Thread: what is sketch up?

Ditto

It's a free and simple to use CAD (computer aided design) program that is very good for wood workers to design their projects.

http://sketchup.google.com

In the SketchUp related posts, you might notice some people include pix of 3D objects, as well as the *.SKP file attachment.

SketchUp is what makes those pictures. Why? Sometimes such a pic explains something better than trying to interpret home-drawn blueprints or 10,000 words of text.

I've been a Sketchup (SU) user for about 15 months now. Firstly, it was intended to be used as a preview tool to complement architectural drawings and to present concepts rather than specifics. It has an excellent collection of 3D tools and model intersection capabilities which makes the assembly of complex shapes and curves relatively simple. When coupled with a rendering application like Kerkythea you can produce incredible photo-realistic images. SU is not a true CAD program but it offers ease of use that brings it close. To us who use it for designing woodworking projects its accuracy is very good and being able to see every aspect of a model helps you to see potential 'collisions' where parts of the model intersect and meet, possibly with undesirable consequences if you start the work and only see the problem too late.

One criticism of SU however is that producing printed drawings is a bit touch-and-go and WYSIWYG is not assured. Dimensioning is spot-on, sometimes too accurate for my liking so you sometimes have to build a degree of 'intolerance' into the model to compensate for inferior cutting techniques. I know, I do this often!

For general design, SU is world-class. The free download from Google (they own SU) imposes some limitations which are not a problem in the fully licenced version. It's a great product.