Top Tips for Interior Design

hi I'm Tammy Cody I'm an interior designer I also teach Sketchup and I'm excited to bring you my top ten tips for interior designers that I have learned throughout the years of making lots of mistakes my number one tip is to stick to the interior design process and then use Sketchup throughout it this is going to vary from project to project but I bring Sketchup into the project right from the start from that initial measure so I will bring my laptop to the clients house and when as I measuring I will transcribe those measurements directly in to Sketchup I skip the paper and pencil and scratching out the dimensions I just put it all right and Sketchup and that's for a number of reasons number one it brings accuracy I know that I have a lot more details in there I can see it a lot more clearly and I also have a working set of drawings right away that I can go ahead and go back to my desk you know and begin designing I don't need to transcribe those into the program afterwards I don't want to take away the mood board or the hand sketching part of the project if that's part of your workflow go ahead and keep doing that but I do encourage you to keep Sketchup throughout the entire process from schematic all the way to presentation tip number two is to help your client learn the purpose of 3d modeling within your project your climate has likely seen design shows with a lot of animated renderings and a elaborate use of 3d modeling and they may be excited that you offer 3d modeling as a service as well so it's important to let them know how we use it whether it's just simply for 2d drawings or animated walkthroughs give them examples of how you've used that and past projects to kind of manage those expectations a little bit more it's helpful to like I said provide examples of the different levels of 3d modeling that you offer whether it's straight from Sketchup images or renderings and if you do offer renderings it's important to remember to charge for those because those do take extra time and once your client learns those take extra time or aka extra money they may realize that a Sketchup model is just perfect for making decisions and they don't need to go that extra step with the photorealism tip number three is get to know the layers function layers give you a greater control over your model and they're also a great way to show a few different options within the same space in this model I've created one fireplace with this stone option and I've also created a second option and I put them on corresponding layers so right now I've got fireplace option 1 turned on and I can toggle that on and off really easily I'll toggle that off and I'll toggle on fireplace option 2 so it's nice that I don't have to draw two completely different spaces to show these two options I can simply put them on their own layer and toggle those on and off we can also take that a step further and add a scene with its corresponding layer so here I've got this option two and this scene I've got the option 1 so I can toggle that really easily back and forth to show those two different options tip number four is to lock your walls when you have trouble accidentally moving them and your floor so if I hop over to a working scene and begin to move this rug here I may accidentally get too close to the to the floor and accidentally move it so that's actually really common when you're first starting out is to accidentally move the shell of your home and you may even just move it ever so slightly and set it down and you don't really want that you want to leave it right where it's meant to be so instead of accidentally moving it and trying to undo I like to go ahead and just right-click on my walls and choose lock the geometry or the edges will look like that red and I do the same thing for my floor right click lock and now when I go to move any piece in my space here it will only choose the pieces and not the shell of the space tip number five is to block out your space in 2d and your floor plan and then it will make it easier to space plan when you're working in 3d so in this design here I've got a floor plan and I've got these simple rectangles blocked out and those are just representations of the pieces of furniture that will be in this space so these are sized this one here is sized to fit the sofa that I'm specifying and these are sized to fit the chairs that I'm supposed to find and it just helps to have these rectangles in the space or squares or circles really if you have a circular table that's kind of a floor plan so that when you move into 3d you'll see those rectangles on the ground and you can easily place your furniture right where it's supposed to be right where you planned for it to be in 2d so it gets a little tricky sometimes placing things right where you'd like them in 3d because of the perspective so having those edges on the ground to reference are really nice and I like to put those our own lair so I turn on my layers window here click my 2d blocks layer and you can see those on the ground so they're nice to have on the ground as a reference or on the wall as a reference but again I like to turn those off when I'm ready to present so that a client doesn't see them but I can easily reference them as I'm swapping out other 3d pieces tip number six don't over model for the stage of design that you're in as you're working through schematic design just focus on what you're designing in the moment and don't get too excited about adding on all those fun details like plants and candleholders and everything that you find in a 3d warehouse I know it's really fun to find those pieces and add them in but they can weigh down your model and they can kind of hide what you're actually working on the important part of your design that you'd like your client to focus on you can add those details later as you get closer to final presentation final design possibly rendering things like that tip number seven don't worry about finding the exact piece of furniture that you're looking for in the 3d warehouse I can often get hung up on finding the exact thing that I'm specifying in the warehouse and I do use the warehouse for pretty much all of my furniture and appliances but again it's not 100% necessary to find the exact piece I just find something that is a good representation I will rescale it a little bit add the material that I'm specifying things like that I'll change what I can about it and go ahead and leave that in my 3d model then when I'm presenting in layout I will often get an image from the tearsheet and place that in my presentation so that they know this is the exact piece that I'm specifying and it's representing represented here in the 3d model tip number eight add materials towards the end of your 3d modeling process if possible it's a good idea when you're working on your 3d model to hold off on adding those materials and textures until you're a little bit further into the modeling process it's a lot like the interior design process our client will often bring us paint swatches and pieces of fabric that they like and we'll file those away and continue working on the space plan and layout and things like that so so two goes with the Sketchup bottling process you'll want to go ahead and develop that 3d model and then push off adding those materials and textures until you're ready it's a couple of reasons number one like I just said it's part of the interior design process we don't want to get too hung up on specific materials and colors and then the second reason is that it can be more difficult to see what is going on with the edges and where those edges are when materials especially like dark flooring materials things like that are added it's easier to see before those are added if you've already added your materials you can go ahead and change the face style you can do that under view face style monochrome and that will pop you back over to a blue and white face style tip number nine is to pay attention to the axis and keep everything aligned when it's appropriate that axis is going to keep you plumb and perpendicular in your drawing so when you're drawing make sure that you look for those green red and blue lines as you move throughout your model and if you're unsure if your geometry is aligned with the axis you can always check that in your Styles window so if you open that and go to edit you'll see a drop down menu that says color by axis and that will change all of my edges that are aligned with the axis to the corresponding color so red for line with red green and blue if there are any black edges like this trim right here is black I instantly know that is not aligned with the axis trim is okay I mean I would like to change that it becomes a problem with your walls when you start to add windows and doorways things like that so it's pretty important to keep it from the start aligned with that axis and lastly tip number 10 is to utilize layout layout is an amazing tool to document your designs and keep track of all your different drawings that you'd like to present to your client and if you need to create construction documentation as well so I used to take my Sketchup model and I would export 2d images of that model and then I would import them in to other presentation software and each time I present it to my client had to do the same dance export import make sure it looked the same but now since using a layout and kicking myself for not utilizing that sooner in past years I now get my pages setup and layout and allow that to dynamically and talk to each other so as I work on my Sketchup model my designs will also update in layout and I can document all of my call outs dimensions things like that layout is just the perfect tool to document your designs as an interior designer without anymore exporting and importing into other presentation software so you can keep everything native to Sketchup I'm Tammy Cote and those are my top ten tips for interior designers if you have any questions at all about these tips or other interior design Sketchup workflow related questions you can find me in the information below

Channel: SketchUp

Views: 34,042

Rating: 4.9508972 out of 5

Keywords: SketchUp, 3D modeling, interior design, tips

Id: j6lNcooE6Lc

Length: 12min 7sec (727 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 16 2019