Sketchup - Am I missing the point?

[Matt Day]

I cant for the life of me rationalize modeling a picture frame in SU.

Mark,

The biggest reason for me to model a picture frame in SU is for design. I can get a feel for the frame proportions (thickness & width of frame, mat size & color, etc) and general wood color/species. I import the picture, or a picture of the artwork, then stretch it to size in SU. All of this gets me an accurate depiction of what the picture or artwork will look like so I can get approval from the client (my wife). And when for instance I just dropped $100 on Wenge for a rather large frame, I don't want to screw up a dimension in the shop because I didn't take the time to design it correctly.

For me, it's organic to go from the computer, to working drawings, to the shop. It's also pretty quick since I think I'm rather proficient at SU. If you can't rationalize it, to each his own.

[Dave Richards]

I would agree with Matt. Sometimes even for simple projects, an accurate drawing is nice to have. Even for something like a frame or a little fold up table for my sailboat. Especially if I need to show it to someone else.

[Keith Weber]

Personally, life around the shop is so much easier with Sketchup than it was before. I design furniture with it so that I can look at it in 3D to make sure that the proportions are pleasing. No more mockups or do-overs because I didn't like the looks of something after it was built.

I designed my entire shop on Sketchup when I was kicking around hotels on layovers and had time to kill. Then, when I was back building the shop, I was able to just start cutting pieces to length and figuring everything out when my time was more valuable. It also allowed me to discover and fix mistakes in advance that I probably would have missed had I not had the ability to see everything in 3D. Like the truss that I would have hit my head on climbing the stairs to the loft, or the toilet drain that was going to fall right on a floor joist. It saved me a lot of future headaches.

It also allows me to see if the tools I want to buy will actually fit in my shop. Space is tight in my narrow shop, and everything is planned down to a fraction of an inch in some areas. My slider carriage and crosscut fence clears my jointer by 1/4" laterally, and and 3/4" vertically. I needed to be able to work that out with great certainty before I spent my money on the slider.

The tape measure tool has allowed me to figure out diagonal dimensions needed to determine if I could get something out of the basement (when my shop was there), or if I had to assemble it upstairs.

It is a very powerful program. It just takes time to get good at it, like everything else. But, it's a lot easier to learn than a lot of the professional CAD software, and best of all... it's free. For what I use it for, I never found a need to buy the pro version. I've shown a lot of people the program on my laptop, and what I can do with it. Every single person that I've showed it to, has been blown away with its capabilities, and has written down the name of it to download it when they get home. I suspect most of them probably went home, downloaded it, and then found out that they can't immediately do what I did so quickly and easily, right away, and then gave up, but if you stick at it, you'll find it a very capable and helpful tool for the workshop.

I never print anything out because I use a laptop, and just bring it to the shop with me, so I can't comment on that aspect of it.

Keith

[Chris Padilla]

I like being able to take real-world pictures of a wood species/fancy grain, and paste onto a cabinet face to see how it would look. Messing with colors is a bonus, too. Getting proportions right is a key item as well. Just recently I designed a new vanity, side cabinet, and overhead cabinet for our new master bathroom remodel. Dimensions were adjusted as we went along to get everything how we liked.

One thing about these cabinets I designed was I could highlight where exposed edges of plywood might be and either redesign how my box went together or planned for some edge-banding. Cool stuff. Sketch-Up is as valuable tool as my table saw.

[Steve Baumgartner]

I agree with everything positive said so far. I find that I get a much better feel for the proportions and shape of a tentative design by spinning it around and zooming in and out than I could ever get with pencil and paper. I can easily stretch or shrink things and put them back if I don't like the result. I can move elements such as knobs to decide on a good placement. And on and on... This makes it much easier discussing alternatives with a client, or even just for making up my own mind.

I did some cabriole legs once and thought I had drawn a wonderful profile. Then I viewed them from lots of directions and found that the profile curve gave me a very misleading impression of the final shape (which was awful!). Glad I didn't learn that after carving out a bunch of $ worth of cherry or mahogany!

I do shop plans using multiple views, one or two isometric-like perspectives and one in each of the traditional orthogonal orientations, plus detail blowups and exploded versions where an assembly is complicated. I know that Dave likes using Layout, which comes with the Pro version, but I never bothered to learn it because I my plans are for my personal use and the simple views are good enough for that.

You can do everything you need using the built-in tools in the free version of SketchUp, though there are numerous woodworking-oriented plugins that greatly simplify or speed up common tasks.

[Mark Bolton]

For me, it's organic to go from the computer, to working drawings, to the shop. It's also pretty quick since I think I'm rather proficient at SU. If you can't rationalize it, to each his own.

