The process of designing a home is pretty complex. There are many parties that are involved in the process from beginning to end, such as: Interior designer/ architects, estimators, project managers, procurement and production teams. Interior designers and architects need to translate customer needs into design, material, and budget, all the while needing to coordinate with the rest of the team.
More often than not, some common difficulties arise in the process. Let’s see, do you often get these following problems too in your interior projects?
Turning Your Idea Into 3D Design and Then Into Reality
In an interior project, we as interior designers on average would be dealing with 20+ brands and product types to realize our design, including the material, furniture, custom furniture, lighting, appliance and so on. More often than not, even if we already know the exact brand/ product, we struggle to visualize them into our 3D design.
We have to find similar 3D/ textures or even create it from scratch, just to apply them to our design in Sketchup. Sometimes we have to contact the brands one by one to ask for the 3D model or textures. And we have to do it for every product/brand in our design, which takes up a lot of time and energy.
The other way around is also true. Let’s say we already have the 3D/ textures that fit into our design, they match our expectations and we apply them to our 3D design. When the time comes to estimate and build our projects, only then do we struggle to translate our design into real products/brands that are available in the market.
This process usually takes a lot of time, because we have to match them to real products and specifications in the market, from multiple vendors. More so when involving a customer’s decision due to unavailable products, difference in specifications, and budget expectations.
Design with Real Interior Products
Aware of those problems or pain points for designers and architects, Dekoruma develops Thudio (previously known as SOMA) based on a practical idea: “Why don’t we design with real interior products from the get go? It will make work more efficient, precise and enjoyable”. Previously this process was simply not feasible due to the lack of a platform and the fragmented nature of the industry.
To deal with this problem, Thudio innovates and collaborates with trusted brands and suppliers to provide a wide selection of real interior products ranging from furniture, decorations, materials (such as ceramics, wall paint, HPL, etc), appliances and even sanitary products for your design. And when it’s time to build the project, you can get the products in your nearby stores! This is only possible due to established collaborations between Thudio with trusted interior and home and living brand products such as Panasonic, TACO, Propan, and many more that will be added in the future.
By designing using real products, both furniture and material, you and the client will get the final result as expected, reducing the chance of complaints. Also it will reduce the extra time spent to align specifications between designers, estimators, production and procurements, which could amount to up to 20% of overall project timeline.
Inside Thudio, there is a wide selection of interior real products ranging from furniture, decorations, materials (such as ceramics, paint, sanitary, HPL, etc), and electronics from awesome brands that are available in your nearby stores. All these products are available in the local market and the prices for furniture are already listed. So, while choosing the interior product, you can also consider which one is still within the client’s budget. No more endless browsing for 3D models & textures!
Thudio Adds Superpowers to Your SketchUp
The fun part is Thudio is a plugin for Sketchup (and it’s free!), therefore you don’t have to change your current workflow at all. You just have to download and install it to your Sketchup and voila now you can apply real interior products to your design in 1 click. And when your design is complete, you can proceed to use your favorite rendering and working drawing tools.
Thudio 3D models and textures are light-weight and optimized, making your design file size more manageable. Say goodbye to frequent laggy files and bugsplats. You also don’t have to worry about the hardware and software requirements, just make sure your hardware can run Sketchup and you’re good to go. Thudio can be installed on Sketchup 2017 or newer on both WIndows and Mac versions.
By using the Thudio plugin for Sketchup, the benefits are not only gained by interior designers and architects, but also all home and living industry stakeholders, including suppliers/brands, estimators,associations, and ultimately end customers. In the end, Thudio’s vision is to enable a sustainable platform and ecosystem for all home living industries.
Interior products at Thudio that you use in SketchUp are available in the local market, so there is no need for endless browsing and painful process of respecifying for every design revision.