Popular Woodworking Magazine: The Woodworking in America conference is an opportunity to indulge in sensory overload, and for the third year in a row, I'll be doing my part to keep your head spinning by teaching two different sessions on using our favorite design and planning tool, Google SketchUp. On Friday morning at 9:30 and Sunday morning at 9:00 the topic will be SketchUp Essentials. Saturday morning at 9:30 and Sunday morning at 11:00 the topic will be The SketchUp Gold Mine. Both of these classes are aimed at using SketchUp as a tool for woodworking.
Friday, September 23, 2011
SketchUp Classes at Woodworking in America
Popular Woodworking Magazine: The Woodworking in America conference is an opportunity to indulge in sensory overload, and for the third year in a row, I'll be doing my part to keep your head spinning by teaching two different sessions on using our favorite design and planning tool, Google SketchUp. On Friday morning at 9:30 and Sunday morning at 9:00 the topic will be SketchUp Essentials. Saturday morning at 9:30 and Sunday morning at 11:00 the topic will be The SketchUp Gold Mine. Both of these classes are aimed at using SketchUp as a tool for woodworking.
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I've already seen a handful of designers here at CMU utilize Sketch-Up for their designs and I love it. No, of course it doesn't replace AutoCAD [perish the thought!!!] or Vectorworks or [shudder] Rhino or any of the other drafting programs used already; at least, not to the degree we as technicians need in our working programs.
But what it does do remarkably easily is allow 3D functions without a lot of clutter or a huge learning curve to get going. I can easily see why woodworkers and hobbyists have latched onto it and I think it can be a great stepping stone into the world of three-dimensional drafting once the user has need of functions something free and easy to learn like Sketch-Up cannot do.
I love google sketch-up! it is one of those tools as a designer you can latch onto in order to quickly and easily articulate your ideas. and the greatest part of all is it is free! though many people discredit it for its inaccuracy and lack of practical use in the industry, it really is a great tool for explaining a concept or design without needing to be mechanically precise. The 3D aspect of it is another thing that draws users to it. the program is simple and easy to learn (opposed to the Cad programs that require a much stronger knowledge and training.). As programs go i would recommend it for any design use that needs to be quick and not precise.
The other part of Google Sketch-up that seems important is the price. Free open source software that is unfettered with the complications that make AutoCad so powerful allows the process to be more organic for the designer. While this still is not as organic and Zen of an art form as hand drafting, it does help people such as myself whose artistic skills are limited by their ability to draw to have a similarly organic process. With all of that to its credit the access to the 3d warehouse will allow for lazy designers to claim other peoples work as their own. It is a good first draft software for putting ideas to digital information.
So as all the TD’s know I use and love rhino. It and sketchup are very similar in the sense that you can “sketch” designs in 3d space. Once you get the hang of sketching in 3d space (sketch up I think is actually really easy to use) it becomes an invaluable tool. I ended up making a digital model of every piece of furniture that I built because it allows you to look at what you’re going to build from every angle ahead of starting and allows you to trouble shoot how each part integrates with each other.
Google sketch up is a great way to quickly work through some ideas. It is not good for final designs or final drawings but for fast rough models it is great. The program is very user friendly and easy to learn. the basic idea of pushing and pulling allows for fast building. It can not do as complex shapes as others but it is still a useful tool. And best of all its FREE
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