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Thread: I don't think I am smart enough to use Sketchup!

  1. #61
    Quote Originally Posted by Caspar Hauser View Post
    how does it inform your creative process or is it just a draughting tool?

    CH
    The nice thing about SU once you get used to using it (just like getting skilled with a pencil!) is that it can really be used to sketch rough ideas until you get to somewhere you like. A cupboard can be little more than a box with a few areas inset and pushed to make it look faintly like a frame and panel. Dress it up with some wood textures and it starts to look like a bit of furniture. Pull on the sides and top until it has the proportions you want. Add details like handle and knobs - grabbed from the online warehouse and possibly provided by the manufacturers - and you're getting to a finished sketch.

    Now, and only now, do you start to use SU as a drafting tool. It's good for that too. Precision is as easy as sketching once you've got the basic ideas. I tend to sketch and then start a new file to do the precision construction model where I model the exact components and joints and chamfers and work out the grain orientation and where hinge mortises go and make sure nothing is in that nasty 'looks nice but can't possibly fit' realm that is so easy to wander into with simple sketches. After that I usually use Layout (I have the pro version and use Layout a lot) to assemble working drawings and then print them up for the shop. A local printshop can do 36" wide prints for C$1.50 a ft so I can even print fullsize templates in many cases.

    Sorry to sound like an advert but it really is that useful to me.
    Smile. It worries the other guy.

  2. #62
    I'll have to give this a try, though as I said before I like pencils. I enjoy the immediacy that drawing gives me along with the continuance of the process into the actual building, kind of Jazz Joinery Having said that perhaps the discipline that even a flexible program such as this seems to offer might not be a bad thing. Not going to show clients the pictures though.

    CH

  3. #63
    Join Date
    Dec 2008
    Location
    South Central Pennsylvania, USA
    Posts
    761
    Personally, I rarely pick up paper and pencil anymore. Easier to go to SketchUp. With paper and pencil I'm either constantly erasing and redrawing or laying another sheet of trace over top as I refine things.

  4. #64
    It don't think learning how to use SketchUp is comparable to learning how to sing or play a musical instrument. Those skills require a combination of timing, muscle coordination, and physical characteristics. Those skills are in many ways genetically based.

    I would compare learning to use SU to learning to read and write music. I believe the brain plays far more of a role in that instance. While genetics plays a role in brain function with respect to reading/writing/comprehension, I don't think it is as variable between individuals as are other physical talents.

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