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having a fair bit of experience in SketchUp myself, the author is building as most people do when they first pick up the tool. As in, thinking about building li

having a fair bit of experience in SketchUp myself, the author is building as most people do when they first pick up the tool. As in, thinking about building like its a literal sketch on a piece of paper, rather than in 3D. The finished building is just a flat facade more or less. They're also not using components or groups, which would speed it up considerably, improve editing/revision and provide for far more realism when creating various views in/around the scene. Properly geolocating for accurate sun shade and spending more time on materials would provide another boost in realism. Not posting this to be condescending or critical of the finished product - it looks good enough and for a one off is more than good enough I would guess. But just like any repetitive process with computers, learning how to properly use your tool, patterns, finishing touches make a world of a difference.

sefwrewr 5y ago
There is a more serious issue with this article, which is the attitude to architecture. The building designed naively as a box with flat facades, as you mention. But there is a subtext in the "software engineer who likes traditional urbanism" vibe, which is this: a lack of faith in the architectural profession. Like so many tech people who profess to prefer traditional architecture and urbanism, this guy hasn't studied architecture or trained in it professionally, and by his own account is "not a good artist". No matter how many disclaimers he includes, actions speak louder than words, and his action is "I am going to draw a building and do an acceptable job—more acceptable to me that a drawing by any of those clueless professional architects who don't understand tradition and beauty". It is flat-out arrogant. A lot of denizens of HN seem to be conservative with respect to architecture, so I'm not going to try to overturn that consensus. But if you want good architecture, it needs to be made by experts. This should be unarguable. Classical architecture is difficult or impossible to pull off convincingly these days. It was a complicated tradition and it has largely been lost. Software engineers, untrained in art or architecture, doodling with SketchUp, are not going to reverse this.
mcphage 5y ago
> the author is building as most people do when they first pick up the tool > But just like any repetitive process with computers, learning how to properly use your tool, patterns, finishing touches make a world of a difference. I agree that's what the author is doing, but as a reader, the reason I want to read about their process is so that I can learn how to properly learn the tool at hand. I want to learn from their mistakes, and take advantage of what they have learned. So when the author learned something useful—texture your windows, before copying them, so you don't need to texture each individual one—that's great! But the workflow the describe didn't do that. Why learn something, and then teach people the wrong way? I'll admit, I have an issue on the whole with "I did this thing once, and now I'll use that to teach other people", but even ignoring that: if you're going to teach people, teach them the right way, don't teach them the wrong way, and then at the end slip in an "oh yeah this isn't a good way to go about this, you should have done something differently a few steps ago instead."

sefwrewr 5y ago

There is a more serious issue with this article, which is the attitude to architecture. The building designed naively as a box with flat facades, as you mention. But there is a subtext in the "software engineer who likes traditional urbanism" vibe, which is this: a lack of faith in the architectural profession. Like so many tech people who profess to prefer traditional architecture and urbanism, this guy hasn't studied architecture or trained in it professionally, and by his own account is "not a good artist". No matter how many disclaimers he includes, actions speak louder than words, and his action is "I am going to draw a building and do an acceptable job—more acceptable to me that a drawing by any of those clueless professional architects who don't understand tradition and beauty". It is flat-out arrogant. A lot of denizens of HN seem to be conservative with respect to architecture, so I'm not going to try to overturn that consensus. But if you want good architecture, it needs to be made by experts. This should be unarguable. Classical architecture is difficult or impossible to pull off convincingly these days. It was a complicated tradition and it has largely been lost. Software engineers, untrained in art or architecture, doodling with SketchUp, are not going to reverse this.

mcphage 5y ago

> the author is building as most people do when they first pick up the tool > But just like any repetitive process with computers, learning how to properly use your tool, patterns, finishing touches make a world of a difference. I agree that's what the author is doing, but as a reader, the reason I want to read about their process is so that I can learn how to properly learn the tool at hand. I want to learn from their mistakes, and take advantage of what they have learned. So when the author learned something useful—texture your windows, before copying them, so you don't need to texture each individual one—that's great! But the workflow the describe didn't do that. Why learn something, and then teach people the wrong way? I'll admit, I have an issue on the whole with "I did this thing once, and now I'll use that to teach other people", but even ignoring that: if you're going to teach people, teach them the right way, don't teach them the wrong way, and then at the end slip in an "oh yeah this isn't a good way to go about this, you should have done something differently a few steps ago instead."