I am teaching 30 newbies, newbies care to share experience?

Jean Lemire

Hi folks.

When I teach SU to newbies that are also newbies at 3D drawing or sketching, I start in teaching them what is a 3D rendering explaining what vanishing points are, asking them to observe their surrounding and how perspective plays a role in what they see.

I then sketch a very simple house to show them how to navigate a model with the Orbit, Panand Zoomtools. While doing that, I tell them to see drawing with SU as sculpting an object in real life. Unless its a statue of gigantic proportion, most sculptors will manipulate an object by adding a detail here, pivoting the object to add another detail there, etc. I even though about using a miniature house to explain the concept of going around a model and modeling from just about any angle and position, even from below or inside the model. This analogy is also usefull for people that are used to CAD softwares that offer a more rigid interface like 3 snadard views and an isometric one in 4 panes on the screen.

Once they comprehend that, they are not confused when they draw a rectangle in an iso view and see that even if it looks like a parallelogram it is indeed a rectangle seen at an angle.

The next thing I do is to show them how to dimiss the large tool set and to enable all the other tool palette so they have all the tools at their disposal. I also show them how to uncheck the Enable length snappingin the Units so they do not get unwanted inferences.

I also push them to place the cursor on every icon to read the associated pop-up showing a tool name, for example. I show them some the menus and submenus and contextual menus and telle them to explore all of these on their own to discover SU.

But the very first thing I show them is the Help Menu and its second choice, the Help Center. Judging from many of the questions asked here and on other forums dedicated to SU, this is the most underused of the menus.

Just ideas.

aadbuild

Wow thanks for all the great replies. It is a big help, i do not want to miss anything.

Ok to be more specific I am teaching 30 Architects & from what I am told, half of these guys still draw by hand. I have demonstrated several 1 hour long presentations in the past and due to the short time I basically have drawn a model from scratch to demonstrate how much quicker Sketchup is. The feed back I got was fantastic, but they call me clicky as i go too fast. I think I really showed how Sketchup can increase work flow when it comes to design. This is the reason why I have been asked to teach. (usually I wont teach to newbies as I prefure to teach people that have a strong interest in getting better not started.
I find it very easy to teach the correct methods from a model that has been done by a newbie as I can show how groups and components not only reduce models size but how they increase performance and alteration times.
I aim to get everyone loving the ease of use while having a fun time which points me to getting them to draw a basic structure with repeated push pull, move, line and navigation commands first.
I need to get these easy operations done first but it concerns me that the common mistake of drawing a none componented model is model size and alteration later on . I di this in Sketchup 4 and if only I had of known it would have saved me hours. I plan on getting them drawing first and then demonstration one of new employees models that drew this way when he came. I will demonstrate how it should be rectified from the start but I don't want to over complicate the first 8 hours ever using Sketchup. I plan on demonstrating and showing components to the people who have go the basics down pat. That is why I plan on splitting the group at lunch time and getting the other two giys to teach this and I will plug away with the ones who do not get it. I hope to be invited back to start getting more refined techniques next month but see how I go. I will let you know. I better get cracking as this is starting tomorrow.
thanks for your help and keep send through tips.

aadbuild

@jean lemire said:

Hi folks.

When I teach SU to newbies that are also newbies at 3D drawing or sketching, I start in teaching them what is a 3D rendering explaining what vanishing points are, asking them to observe their surrounding and how perspective plays a role in what they see.

I then sketch a very simple house to show them how to navigate a model with the Orbit, Panand Zoomtools. While doing that, I tell them to see drawing with SU as sculpting an object in real life. Unless its a statue of gigantic proportion, most sculptors will manipulate an object by adding a detail here, pivoting the object to add another detail there, etc. I even though about using a miniature house to explain the concept of going around a model and modeling from just about any angle and position, even from below or inside the model. This analogy is also usefull for people that are used to CAD softwares that offer a more rigid interface like 3 snadard views and an isometric one in 4 panes on the screen.

Once they comprehend that, they are not confused when they draw a rectangle in an iso view and see that even if it looks like a parallelogram it is indeed a rectangle seen at an angle.

The next thing I do is to show them how to dimiss the large tool set and to enable all the other tool palette so they have all the tools at their disposal. I also show them how to uncheck the Enable length snappingin the Units so they do not get unwanted inferences.

I also push them to place the cursor on every icon to read the associated pop-up showing a tool name, for example. I show them some the menus and submenus and contextual menus and telle them to explore all of these on their own to discover SU.

But the very first thing I show them is the Help Menu and its second choice, the Help Center. Judging from many of the questions asked here and on other forums dedicated to SU, this is the most underused of the menus.

Just ideas.

