Hello, I have been asked by a company to look for a piece of cad software they can use for their constructions. They do indoor playgrounds and that is in many cases a modular system.
They need to be able to draw these things very fast and create presentations with them.
Now I was thinking pure hypothetically, could that be created with Unity.
Most CAD software has a huge amount of functionality that simply isn’t needed for such creation. However somekind of CAD functionality is needed. Like a grid where it’s possible to snap to. Somekind of BOM generation. And the ability to stretch and rotate components quite accurate.
What do you think?
It is possible for sure, but then again, it might be cheaper(time&cash wise) to use an existing CAD tool. Those tools have been improving for years.
I think for the drawing/modelling of such a thing something other than Unity would be better suited.
Unity in my experience (which isn’t much) isn’t very suited for creating new assets.
From your description I would go for something like the cheapest version of Cinema4D or 3DSMAX. Basic modelling with possible animation built in 
Unless ofcourse they already have all their models and only need an engine to animate them in. Then unity would do fine
Stretch/rotate/positioning are quite accurate at pixel level. I don’t know about snapping but if you look for the same functionality of snapping like in AutoCAD i doubt you will find it.
However the main problem is the fact that CAD models tend to have hundred of thousands of pixels/polygons while unity have an internal limit of 64k pixels per mesh i think. But i think this is a rule for any realtime render engine.
Btw what is BOM generation?
To a degree, what you’re asking is possible with Unity. And it may even be a decent fit. As long as you are talking about building an App with Unity, not just using Unity’s IDE.
BOM = Bill of Materials right? (google)
If you are talking modular as in: All the parts are predefined (and modeled) and you want to place them on a grid and put them together and rotate and all that. It’s quite possible. Output is important, too, however. You’d probably have to have Pro to make it output to a texture and save it as a large image or something you can print.
The stretching is giving me pause. If I had a modular piece, say a slide, and I stretched it. That would look bad, right? Or a ladder? The rungs would get further and further apart.
Which reminds me. Have you looked at the latest version of sketchUp from Google, because that could really be the solution you’re looking for.
Unless, of course, you want to make a custom app and you aren’t talking about designing new parts, but just putting pre-made parts together. Then, I’d go with Unity.
Hi, thanks for these responses. Let me explain a bit more about the idea.
The playgrounds are built from pre assembled components that will be created with a professional 3d app. So it’s not really about creating the assets themselves. But the horizontal steel, vertical steel and the floorpads must have somekind of flexibility to it if the available space asks for that.
The essence of the idea is making this super simple for a end user. So the need of a professional CAD person is not necessary (they are hard to come by and the work seems to boring for those people).
So it’s connecting steel, adding floorpads and events. And be able to make the construction longer and shorter.
I think it will be quite a lot of work. But still. A CAD person and software isn’t very “cheap” either.
It’s doable on Unity, then.
In fact, Unity ain’t bad for this type of thing. You can prototype very quickly.
While this is doable in Unity, Unity is not the best solution.
SketchUp would be less expensive (product wise), have a better UI, and require less development to set up the tool for this application (again reducing costs). This is also true for most other modelers. On top of that you aren’t creating a dumbed-down, highly specialized tool for people to use. Instead of practicing a useless skill day in and day out, a user could use components within a modeller, and start to learn a few rudimentary things about modelling. That means that all the people doing this job would actually begin to develop real skills. It sounds like a win win all around to me.
If I was in charge of this, I would first show my employer projected budget scenarios with various products and setups (just to impress them and set up funding for myself and the little work group I was assembling). After showing them how much they could spend by wasting money on AutoCadd or 3D studio Max or other likewise unnecessarily expensive apps, and then showing them how much it would cost to develop a tool from scratch… I would show them how cheaply it could be done by developing a work flow with an existing inexpensive product. (this is all for your benefit, and to possibly create a nice amount of funding within the organization as a contractor for your team - best case scenario)
I’d then get the company to buy a number of workstations. Install Sketchup Pro on all of them. (Or Blender if I was a bad-ass at customizing the UI and setting up Blender). Then I’d build all of the components for this project myself. Then I would write a simple protocol for training new employees with little to no experience using the modeller. Then I would write a protocol describing the basic steps of a work flow. Next step hiring your team of modelling newbies.
If you are the one to manage this team, you might even end up with a small team of future modellers that would work for you on your own projects.
Hello, what a great reply’s!
@aaronsullivan: Cool, I have checked it out. Nice work. It somewhat shows a grid to place components on. So that’s hopefull.
