Luke’s journey begun at the beginning of Lockdown 2020, as the world went into complete shutdown, he decided to take the leap and start his own business. As you will see from his story today, the hard work and dedication has paid off with an impressive warehouse, a current team of 8 and an ever expanding workload, building incredible pieces from 3D model to real life.
Once his designing journey had begun on his own there are various aspects of running a joinery business Luke opened up to not needing to worry about before. 3D modelling being one of them.
“While I worked for a company, we had designers who would look after the concept side of our projects, I would only be responsible for the building”
However, Luke explain it was a unexpectedly simple process to learn the basics of SketchUp, but an anxious process at the beginning, he told SketchUp that before lockdown he didn’t use a laptop and his partner needed to help him log on for the first time!
With the user-friendly interface Luke was able to pick up his SketchUp skills fast and get designing new projects for the flood of customers coming to his door without spending hours watching tutorials and spending hundreds outsourcing it from the beginning.
You can see from the image below, Luke started experimenting on SketchUp and how quickly his SketchUp skills grew.
“Learning on the job was a must for me, and SketchUp really allows you to work most things out on your own, I didn’t have time to sit staring at YouTube for hours, I had a new family to spend time with.”
As his business grew from strength to strength, Luke was able to move into creating 3D designs in SketchUp confidently for clients, allowing them to see their ideas come to life before they were built, and also transfer 3D models back into 2D designs using LayOut containing measurements for the building process.
“One of our team members Josh creates the LayOut drawings and is a wizz on SketchUp so we are lucky to have him!”
SketchUp UK will be sitting down with Josh for a 1-2-1 tutorial in the near future for anyone who wants to learn more about LayOut and how it works!
The next challenge was being able to create 3D models and designs to hand over to his ever growing team to build.
“Designing in SketchUp had become second nature to me, it was a whole new ball game designing these models and handing them out to others to build, you have to make the designs much more detailed and have a clear understanding on how it is going to be built.”
Finally, we asked Luke to showcase some projects for us and talk about what projects he is currently working on.
“I love working on designs like the ones attached below, they take a lot of work but are worth it in the end, being able to see the final project and how happy the customer is gives us all the fulfillment we love from this business! I also love wardrobe designs are they are the easiest to create in SketchUp and always looks great and classy”
To see more of Lukes work, 3D modelling designs and renders, you can find them on social media here:
