Uses for SketchUp

Jean Lemire

Hi folks.

What I use it for, so far :

Mechanical design, building design, house remodeling, surface calculation, volume calculation, walkthrough in buildings, equipement layout in power plants and other type of buildings, piping design, piping and equipment support design, creating illustrations for calculations briefs, architectural illustration, kite design, making tutorials to show other people how to create SketchUp models, drawing just about any 2D or 3D object, geometric studies, woodworking plans, etc.

Search the 3D Warehouse to see what you can find here.

The only limit I see for SketchUp is the user's imagination.

Just ideas.

Gaieus

I use it as an excuse for my wife why I am always in front of the computer.

shipwrght

Hi,

I use Sketchup for designing custom yacht interiors. This ranges from initial concepts, trim details, furniture, cabinets, build drawings and cut lists. The customers like the presentations and the crew like the views, details and exploded drawings. I like how I can focus on being productive and creative, while enjoying the process. Sometimes it feels a little like being paid to play.
If you want to see some of what I do, take a look at my website. There are quite a few pictures, some drawings and a few concepts and presentations.

Dan

derei

I'll not post here the usual uses, but what is less predictable:

-i used it to make anniversary cards for some friends. See them below

Alan Fraser

We supply SU components; and our chief clients are architects, interior designers and set designers...in that order.

Jim

Therapy.

derei

@jim said:

Therapy.

You can say that. I model when I'm angry , it takes my attention from things I'm angry at.

d12dozr

Among the common uses listed already, I make 3D printed models for customers developing new products. Another use - estimate takeoffs, where I take a digital blueprint image into sketchup and trace over it to be able to quickly add up dimensions.

dale

Quick and effective visual communication crossing many disciplines, (and a great community just happens to be thrown in to the mix).

brandy20

I prepare my woodworking plans before going down to the workshop. It saves me soooo much time!

Dave R

Mike, you mention yachts.

I've drawn various boats.

But mostly I use it for furniture design and, like Luca, detailing for construction of furniture.

There's also the odd medical products project or woodworking tools, buildings, interior layouts, etc.

pmolson

I use it for work in Architecture, but I also have found it to be a
good tool for

Child eduction & entertainment.

The kids & I designed, modeled, rendered & built these birdhouses over a two
month period. I kind of used the project to quiet down the "I don't know what to do"
days.
rendered views and progress shots exploded view and parts list

Dave R

MrMikeEsq

@pmolson said:

I use it for work in Architecture, but I also have found it to be a
good tool for

Child eduction & entertainment.

The kids & I designed, modeled, rendered & built these birdhouses over a two
month period. I kind of used the project to quiet down the "I don't know what to do"
days.

Haha that's great

Trogluddite

I guess you could say I am using it to be more 'environmentally friendly'...

I'm mostly designing electronics housings and parts for our range of school lab equipment - using a laser cutter/engraver to make the parts.
I used to do this using CorelDraw, and a lot of 'rotating' and 'translation' in my head! - you wouldn't believe how fast I used to fill the skip with 'test cuts'.
Now I almost always get perfectly fitting parts first time - the 'conceptual drawing' and 'construction plans' are almost one and the same, and there is so much less wastage.

Now I'm just learning 'Sketchy Physics' so that I can model the mechanical linkages to make a series of robot kits for teaching control technology.
I would have had to sub-contract this kind of design work previously, but with Sketchup, I now have the confidence to do the work myself. So we are more self-sufficient, and require less parts to be shipped (or flown) half way across the world.

DanYHKim

@gaieus said:

I use it as an excuse for my wife why I am always in front of the computer.

Aaahh! You broke the sacred CODE OF SILENCE! Now my wife will find out!

DanYHKim

I use it to help plan home improvement projects. For instance, I installed a wood burning stove, and needed to know if I had adequate clearance around the stovepipe/chimney. Because I have a dimensioned model of my house, I could place a model of the stove and its chimney in our converted garage (the room to be heated), and could see if the chimney was too close to a tree that is growing close to the house.

I also needed to screen in our back porch, and wanted to go over several different design options. Finally, I re-plumbed our kitchen and bathroom, and used SketchUp to help me visualize the location of pipes.

I use SketchyPhysics to make animations of my department's engineering projects. I am particularly pleased with this one:

[flash=320,240:2ihy67sk]http://www.youtube.com/v/YRNFi0DzGm4[/flash:2ihy67sk]
The ending logo animation was also modeled and produced in SketchUp with SketchyPhysics.

I have also used SketchyPhysics to make an opening video clip to a video hosted by my department. I used the Photo Match feature of SketchUp to show an animated model of a clock tower that transitions into the photograph of the clock tower and the engineering building. http://pltw.nmsu.edu/cPage.aspx?pageid=news&queryid=110419

Another animation was made to liven up the logo for Project Lead the Way.
http://pltw.nmsu.edu/cPage.aspx?pageid=main&queryid=aboutlogo

Recently, we are using SketchUp in a course on construction and utilities. Because I don't like to talk to people a lot, I am making videos of different techniques, and uploading them to YouTube

milwaukeephil

I use Sketchup to design Point-of-Purchase displays (signs, neons, etc.) for my business. It lets me get the idea across so much quicker than other 3D programs. Everything in our portfolio (link in my profile to the left) was rendered in SU7 and vRay.

marne

Landscape-Design

mozzie

Safety barriers on golf courses, driving ranges and sports fields.

For golf facilities, I provide optimised barrier location and sizing reports using a golf ball flight trajectory model.
Sketchup is a major part of the work flow - geo-location gives me some terrain and relative siting data, import allows me to integrate survey or plan data (ususlly in dwg/dxf format), various plugins allow me to transfer data to the trajectory model, and I export various vews as visualisation aids. Also, I do some overlays using Photomatch for presentations.