@aaronparr: Thanks for this great reply. I am looking into Schetch Up now. I have never used it but it looks simple. The only thing it has to be good at is placing components on a multidimensional grid. Creating a BOM (Bill of materials indeed) and having the possibility of creating a easy to use library of components. I will have to ask about this at the Schetch up forums. Thanks!
Ok, a after a little more research on SU I think it’s not well suited for what we are looking for. Some things are very intuitive and simple while others are a pain to do. (Like creating a simple fillet or pattern).
Right now I am checking Rhino… this may be a good solution.
I don’t understand why you’d need a fillet tool if the purpose is for unskilled people to assemble pre made components for play structures.
If this is about you generating the components then why don’t you just pick up a modeler you know? I picked sketchup because it is cheap, and I know that using it for placing components would be simple for newbies. I can also use it to model just about anything. So it would be a snap for me to create all the components. If you need to create the components, perhaps you need to hire one modeller to generate them for everyone else to use as components within a simple package.
My pont however was not to sell sketchup, but to demonstrate that an inexpensive modeller like it with a clean, intuitive UI is far superior for this project than a customized tool made in Unity. Any modeller in which manipulating components is simple and intuitive will do. However I think price and a customizable UI should also be important. Personally I don’t think Rhino fits any of this bill. But I suspect you’ll be the one training these people so whatever you pick should be something you are comfortable doing that with.
By the way… what playstructure company is this? I likely work with their competitors all the time in my line of work. Or maybe I’ve even worked with them. In which case… I’d highly recommend sketchup… as most professionals that would be hiring them could use the model built in sketchup. And thats actually what many play structure companies do now. THey’ve dumped their expensive AutoCAD jockeys and moved to less skilled workers on sketchup.
Both platforms have been used because they are industry standards amongst designers, engineers, and architects.
In any case, I’ve bothered you on this enough. I think I’ll leave you to it now. Good luck to you, whatever path you choose.
Hi Aaron, when I placed this topic it was only based on a quick thought I had. Thinking of this more and more I don’t think having a app created in Unity is a good solution.
I have only quickly evaluated the possibility’s of SketchUp so there might be a couple of things I have overlooked.
Let me explain something about myself. I have been a designer of those structures for about five years. This was before I started a company of my own. The competition of the company I worked for know me and are asking for my skills. That’s why I won’t go to deep in what company’s they are for now 
. The designing was done in Autodesk Inventor in combination with an app made to draw indoor playgrounds very fast and accurate, also made by me.
Now I am looking for software that can desing indoor playgrounds just as fast but a lot cheaper. Creating a specialized app may not be the cheapest solution (also a reason not to do it with Unity). So the unskilled persons issue I have mentioned before may not be the most important part, it’s mostly about speed and efficiency.
When I look at SU it has some nice features but to start with it has no grid… no patterning… no layers. (Like said, I may have overlooked some things) Those things don’t encourage to look at the app any deeper. Anyway it just doesn’t feel good. Rhino does seem to have this functionality but no BOM. But there seems to be a plug-in that does such thing.
Anyway. Thanks for your advice. What company have you worked for? I have seen the SPI components a lot. They have a very strange system when it comes down to designing the structures if you ask me. All Autocad based. They have to count the steel and clamps by hand… . . Sounds like a hideous task to me.
Regarding Sketchup: What do you mean by patterns? It does not have a grid, but everything snaps to increments by default. It does have layers.
It can’t do a BOM out of the box, but I don’t think most programs are going to do this by default. I have seen some people talking about writing a BOM ruby plugin, however. If you’re somewhat skilled at programming, you may be able to do this yourself, especially considering the new dynamic component features they added in version 7. They’ve essentially added a spreadsheet functionality to every object now. If you have a library of parts, you can assign a price value to each and write a script to total it all up.
I’m a landscape architect, and I work on schools and other child focused environments frequently. Often we also do the install in addition to the design in which case we would custom build most of the structures. (My real world construction skills are much better than my computer modeling skills as I only got into 3D modeling and Unity this year.) We are recently custom designing and installing a number of daycare centers for companies in silicon valley - companies which everyone on this forum will have heard of and so I also can not name them for contractural reasons. Our company website is however:
Anyway… we are not in the same field, but I have likely worked with some of your competitors if not specifically the company you have worked with. Eibe for example I particularly like. For the most part however we need to use American companies, as European companies are usually too expensive for our clients.
As far as apps and features, I’m not clear on what you are looking for or why SketchUp does not feel good to you for this application. As I said it is well on its way to being an industry standard (although its not all that useful for 2D work). You however clearly have experience enough to know what will work and what won’t. And so you should trust your own judgement.
For my part, I agree with what defmech has said, but I’m not going to push SketchUp anymore. I think you have enough experience to make a good decision here on your own.