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I am very familiar with Arc Map but have not really used Arc Scene. (I'm on 9.4) I am wanting to create an house model for remodeling and am wondering if it would be easier in Arc Scene or Google Sketchup?

In addition, I'm also wondering if you just need to create the 3D shapefile in Arc Map & then add it into Scene? I didn't see any options to draw a shapefile in Scene.

Thanks for helping!

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9.4? it did exist for a brief beta but it is either 9.3 or 10 now. – Mapperz♦ Jan 3 '12 at 17:37
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For 3D building creation use Sketchup as Radar mentions. – Mapperz♦ Jan 3 '12 at 17:38
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I think a more relevant question would be CityEngine vs Sketchup. – Kirk Kuykendall Jan 3 '12 at 17:44
CityEngine for a city, but not a single house model. – KevinMayall Jan 4 '12 at 0:49
SketchUp without a doubt. ArcScene is not suited for this type of work. – Jakub Jan 4 '12 at 17:19

3 Answers

up vote 7 down vote

Have you ever created a building model using ArcMap? I'm confused as to why you would choose any of the ArcGIS products for this application, as it was designed for geographic data, not 3D modelling of structures.

Google Sketchup is very easy to learn and there are some very good tutorials on their website and on YouTube - I'd highly recommend it and would steer clear of ESRI products for tasks outside of geographic data - especially ArcScene, which can be touchy at the best of times.

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up vote 1 down vote

For a single house model, you are better off using Sketchup. But if you want to know about ArcScene and Sketchup in workflow, there are a couple of posts which both point to the same YouTube videos.

ESRI's 3D blog: http://blogs.esri.com/Dev/blogs/3dgis/archive/2010/10/25/ArcGIS-to-SketchUp-and-back.aspx

Official Sketchup blog: http://sketchupdate.blogspot.com/2010/10/arcgis-10-and-sketchup-8.html

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up vote 0 down vote

I use sketch up for all of the models I build for my portfolio of properties. It is fantastic to prepare models you can put in front of planners in order to best approximate a design they will like:

Without getting too into detail. It allows you to take a laptop to a planning meeting, and in real time, remove detail that is suggested wouldn't get through planning, and adding to it detail that would. Once you've agreed with the planners it's a good plan, you can then present it to your architects knowing it's, effectively, a once drawn solution. Saves money and time.

I have no idea why anyone would want to use an ArcGIS product for this and, trust me, being the evangelical GI pro I am, i would have found a use for it by now if I could ahve done ;)

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