Whilst we love sketching initial designs, nothing beats the efficiency and clarity of working in 3D. In our experience, some clients struggle to read and understand 2D drawings, and don’t always take in everything within the design. As architecture is a visual and collaborative process, design proposals need to be communicated clearly whilst showing off the work put in by the Architect.

There are lots of architecture practices that still work in 2D CAD, drawing each aspect of a building as lines. This is a slow and outdated workflow, which can be prone to mistakes as each plan, elevation, and section is drawn individually. Whilst most architecture practices do offer a 3D service, you’ll usually have to pay an additional fee as they will model your project separately to their 2D drawings. This also means that the 2D information and the 3D model are not linked, therefore any amendments need to be done twice.

With most 3D software such as the one we use, we spend our time drawing in 2D with 3D components. Each 3D component has controllable levels and height parameters. A good way of thinking about it is that we can draw a ground floor plan, and the 3D model is generated automatically (within reason). This saves us a lot of time and most importantly the 2D plans, elevations, and sections are taken from one 3D model, and therefore if the model gets updated all the drawings do too.

Some 3D software such as Revit, ArchiCAD, and Vectorworks also have ‘BIM’ capabilities. Building Information Modelling (BIM) is essentially a workflow that produces a smart 3D model. To achieve a smart model, information must be input directly into each model component. For example, a door, from a specific manufacturer, could have a price and a thermal value assigned to it; this makes pricing the project easier, whilst also providing an insight into its thermal performance. This process can be time consuming, however, the upfront input should, in theory, limit delays later in the project.   

Our software of choice is Autodesk Revit; however, we also have a lot of experience with Vectorworks, which is a good, cheaper alternative. We mainly use Revit for 3D design and have yet to start utilising its BIM capabilities, however, this is something we are working towards.

Alongside 3D modelling in Revit, we’ve been experimenting with Twinmotion. Twinmotion is a rendering package that can link with 3D models and then create high quality renders, animations, and VR walkthroughs. This software is very exciting for presentations and communicating ideas, and we are very enthusiastic to continue to integrate it into our workflow!

We’re always pushing ourselves to learn the newest technology, as we believe it’s the key to efficiency and clarity, which in turn gives us happy clients! Using technology to clearly present our designs and show off our hard work is well worth the investment.