an 812 pitch you're screwed i mean you got to go back and redo it unless you had the whole parametric thing that could do it so we run into that a lot uh the house i'm building right now hey let's go with a 30 by 30 garage so i had to redo that hey let's add an elevator now that was fun three floors i had to redo the floor plans redo the model so i wish i had an easy answer for you other than uh as you get faster and more efficient um and hopefully you won't deal with people that make these kind of changes uh you'll work your way through it yeah all right all right i'm gonna go throw one last one out here and this is just a general general idea what are your thoughts on keeping file size down neil is wondering wow i am the last person on the planet to ask that so so nick has a series of multiple files that he uses i need everything to be in one file because everything is tied to estimator i don't want to have to break it out so i fight it every day getting rid of un purging unused components a lot of people don't realize that those components are still in your model if you downloaded a five megabyte refrigerator and stuck it in your model went oh i don't like it and delete it it's still there folks you may think it's gone because you don't see it anymore but it's living it over in your component so if you go over into your components tray and say purge unused it'll get rid of things that aren't used in your model that'll be the number one thing that you can do and use tomtom's cleanup sometimes josh suggested turning off profiles or using a fast style as an example i cut off profiles automatically because i don't like that heavy edge so yeah our template our template has profiles unchecked because the floor plans look nice and crisp they don't have heavy edges that's good and then larry's reminding people to use groups and components absolutely the first thing i do i teach everybody is that as soon as you make any object triple click on it i say g is group for me not component because i make more groups and components and but that's a habit as soon as you model anything triple click on it make it a group put it on its layer or tag and then move don't ever do one thing on top of another and forget that or you will regret it because it'll be sticky geometry and you'll move something and totally screw something up that's right and be careful of components and groups too because if you're modifying a column or something that's a component on the front of the house you don't realize you've modified every one of them because you didn't make it unique that is a rough one you do have to pay attention yeah so john i'm gonna see if i can rapid fire two more productions uh tell me that we we have a little bit more time the first one is bob wants to know matt guys can we get your pdf importer that you you created that i uh i have been on my developer on that and he it's it's a lot more complexity and he's not giving me any kind of date i begged him pleaded with him i'm gonna play him this um because there'll be a lot of people using it but see it's software development that's that's yeah that's right okay all right good good point last question john asks how much time on average are you spending modeling a house for a project like in the example that you showed us today is there you have a rough see those things those things are kind of fluid uh because of waiting on answers and we do a lot of back and forth with people but if i had to sit down i could probably do that in maybe three days four days something like that and you know even faster if it's just my stuff um i designed one for myself for a potential spec house and i modeled it i designed it in a couple of hours and had it modeled in a day so it really just depends on what you're doing right all right it's like saying how big is big or how long how much per square foot yeah exactly exactly i get that question every single day yes is the answer how much is a car per square foot you know yeah awesome awesome yep john thanks for joining us today everyone let's let's show john brock some love thank you thank you for joining us all right guys you remember remember to head over to the fire set there's links down below right now he's going to be there in the forum answering your questions uh so get over there and uh let's keep this thing going let's let's get another half hour of of education and let's get more john all right see you john thank you guys thanks for joining us bud oh man you hear that i do well scaring it looks like the moon is rising and it's time for us to crawl back into our crips be sure to join us in the fireside lounge or the forum uh for more questions and answers with our man john brock aaron what do you have to say words of wisdom in answer to the question is what is the best way to model your house in sketchup simple answer is use your brains yeah nice one all right everyone thanks for joining us [Music] you

Channel: SketchUp

Views: 4,747

Rating: 4.9333334 out of 5

Keywords: SketchUp, 3D modeling

Id: JuExXLO-v-g

Length: 93min 30sec (5610 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 02 2020