Google Sketchup

[Rob Fisher]

I reread my post and I don't see where I compared SketchUp to Autocad or Rhino or Solidworks or any other cad program with 3D capabilities. I have not had to spend years learning the program or thousands of dollars just to get functioning drawing either. The OP asked about SketchUp and I gave my opinion.

Your absolutely correct. I seemed to have read more into your post than is actually there. Sorry.

And your comments about cost and learning time are spot on. I may have spent 30 minutes getting up to speed on Sketchup where it took me considerably longer to learn other CAD programs.

Rob

[Thomas Bank]

As an architect, I have been starting the preliminary design of every project with SketchUp. It is just so much easier to see relationships and modify as well as to convey intent to the client. Even my small personal projects get drawn up in SketchUp rather than scratched out on paper due to the ease of use.

I just downloaded the 7.1 update and have been playing around with it. I'm really impressed with the updates to LayOut. I've always had to move over to AutoCAD somewhere in design development because I just cannot do a set of construction documents in SketchUp. But LayOut has become pretty powerful. I'm not saying that I will be able to do construction documents for a 250,000 s.f. project in SketchUp now. But I thing that I am going to be able to start using SketchUp the whole way through on small projects. And it certainly has enough power for your typical woodworking project.

You can see the overview of LayOut 2.1 here: http://sketchupdate.blogspot.com/200...layout-21.html