Great advice, thanks. Jean... 30 newbies. I did send them all a model and gave instructions on navigation. I will brush over this first.

aadbuild

@baz said:

I taught a Tafe course last year with a mixed bunch.

When you say newbies do you mean to just SU or 3d drafting in particular, or new to drafting full stop. I had all three in most groups.

With the last category I had to start with perspective drawing 101, they had no understanding of the xyz world on a computer, so they had no chance until they understood that.
With the others, once they had inferencing under their belts, they were away.
I found that they all picked up navigation pretty quickly.

Of course "group, group, group!" was my usual battle cry.

It would be interesting to hear which bits newbies get stuck on in the beginning, I hope you get some good feedback.

Baz

Thanks Baz, from what I know these guys are true newbies. I have taught at Schools but all the kids have a basic understanding and they had not be influenced by CAD. Kids are easy to teach. My seven year old has been using it for 3 years, he started before he could read and write. I have a video of him . I will post it when I am done preparing.

utiler

My mantra is:

Interface and Environment
Inferencing, Inferencing, Inferencing!!!
Layer 0, Groups and components....

Its a good base for newbies to go away and be confident to play around and generally all falls into place after that...

Good luck, mate!

aadbuild

@utiler said:

My mantra is:

Interface and Environment

Inferencing, Inferencing, Inferencing!!!

Layer 0, Groups and components....

Its a good base for newbies to go away and be confident to play around and generally all falls into place after that...

Good luck, mate!

Thanks Andrew, I have done a lot of preparation and yes Inferencing, Inferencing, Inferencing!!! is at the top of the list. Feel free to email if you are interested in teaching up there in gods country. Newbies are difficult but intermediate and advanced is a lot easier. I can help you out with some presentation info for Aussies if it helps.
I enjoyed a beer or 3 with Mike, Pete and many others from Sketchucation at basecamp last week. They were telling me they did the same with you last year.... Hopefully we can catchup .
Thanks again for the tips, they are bloody beauties.

utiler

They sure are nutters, mate! Really disappointed I couldn't make it this time around; will do my best next time.
I don't really 'teach' a classroom; rather people come to me all the time wanting to know how to get started..... all for the love of it!!

I'll contact you next time I fly the bird down that way again and we'll have our own little Su Basecamp in Sydney, maybe in around the Rocks somewhere....

aadbuild

Basecamp Down under bring that on.
Mate tomorrow is a freeby as well although the company I am doing it for have offered to pay I just love doing it. Being a builder 30 architects could only increase my work load. It was quicker than having 30 people coming to my office and teaching them individually....
Thanks for the advice mate, with another 30 SU users I reckon we could get a basecamp down under going....
I want to see those Irish drink some good Aussie beer.

BTW for anyone reading through here there are some real advantages of becoming a registered member. They do training and you get great service! I hope to have 30 signed up by tomorrow arvo.

aadbuild

Here is a bit of feed back from the day.. I had 30 people show up and we went through push pull and off set, inferencing and all the basic tools. It went better than I could expect. I had 3 students that were lets say a little slower than the rest and I did want to ensure that these students learned the basics as well so I went over things and over things and over things. I honestly don't think that these people will get it without individual one on one tutoring.... I found the rest of the class got frustrated with these guys and it really held things up. In hind site I should have just moved on... Anyway by the time I brought these guys up to speed with the rest of the group the rest of the group were getting restless. So I moved on and decided to show everyone how to import a 2d drawing and scale it. Let me just say not a good move. The slow ones interrupted the good ones, some people forgot to bring their chargers and some people did not bring a working 3 button mouse. I would like to swear right now but I withheld .
What else could go wrong... Then when I decided to use xray to show people the lines on the imported plan I had two graphics cards not handle it and they started throwing square over the plan. So in the middle of the lesson I had to stop turn the hardware accelerators off on these computers in the open GL menu and the list goes on. AAARRRRRGGGGG
In the past I have side stepped the teaching of newbies and in the future I will do the same. I must say that 27 of the 30 picked up Sketchup well and all of them have enjoyed the day but I never want to do that again. 30 newbies in one room forget about it.
Thank you all for your tips and please let me know if you have had similar issues. I feel sorry for the people that could have got a whole lot more out of the day..
In the past I have taught 30 intermediate users and it was a blast.
If you are a newbie my tip is : get a 3 button mouse that works well. Not an old one. Get a new one!!!! Sketchup is sooooooooo much easier with a working 3 button mouse.
If you are a newbie, do your selves a favor and become a registered member here. Builders are not teachers, they should stick to building and that is what I will be doing in the future.
Happy Sketchuping.

Gaieus

Well, 90% of the students is not bad at all. Altogether 30 is indeed too many though. It's okay for a lecture type of class but not when you interactively need to work with them. In that case, even half is too many. Ideally no more than about a dozen of them - but the fewer the better.