jansandstrom

It really depends on what you want to do. If you plan on doing very organic shapes or computative designs there are other software that is more aimed toward it but if your doing more orthogonal geometry I'd say stick with SketchUp as long as it works for you. Much have happened with SU plugins so now you can scatter plants in the millions without problems. You can do cloth simulations and much more directly inside SketchUp. About speed, yes there are some limitations with SketchUp. As with all other software. But I have worked with two imported Revitmodels of a big hospital that ran fine in SU. Running just one of them in Max or even Revit was very slow in comparison. A few quick tips are to turn off shadows while working. Turn off profile edges and group loose geometry. I'd say use what ever tool makes you most efficient and when you feel you have the need for more change software or use them together for what they are best at. I don't give much for comments like "SketchUp is not a professional tool". Even major archviz artists use and love SketchUp in their workflow. Including Ronen Bekerman and Peter Guthrie. And they are very much professional in my opinion. Finally here are a few lines from an interview with Henry Goss from the Boundary. The whole interview can be found here: https://blog.sketchup.com/article/pushing-boundary-architectural-visualization

Maybe try something like what I describe when going from Revit. Before export make a copy of the file and put stuff on a layer with the name of the material wanted and then export.

I import dwgs from Revit to SketchUp with the workflow in my post here: http://sketchucation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=68000 There are some scripts mentioned there to make materials from layers that can speed up work if you have to reimport a dwg file. Hope it helps.

@ Lewis Garrison I'm interested in seeing an example of how a good modelling workflow in Max looks. I've seen different tutorials like these, but they are way slower than when I model in SketchUp. I would like to know what you consider the best way of modelling in Max?

Well, Vray is a separate renderer for Max... I've worked with all the major 3d apps and for modelling architecture that isn't curved SketchUp is a superb tool. Very fast and if you use it right it creates good clean geometry. As all apps it has it's weaknesses. True mathematical curves is one of them but for most things it's a very good modeler. As for renderers, Vray for SU is not in par with the Max version. There will be a version 3 someday but when is not known by me. I use Thea render now and am very pleased with the quality and fantastic integration. The developers are very good at listening to the users and are making fixes very quickly. Unlike Vray. If you haven't tried Thea please do. It's the only renderer I know of that can use both CPU and GPU together for rendering. In the past SketchUp could have a hard time with heavy geometry but much of that went away in the latest versions. I've imported Revit models and even three different large Revit buildings into the same SketchUp file and worked with them without problems. Navigating the Revit file with just one of the models was much slower in Revit than in SU. There are a lot of exiting SketchUp plugins newly released or coming soon. Thomthoms SubD brings sub division modelling to SketchUp. Skatter for scattering render only vegetation and much more and LSS Arch for dynamic parametric modelling of walls and windows and such. Viz is another exiting parametric plugin in the making that will bring Grasshopper like modelling to SketchUp. WrapR is a upcoming UV mapping plugin that will have a SketchUp friendly interface and Animator by master Fredo is a parametric animation tool for SketchUp that looks absolutely great. And if you still want to render with Vray for Max you can always do like Ronen Bekerman or Peter Guthrie and model in SU and export to Max for rendering.

I've written a tutorial about my technique for transforming a photoreal image to a digital watercolour painting. http://www.pixero.com/store