A year of collaboration, from residential project documentation to better connections between design software and office systems.
A year of working with Campbell Architecture has brought opportunities to contribute to residential projects and improve the systems behind their delivery. What began as a CAD technician role in Vectorworks expanded into design development, documentation workflows and tailored administrative tools.
Supporting design and documentation
My contribution has extended across design, development applications (DA), construction certificates (CC), Section 4.55 modifications, occupation certificates (OC) and practical completion. Alongside project work, the practice encouraged me to investigate ways to make its CAD documentation and administrative processes easier to manage.
Connecting SketchUp models with Vectorworks
One recurring challenge was maintaining a design across two programs. SketchUp was used for conceptual modelling, while Vectorworks supported detailed documentation. Design changes could mean updating the model in one program, then repeating the work in the other.
I developed a workflow that references the SketchUp model in Vectorworks, allowing the reference to be updated while retaining detailed documentation information. The intention was to keep the preferred modelling process in SketchUp and reduce the need to rebuild the same design in Vectorworks.
Office manuals document how to set up and manage the process so other team members can replicate it. By the time of this update, the workflow had been implemented on two significant projects within the practice.
Simplifying document transmittals
I also developed an application to assist with document transmittals. It reads metadata within the practice’s documents and uses the individual page names in a combined PDF to generate an editable transmittal.
Developed with Python and AI-assisted automation, the tool is tailored to the office’s existing business systems. It addresses a specific administrative task while keeping the resulting record available for manual review and editing.
Practical improvements, built around the team
The most rewarding part has been working alongside a team willing to explore new approaches. These developments came from the practice’s day-to-day needs: clearer documentation, less repeated modelling and more reliable information handling.
