In the book, THE ENERGY-SMART HOUSE by Taunton, there are several color illustrations in an identical style that show construction details. I see the same style of illustrations in Fine Homebuilding. Can anybody tell me what illustrating program is used for making these illustrations?
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If it were me.........
I'd call Newtown Conn. and ask to speak to Dan Morrison, Rob, Justin Fink-someone that could answer your question. That place isn't like the NY Times, there's humans there that might be able to fwd. a call.
Sketchup
That is my first guess. They have sketchup plans for all kinds of things, on both the Fine Hombuilding, and Fine Woodworking sites, and Tuanton has published several books on using sketchup, written by their illustrators.
I know they used to use AutoCadd LT, but think they have pretty much transitioned to sketchup.
Sketchup looks like it would do what I want to do, but I know almost nothing about it. Can I input dimensions into the program and have it model parts to dimensions? Tutorials make it look as though models are developed by eye with freehand input as though one were just hand sketching to develop the appearance of a concept.
I don’t understand why I see it offered for free download, or for sale for $495.
I use Solidworks and AutoCAD LT, doing mostly mechanical work. I have recently modeled a lot of architectural work in Solidworks. I would like to produce detail perspective illustrations in color, with callouts, with a sense of lighting, and with textures that look like the materials being shown.
Solidworks can produce the perspective detail views with callouts and leaders, but cannot indicate a texture such as making fiberglass insulation look like that material. Applying colors is squirrelly, and lighting / shadows are somewhat abstract and hard to make visually convincing.
Supposedly, I could import the Solidworks models into some type of graphic illustration program such as Corel or Adobe Illustrator to add lighting, color, and textures. But it seems like it would take about ten years to get a handle on how to do that.
So I have decided to set up the perspective views in Solidworks as lines only. Then I transfer those to watercolor paper in an 11 X 17 format, and hand paint the image. Then I will scan those paintings, take them into Photoshop and add the callouts with leaders.
Two versions of Sketchup
There are two versions of sketchup. One is the freeware version, the other is the "pro" version that costs $495.
They were offering the proversion on a time limited trial version, which counts the minutes of use and then cuts you off.
There were a few guys, who had both the free and the sample version on theri machines, and would do as much as possible in the freeware version, and then open the file in the pro version jsut long enough to do the more complex things that only the proversion would do. Then save the file and shut down the pro version, to limit the useage, and best ustilize the free trial time.
There are a bunch of articles if you have the online subscription to Fine Homebuilding, and/or Fine Woodworking, that will let you get started with sketchup, actually doing real tasks with it even in the freeware version.
That would let you get skill with it and help you determine whether it will work for you, before you spend the money to buy the proversion.
Personally, I tried sketchup, and didn't want to spend the time to master it. Mostly because I don't ever do "pretty" drawings. I'm an engineer, who happens to be color blind. So, I prefer black and white line drawings with various hatching applied over color drawings. Since I've been using autocad since version 4, I have a pretty good mastery of the commands I need to efficiently produce a drawing that shows what it needs to. Learning new software with commands that have the same name, but behave entirely differently from the autocad commands just drives my bonkers.
SketchUp Insight
KDESIGN,
To answer your first question: yes, you can type in dimensions and the software will "draw" to them. Trying to draw any object to a given dimension say 34 13/16" can be done but it's inefficient. Much quicker to key it in (where typing shows up in the "value control box") and hit enter. Done.
You might want to check out The Digital Jobsite blog here on finehomebuilding.com to see if it answers any of your questions. I've found the free version more than adequate for all the projects I use it on. Consequently I use the free version for the blog so its accessible to anyone without comitting almost $500 as an experiment.
It depends on who the illustrator is.
Our editors make scrap art, the art directors convert the scrap art to pencil drawings, the editors approve the pencils and then we send them to one of a handful of free-lance illustrators, who all work differently. Some work in a program similar to Maya, which is a 3-d animation program, some do hand drawings, and then manipulate them in Adobe Illustrator, others use Photoshop exclusively.
The construction detail drawings that are feartured in the Energy Smart Details section, such as this one wewre drawn in a CAD program, and edited in Illustrator (to add color).
When I was only working on Green Building Advisor, we used Sketchup a lot because it was free, and you could customize the drawings with a pallette of textures making the illustrations look a little more real. For the magazine, we do not use sketchup much as final art for a number of reasons, but to quote one of the art directors: "because they don't look too good."
Usually each illustrator works in whatever software they like the most.
FYI there is a pretty serious learning curve on Photoshop and Illusatrator unless you are a 10 year old kid. Ask me how I know that.
Dan
Thanks for that information Dan. It is comforting to know that there is a fair amount of hand work in the production of some of those illustrations. It looks like handwork in some of them, but I was not sure if it really was. There a few illustrations in THE ENERGY-SMART HOUSE that look like hand watercolor.
I know what you mean by needing a lifetime to master illustration and cad programs. I understand the artistic side of illustration, and can execute it with pencils, ink, and paint. But my only experience with executing these types of images with illustrating software is with Solidworks. There are forums where industrial designers discuss Solidworks rendering techniques, and it truly does sound like rocket science. I don’t know how anybody who can master all of that has any mental space left over to create ideas. But, in any case, Solidworks cannot produce the renderings where construction materials have the proper textural appearance.
The approach I have chosen is to go from Solidworks line perspectives, to hand watercolor, to scanning, to adding callouts and leaders with Photoshop. Hopefully, it won’t take ten years to master the technique for adding the callouts. I don’t want to add them by hand because I want the freedom to edit them.
But in the meantime, I was wondering if there was a straightforward way to do all of this in a program. Generally, it seems that is not the case, so I will proceed with my watercolor method.
Jigs-n-fixtures and Timber Tailor,
Thanks for your advice. I will look into Sketchup and check out the examples on the Digital Jobsite blog. The full price of $500 would not be too bad if I could readily use it, but there is a cost to the learning curve as well.