Sketchup sale price

what is it?

Jack Guzman from Maine

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3D Design Tool  *LINK*

Greg B�tit, Vergennes, VT.

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Sketchup

Re: Sketchup sale price

john jesseph

>Have you had much hands on time with it? I am interested, but it is kind of salty for the occaisional user...

John Jesseph

Re: free (and legal...) software

paul womack

>Art of Illusion is quite highly spoken of.

http://aoi.sourceforge.net/screenshots

http://aoi.sourceforge.net/artgallery

Disclaimer: I don't use it - I simply did a search for free 3d modelling software.

BugBear

Re: free (and legal...) software

Pam Niedermayer - Austin, TX

>I was looking for more of an architectural CAD helper that could also be used to design furniture, present same to potential clients, and would run on a Mac. Art of Illusion looks wonderful for designing, and perhaps animating, graphic characters that would be used in movie making and the like. Bookmarked it, but no buyer's remorse so far. :)

Pam

Re: Sketchup sale price

Pam Niedermayer - Austin, TX

>I've spent about 15 hours with it so far, like it more the more I use it. Know what you mean about the price, even on sale it's not cheap; but the confluence of applying for a building permit, designing my new workshop (especially the wall system), sale price, Macintosh version, my drool for the way it works, and the fact they're working on furniture design enhancements convinced me to buy it. It would be hard to justify if I only needed a piece of paper occasionally.

Anyhow, you can download it and use it as a demo for 8 hours without paying anything; and there are plenty of videos that run in Quicktime that don't take up any of your hours.

Pam

Re: free (and legal...) software

paul womack

>...present same to potential clients...

If you're using it for professional purposes, costs are more justifiable, simply needing to be balanced against (commercial) benefits.

For me, it would have to come out of precious tool funds.

BugBear

Re: free (and legal...) software

Pam Niedermayer - Austin, TX

>Yes, that's true, there are a couple of tool purchases I'll have to be put off, regardless of customers. Everybody is competing for your money and/or time.

However, I could always sell some stuff I'm not using, get that $400 back pretty quick.

Pam

Re: Sketchup sale price

Marion R.

>Pam,

I'm right on the edge. How good were you at using this type of software before sketchup? How many hours into did you say--wow, this is great?

I'm bidding on large wall unit right now and made a drawing yesterday after I played with sketchup. The handmade drawing was alot easier.

Thanks,

Marion

Re: Sketchup sale price

Pam Niedermayer - Austin, TX

>I was a software developer for 34 years, so I'm very good at understanding software paradigms, which makes picking up a new piece of software very easy. However, I'm not at all familiar with CAD, having previously used drawing programs like Freehand/Illustrator and painting programs like Photoshop. I've had huge problems trying to work with MacCAD, AutoCAD, and various free/cheap CAD programs. I find Sketchup intuitively obvious, they did a marvelous job.

Of course the first sketch will be faster done on paper, perhaps even after you get a bit experienced; but it's when you have to make a change and/or make things neat that the software approach pays off big time.

Pam

Re: Sketchup sale price

paul womack

>Of course the first sketch will be faster done on paper, perhaps even after you get a bit experienced; but it's when you have to make a change and/or make things neat that the software approach pays off big time.

Or take a measurement on a component. The CAD version is ACCURATE.

A sketch is a ... sketch.

BugBear

How true.

Pam Niedermayer - Austin, TX

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Re: Sketchup sale price

Moses Yoder in White Pigeon, MI

>A drafting program like AutoCad takes some getting used to, but I would never draw a project on paper again. It takes some learning, and I dedicated a few hours every night for two weeks to go through the tutorial with our program. I know nothing about Sketchup, but with AutoCad you have complete control over the line weight. You can put your drawing on one layer, dimensions on another, joints, electrical, whatever; you can change the line wieght and color of each layer individually after it is drawn. Learning how to use offset lines to put entry points at the right spot was the biggest key for me to use a drafting program; it is very different from drawing on paper. I'll race anyone drawing a project on paper against my Auotcad program and buy their dinner if they beat me. And the lines on my drawing will all meet precisely at the corners, and be exactly the right length. It just takes some getting used to.

Re: Sketchup sale price

ThomD

>I don't know this program, but have Autocadd, turbocad, and a variety of 3d tools. One thing I find CAD totaly unbeatable for is output. You can prod a paper drawing as much as you want, but it isn't going to run a machine for you. So far I can't afford/figure out any of the really cool machines, but the printer is suprisingly good at making wonderfull paterns. (I hate to say it , and it doesn't apply everywhere, but hand tools are wonderful, machine tools largely suck, but CNC is going to give us a lot of the best of both worlds.)

When I first started out in luthrie, people were spending big bucks to buy accurate patterns and tooling in various radii, like 25 feet. And the help columns were full of geometry on how to draw these or conver 1/8 over 22" into a radius. That wasn't difficult for me, but in cad it is ridiculously easy, and you can print the output pretty-directly to metal and wood, by using transfers.

Another incredibly useful function is harvesting the info on the web, inport pictures, and scale them, clean them up, and convert into accurate plans.

Another really useful function is to record symbols and designs of your own. Storage is cheap and pretty reliable. You can export your designs to the inbox of your Yahoo email account, and even retrieve stuff if you have a fire. Simple line drawings are not heavy in memory connsumption.

I see guys these days who had never turned out a cad drawing in their lives all of a sudden doing beautiful rendered 3D drawings. I don't have that budget, but even conventional cad is pretty powerful for what I want.

Comparison with Illustrator

Dan in Orinda, CA

>Hi Pam,

I am also a fellow Mac user and have experiece with Illustrator and Photoshop. How steep is the learning curve for Sketchup if one already has experience with the Adobe products? Also, what are the features of Sketchup that you find superior to Illustrator for designing furniture?

Dan

Re: Comparison with Illustrator

Pam Niedermayer - Austin, TX

>I use Freehand instead of Illustrator, so I'll have to compare to that; but I think the differences between any object drawing program and Sketchup hold.

SU has 3D capabilities (object drawing programs are 2D only), fly around, light projection for shadowing, dimensioning, ability to easily find midpoints and detect lines with your cursor, and the ability to create shows/presentations. That's just off the top of my head, but these are significant differences. Photoshop doesn't begin to compare, but SU allows you to fill in colors and patterns.

You can download/view online their videos at no cost, and you can use SU for 8 hours for free. This should give you a good appreciation.

Pam