It turns out Sketchup is more sophisticated than it initially appears to be, and this is a 6-week class, so my progress in Revit is put on hold for the next 5 weeks.
Two of the critical issues I'm dealing with on the project mentioned before are 1) the slope at the front of the building, and 2) the height of the building relative to the grade. The slope at the front turns out to be greater than 20% (the rise is more than 20% of the run) which, in Oakland, allows us to build within the normal front yard setback, which is 20' in this particular case. Because of the steep slope, we can build up to 5' from the front property line instead. This makes a huge difference in terms of potential design solutions. In this zone, the height of the building is not allowed to exceed 24', measured from the actual and interpolated grade. This means there is a limit to how much we can lower the grade, as well as how high we can pitch the roof.
You can see that an understanding of existing and proposed grades is critical, and equally important is the ability of an architect to depict them for a client. For this reason this luddite has finally bitten the bullet on 3-D Modeling. This is not to say that I'll give up hand drafting, but I do think it is wise to add some more tools to my toolbox. Here's a somewhat successful attempt:
(Don't look closely - a lot is out of control here.) The Entry and the room over the garage are new, as well as a basement area excavated for bedrooms and a bath.