Couldnt agree more Matt. I print full drawings and cutlists from sketchup daily. Moving from a drawing to the shop is absolutely flawless. Most every job I take out to the shop printed in tabloid with full scale sections and details. Its a great asset. That said, when a project is very organic there is simply no way to, in a reasonable amount of time, render it out. It would be like a comparison between hand carving a detail and milling it on a CNC. The CNC will never capture the concept regardless of how much work goes into the programming.

As you say, to each his own. Some tend to be more productive "in the work" while others arent able. The OP may well be someone like Sam Maloof who would likely find he SU method of design clinical and cold. I choose to bounce back and forth.

[Bradley Gray]

This is all good information. I'm still stuck in the last century with my renderings. I use a drawing/ light table t-square and triangles to draw 3 views then turn on the lights and trace an ink copy. This gets scanned into photoshop to scale and clean up and email to the client. If I need 3D renderings I either use the perspective filter or make a quick band sawn model to photograph. The original drawing gets marked up with the inevitable changes and rules the build.

[Grant Wilkinson]

Marty: You will learn a lot from Dave's DVD/videos!

[Mike Ontko]

I'm still in the early learning stages with SketchUp, but like others have mentioned I find it to be helpful in working through some of the basic proportions and construction details once I've finalized my napkin doodles. One thing that I've thought would be nice for gauging proportions would be the ability to import a scaled photographic image or even a line drawing of a person, to use for visual comparison. Is this even possible in the free version of SU?

Also, a +1 for Dave Richards, "The Basics" DVD.

[Dave Richards]

Thank you Grant and Mike.

Mike, you can indeed import a human figure to give your model scale. Go to the Components window in SketchUp and type something like 'man standing' in the search line. There's hundreds of people and other figures you can download and insert into your models. Here's an example and another example.

[mreza Salav]

I'm a computer guy and live with them, yet I find these drawing softwares waste of time for *almost* all things I do. I find it a LOT faster to calculate things on my own (btw I rarely use calculators either) and do some rough drawings on paper. There is only one time that I used a full sketch-up of the project and that was for the cabinets I'm making for the house I'm doing and it's a very large project with many hundreds (perhaps thousands) of pieces. It took me hours (mostly evenings after dinner) to draw things and do measurements. The shear number of items of different sizes was way too much to keep track of without a good spread sheet. For the rest of my projects I have a (paper) notebook that I draw things (roughly) and do my calculations and off I go.

[Larry Edgerton]

This is all good information. I'm still stuck in the last century with my renderings. I use a drawing/ light table t-square and triangles to draw 3 views then turn on the lights and trace an ink copy. This gets scanned into photoshop to scale and clean up and email to the client. If I need 3D renderings I either use the perspective filter or make a quick band sawn model to photograph. The original drawing gets marked up with the inevitable changes and rules the build.

I'm more in this camp. I would like to be able to play with designs on the screen just for changes. I bought a cad program years ago recommended by a genius machinist find of mine and found it made me forget my original plan just because I was using so much of my limited mental energy trying to make the program work. I went back to paper as it is second nature to me.

That being said, I think I will order Dave's CD as sketch-up sounds a lot simpler that what I tried 15 years ago.

Larry

[Erik Christensen]

I find it invaluable for cabinet case construction. In a run of 20' of base cabinets when management says "I want this bank of drawers X inches bigger/smaller" it takes a few seconds to move a case wall and all the other dimensions automatically adjust. There is no way I could have done the kitchen without it. I am now in the process of doing the master closet - get the cases defined in sketchup, copy parts dimensions to custlist+ and head to the shop to break down the sheet goods.

I got a spacemouse a few weeks ago and it has made a huge difference in my productivity in using sketchup

[Mark Bolton]

I'm a computer guy and live with them, yet I find these drawing softwares waste of time for *almost* all things I do. I find it a LOT faster to calculate things on my own (btw I rarely use calculators either) and do some rough drawings on paper. There is only one time that I used a full sketch-up of the project and that was for the cabinets I'm making for the house I'm doing and it's a very large project with many hundreds (perhaps thousands) of pieces. It took me hours (mostly evenings after dinner) to draw things and do measurements. The shear number of items of different sizes was way too much to keep track of without a good spread sheet. For the rest of my projects I have a (paper) notebook that I draw things (roughly) and do my calculations and off I go.

That's where a 29 dollar a month plug in is smart. All drag and drop dynamic components. Lays out all dados, rabbets, joinery. Automatically redraws on scaling, adjust a single change across a range of cabinets. Etc.

Your time is very valuable.

[glenn bradley]

I think I will order Dave's CD as sketch-up sounds a lot simpler that what I tried 15 years ago.

A comment on Dave's Disc; I found following the course, as is, very beneficial. What I found as a 'hidden' benefit was watching the lessons again and again and observing how Dave did things just as much as what he was doing. This really streamlined my approach to drawings.