Architectural Design with SketchUp: Component-Based Modeling, Plugins, Rendering, and Scripting

I have come to frown upon fat computer books because they look rich but, they usually turn out to be Kindergarten level, in terms of quality and intelligence. This volume is relatively slender, in color and beautifully illustrated and it is written in clear English, with little techno-babble. It is jam-packed with only useful information on a range of topics including SketchUp strategies for organizing the elements of your model, for eg.: when you should use Groups and when you should use Components; a truly vast discussion on Plug-Ins, where to get them and how to install them in order to pimp up your SketchUp, even if it is only the free version; rendering, Ruby scripting and much more. I am finally in the possession of a salient, perhaps the best manual on SketchUp! This book will appeal to architects, interior designers, and engineers but, also to youngsters who have a passion for modeling in 3d. Thank you Alexander Schreyer for this wonderful and inspiring book which unlocks the full potential of SketchUp.

I am a professional and specialize in architectural drafting, modeling and visualization. Architectural Design with Sketchup is a must have for any level of designer, artist, student or architect. Anyone who has used Sketchup can tell you that it is very intuitive to learn and very fun/addicting! Also, anyone using it at a professional level will tell you that its true power lies in its complex and evolving abilities. This book gives a brief refresher on the fundamentals and then dives into many, if not all, of the diverse and functional uses of the program. I use Sketchup every day and I my weakness has been finding and accessing the right plugins for my workflow; this book has a great chapter dedicated to plugin usage along with where and how to find them. I am confident that this book can improve your Sketchup skills, or at the very least inspire you to model and try some new and exciting ideas.

First the good news. This book is well written and very well illustrated. I read the Kindle version on my iPad and the links to various websites made it a simple matter to go to the various referenced sites and return to the book when done. I appreciate the fact that it was professionally formatted and edited - something that doesn't always happen with the Kindle version of books. And I appreciate the author's depth of knowledge and very readable style. It has current references to a great many plug-ins for Sketchup, some of which I am sure I would find helpful. I hesitated to buy the book at first because paying more than thirty dollars for an ebook just seems pricey, but after reading the early reviews, I decided to go ahead. Now the bad news: I am an architect who designs houses. I love to use Sketchup to develop the design and convey the concepts and ideas to the client with a Sketchup model. I work back and forth between AutoCAD and Sketchup, creating the final construction documents in AutoCAD, but I am intrigued by the possibilities of staying in Sketchup for the final drawings too. But I am not there yet. To me, architectural design is about the creation of the design. This book is primarily about the photorealistic presentation of the design. While I am very impressed with what others do with photorealistic renderings, I have zero interest in perfecting the reflections off of a sphere or programming in Ruby. I share the blame for expecting this book to be about what I think of as "architectural design with Sketchup" because the subtitles gives a hint, but the free Kindle preview - the first part of the book - turned out to be most of what I was interested in in the book. I read it through to the end and was impressed by the quality of the writing and detail, but it was not what I was expecting. For someone interested in photorealistic rendering with Sketchup, this is certainly a five star book. For me, it was a disappointment.

it's a very good book ,it shows a lot of things that can be done from beginners to advanced and it lists several web sites to go to and get more.

There is so much piecemeal info available for SU on youtube, but I found it very helpful to have a comprehensive guide that puts all of the information in one place and organizes the content from basics to advanced.

The lessons are easy to follow but some seem to be missing steps and you had to fill in the blanks to get the exercise to work correctly. The depth of ruby script was a bit more than necessary I think.

All this book did was prove to me that SketchUp (I endearingly call it F*%kUp) is a worthless tool. The book spends two chapters skimming over modeling and then plows head long into describe, in brief detail, all plugins you will need to download and install if you want the program to be even semi useful. Followed up by a bunch of chapters going into how you can attempt to produce crappy renderings. I'd rather go out and buy a box of crayola crayons and some cheap sketch paper and render by hand.

This book is written for 3D CAD practioners who have been using SketchUp for a year or two and as such is very useful to expand your knowledge base into new areas.

A first rate publication. Hope to see more from this author. His accompanying blog or website for the book is excellent as well. Primarily for users with some familiarity of Sketchup...but will be useful to everyone. One of the best EVER publications for Sketchup....as it is just beautiful to look at, lots of colour, and reads very well..without too much jargon. If you love Sketchup...you will love this book as well. One of the best for 2012...or 2013 for that matter. ***Purchased literally the day it was available...and it just gets better and better in its deep information and value. Hands down "the" best Sketchup publication in some time. This book should hopefully be around for some time. But to be safe I would purchase it anyways as it is really an investment in your Sketchup education. Excellent!***

Un bon support pour avancer en modélisation. Pas mal d'astuces ainsi que le développement des outils de conception de volumes complexes ( terrains, objets …).

I am a novice trying to learn about Sketchup. This book assumes that you have some prior knowledge. I learnt my basic knowledge by reading 'Sketchup for Dummies' and then this book starts to make a lot of sense. I would highly recommend it.

Excellent book, worthy of recommendation. This book has opened up much good advice for extending the functionality of SketchUp. Sits on my desk next to my workstation.

Not as what I expected