Top 10 Lessons from Basecamp: #6 – #4
– By Dave Cooperstein, senior creative designer
If you read my first four Lessons from SketchUp 3D Basecamp, you’re probably waiting with baited breath from some more.
So here are Lessons #6 – #4 of the Top 10 Things I Learned at SketchUp 3D Basecamp 2016:
#6 – The best tool is the tool you need to get your job done.
When I talked to SketchUppers at Basecamp about all of the various pieces of software that we use at PGAV Destinations (SketchUp, AutoCAD, Revit, Rhino, 3D Studio Max, Lumion, etc…), the first question they undoubtedly asked was, “So which tool is the best?” And the answer is simple: Whichever tool you need to get your job done. If we hire someone who just graduated from school, and they spent seven years learning how to build 3D models using Rhino, I’m not going to ask them to build it in SketchUp. If they are whizzes at using 3DS Max (and we have a bunch of those people in our office), we can save all kinds of time and money if they build it in 3DS Max. The trick, however, becomes understanding exactly how your model is going to be used down the line, and what we are going to do with your model in our work-flow. Because if you are the only one who can use your model in any meaningful way, that’s not helpful for the other 10 people on your team. So understanding how the tools interface, cooperate, and interact with each other becomes paramount.
#5 – Organization makes everything easier, and keeps things moving forward.
Based on Lesson #6 above, everyone is now finding themselves using a huge variety of tools to get their jobs done. Between all of the 3D modeling programs I’ve mentioned, plus other ones like Infraworks, Solidworks, Zbrush, Unreal Engine, not to mention other 2D creative tools like Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Acrobat, and project management tools with Excel, Word, Filemaker, etc. etc. etc., the notion of file management and layer management has become more important than ever. As we find new ways for all of these tools to talk to each other, keeping the files diligently and logically organized, and your layers named clearly and smartly organized, and using standards and best practices to do so, has become a critical means to productivity on a daily basis. My colleagues at PGAV are sick of me telling them this… for the past 19 years.
#4 – Community builds knowledge.
As Daniel Tal so eloquently spoke about it in his Keynote presentation, the SketchUp community has evolved into a hugely supportive, incredibly diverse, and amazingly powerful community of knowledge. Basecamp was rife with people wanting to teach each other, and learn from each other, and get better at their craft. It’s why entire web sites like SketchUcation were created, and why SketchUp’s open-source Ruby scripting has propelled it to an incredible amount of customization and created powerful extensions that allow you to model just about anything. Communities and teams that share their knowledge succeed in ways they can’t even imagine. It’s why every project at PGAV Destinations is a team project. And it’s also how I’ve managed to escape from being locked in a room with no clue as to how to get out.
Stay tuned for Lessons #3 to #1…
