Many of our construction projects start as ideas with little formal documentation. We’ll walk through a facility, listen to our client’s ideas about the work, and start to help them define their project. We’ve successfully used Trimble (formerly Google) SketchUp software for a couple of years now to help do this.
Our clients typically need budget, scope, and schedule information to secure project funding. Taking the information from the walk-thru, we create a 3-D SketchUp model of the proposed work. The model gives us a solid starting point to refine the concept and prepare the information our client needs for project approval. 3-D representations help clients visualize and understand the work better. We can also color code the model for better scope definition.
Internally, SketchUp helps us to convey information to subs and vendors for pricing, quantify the work for estimating, and sequence the work for scheduling. It’s also a good starting point for design firms if they are needed after the project is approved. Best of all, we typically spend 2 to 4 hours on building a model – a great value for time invested.
We don’t typically use the Google Earth feature, but we do import objects. It’s amazing what is available. Some manufacturers have an extensive product line available. We try to limit what we import because while the detail is great, the file size grows quickly when they are included. Our models are simple and we find that works best at this level of effort.
There are certainly other software applications available other than SketchUp, but we stumbled across it a few years ago and have adopted it. The free version (http://www.sketchup.com/intl/en/product/gsu.html) was easy to learn and suited our needs.