One big difference from working the real wood is that you form parts in place, overlapped at the joints, then go into x-ray view to form the joinery and transfer the lines to the matching piece. You form a squared-up piece, cut dovetails in it by drawing outlines and using the push/pull tool to push out the waste, form mortises and tenons by drawing outlines and pushing in or pulling out shapes. The other thing that's absolutely fascinating is that you build up a drawing from components almost exactly the way you make the real thing. Every intersection forms a new selectable segment. It's very intelligent about selecting what you click on. Copying and duplicating bits of shapes is easy. Cleaning up lines and faces with the eraser tool is simple. Its drawing paradigm is to form faces from lines, rectangles, and circles, and then with the amazing push/pull tool, extrude those faces into the third dimension.Ĭonnecting lines and arcs is very natural to form more complex shapes. No "you meant this and it did that" fussing around. And by intuitive I mean that when you use one of its tools and click on something, it understands what you want to do. What's fascinating about SketchUp is that it truly is intuitive to use. The zoom, pan, and orbit tools are critical to operating SketchUp, and those are the things I didn't understand before. The download includes a PDF containing the complete transcript so you can jump around to find things easily. Richards' video, 67 minutes, consists of 5 episodes that show basic navigation and usage, then go through the complete process for a hanging cabinet design. So you can watch a video and see SketchUp in action, then read about the process in detail. The combination of video and text makes it suited to all types of learning styles, whether you prefer to read it or watch it. Both books include information on creating a set of shop drawings and templates.Īn interesting feature, taking advantage of the electronic format, is that the second book has several videos embedded in the PDF. Like the first, it's packed with diagrams. He also uses several other projects as examples. One of them shows how to work from scanned images. It includes some review of basic usage, then covers three cabinet projects in different traditional styles down to the last detail. His second book, 197 pages, consists of 7 chapters focusing on using SketchUp for cabinetmaking. It's copiously illustrated with step-by-step diagrams and is a fabulous example of written instruction. He uses a variety of different furniture projects for examples, including simple cabinets and tables and a Windsor chair. To give you an idea of its coverage here is the the table of contents.Killen's first book, 145 pages, consists of 16 chapters covering SketchUp tools and techniques, from basic navigation to creating original drawings to making drawings from imported photos. Let this guide help you learn how to get the most out of this versatile tool. There are plenty of SketchUp guides out there, but this one concentrates specifically on what you, as a woodworker, need to know.
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