sketchup license

[DaveW]

so a while back, there was a thread which included a discussion about sketchup that sparked my interest - I watched a few tutorial videos and was blown away by what it could do. My question now is - WW is a hobby for me - how could I justify the license cost? If I were using Sketchup professionally, that's a really small investment, but as a hobby...

(I'm just sitting here waiting for Google to make it free ala Google Earth)

[final_t]

Google is not making it free, they are getting @Last for some of their Google Earth plugins. Sketchup will still cost $495.
They have a time-limited version you can download and try out. Give that a try and see if actually is usable for you vs. standard graph paper and pencil. I found it's not, since you cannot declare the thickness of "walls" for a simple bookcase, spent more time fiddling with it to nail in 1/8" of an inch then just pulling out the graph paper, ruler, lead holder, and sitting at the table.

[mschrank]

... I found it's not, since you cannot declare the thickness of "walls" for a simple bookcase, spent more time fiddling with it to nail in 1/8" of an inch then just pulling out the graph paper, ruler, lead holder, and sitting at the table.

Did you use the "push/pull" tool?

I've found sketchup very useful for drawing WW plans and just trying out different ideas.... but yes, it is kind of spendy for hobbyist use. I was able to justify it because it also works as a plug-in for my GIS software (GIS-Geographic Information System, what I do for a living)

[final_t]

Yes, I did try push/pull, but it wanted to do the entire bookcase, not just the thickness of the wall. The program *really* isn't designed for that kind of work, and is targeted at the folks who would use AutoKad and the like.

[pierhogunn]

sounds like you had a problem defining the surface that you wanted to push/pull, sometimes I find that I have to re-draw using the line tool a surface so that all sides are in "plane" with one another, then push-pull is good to the 1/32 inch.

Sketchup is a great tool, if you have the time to learn, and get into it. I find that it really helps me design stuff, now if I could just cut a straight line with my saw, I would be doing so much better.....