The SketchUp Workflow for Architecture: Modeling Buildings, Visualizing Design, and Creating Construction Documents with SketchUp Pro and LayOut

Chapter 17

Site Analysis: Documenting an Existing Building

Creating accurate as-built drawings is a critical early step in the design process. When you’re making decisions about new construction, it is important to be well informed about existing conditions. The techniques in this section will give you an organized plan of attack for measuring and documenting any building.

The Project

For this exercise, you will prepare for a site visit to a house where the client would like to remodel the main floor and add a new kitchen, bathroom configuration, and master bedroom suite. You will record and document the existing conditions using SketchUp and LayOut to expedite the process.

Preparing for a Site Visit

Often when visiting a site, you’ll spend hours pacing off the building, sketching the footprint, and trying to record everything on one landscape page—or even trickier, you might try to break things up on multiple pages. This is a difficult task! Fortunately, there is a way to create your initial field sketch in 5 minutes—before you even leave the office. Follow the steps in this section to trace the building footprint in SketchUp and print at an ideal scale from LayOut onto custom grid paper.

Adding the Location

To add the location, follow these steps:

1. Open SketchUp and start a new model.

2. Click on the File drop-down menu and select Geo-Location > Add Location. In the search bar, type 3458 Steele St, Denver, Co, then press Enter (Figure 17-1).

Figure 17-1: The Add Location ...