A Welcome Message to New SketchUcation Members

Rich O Brien · 22 Sept 2015, 13:28

Can anyone point me to any good tips/posts/resources for learning this?

Best way to find out stuff is to ask. Usually the quickest means of getting good advice around here. Welcome aboard

Mahoot · 31 Dec 2015, 16:20

Hello all.

I'm new to SketchUp but beginning to pick things up. I Used the month free trial before upgrading to 2016 pro a couple of weeks ago. First time 3D modelling for me so with no previous experience, my learning curve will be steep.

My background is in home interiors and building custom made fitted furniture. With a passion for design, it is my aim to concentrate on the design side of home interiors now my body is starting to wear out.

I came across here from SketchUp Community (Scooter over there) with a recommendation of a plugin that @DaveR told me about. The Fredo Round Corner. Its taken me many hours of reading all the issues that others have had and many attempts at trying to install the plugin. But I succeeded in the end. I may well post up my 'computer illiterate' way at some point for those who struggle with zips and toggles or whatever else holds this stuff together. Another day perhaps.

Looking forward to expanding my knowledge with you all here.

Scott

november92 · 1 May 2016, 10:18

Hi, Im november92 ,
I have used SU for years but because of too much other work there was not much time to keep working with it. Im still a very enthusiastic SketchyPhysics user.

The latest versions I have are

SketchUp 7
SketchyPhysics 3.1

Now Im looking for the latest S-Version and the best matching SU-Version.
And.. after Trible's acquisition of the 3D-Warehouse I noticed a strong increase in the use of the forum. Which makes me very sad.
Has the use shifted to another place or is the warehouse still the best place to swap model?

Thanks a lot for some helpful answer.

bheath35 · 24 May 2016, 19:02

Hello! I am a new University user for SketchUp Pro. My interest in SketchUp is to create airfoils/wings for a foam cutter. Having some difficulty getting a straight leading edge using Simple Loft and am attempting to download CurviLoft. No success as of yet.

faust07 · 25 May 2016, 16:10

@november92: I can remember models from you in the 3D Warehouse. The best thing is to look through the posts regarding SketchyPhysics and MSPhysics to find the latest versions. Both plugins have been further developed and are very stable. MSPhysics is still under development and needs testers ...

pbacot · 25 May 2016, 16:18

@bheath35 said:

Hello! I am a new University user for SketchUp Pro. My interest in SketchUp is to create airfoils/wings for a foam cutter. Having some difficulty getting a straight leading edge using Simple Loft and am attempting to download CurviLoft. No success as of yet.

Welcome Bruce! Just post your progress / questions in the SketchUp forum and see if anyone has some ideas to help.

bheath35 · 25 May 2016, 16:34

Thank you,
CurviLoft appeared yesterday in the LibFre06 app?/menu item?
Thank you.
I was finally able to get a straight leading edge on the airfoil.
NOW on to bigger things!

GigiCray · 11 Oct 2016, 16:47

Hi all, i'm an interior designer and have taught myself SU with great success, however, I'm curious...does everyone do their lighting layouts in SU or layout? is there a tutorial?

snoyes · 12 Oct 2016, 19:37

Strictly speaking, I'm not a new member, as my first (and, until now, only) post was 5 years ago. But my second and third posts have been sitting in moderation for 24 hours now... I'm not that easily mistaken for spam, am I?

Blind Lemon · 17 Feb 2017, 03:20

Howdy, just reg'ed and thought I'd stick my head in and say Hi.

This is all so new to me, I have absolutely no experience with any type of design software. I am a woodworker and electronics technician, mostly vacuum tube gear. Most of all the circuits/layouts and woodworking project I design are hand drawn. What actually got me to sketchup was I am wanting to build a new shop and I saw House builder and thought it was very cool. Really piqued my interest. I have no idea if sketchup is what will work for me, but it does look interesting.

If you have a suggestion as to where to start, let me know.

Blind Lemon

I have a lot of reading to do

Mike Lucey · 21 Feb 2017, 02:10

@blind lemon said:

Howdy, just reg'ed and thought I'd stick my head in and say Hi.

This is all so new to me, I have absolutely no experience with any type of design software. I am a woodworker and electronics technician, mostly vacuum tube gear. Most of all the circuits/layouts and woodworking project I design are hand drawn. What actually got me to sketchup was I am wanting to build a new shop and I saw House builder and thought it was very cool. Really piqued my interest. I have no idea if sketchup is what will work for me, but it does look interesting.

If you have a suggestion as to where to start, let me know.

Blind Lemon

I have a lot of reading to do

Welcome, Bob. I'd suggest you outline what you need to design in a new post and take it from there.

pics · 15 Nov 2018, 17:13

I just started to learn SketchUp and wanted to say hi. I never used a program like this but when I saw what a friend did with this I thought it was just too cool not to try it. I recently became unemployed so I've got some time on my hands, so I'm going to give this a shot. I wish I had found SketchUp when my brain was a little younger but at 61 I still enjoy trying to learning new things. So with some perseverance and help from this great community I might just get it.

Thanks in advance,

Dave

Flion · 24 Nov 2018, 14:49

Hi everyone.

I'm new to SketchUp but starting to grasp the things. I have some very basic experience with 3D modelling so my learning curve will be quite steep.

Thanks for your time
Duka

Angel · 13 Dec 2018, 22:09

Link to enter raffle is not working

Has this contest finished?

Thanks in advance

A

dabird · 21 Feb 2020, 10:09

Hello Everyone:

I've been using sketchup off and on, mostly off, for several years. Now I discover that I have to use the cloud version, or the 2017 make version if I want to use it locally.

My current project is to use sketchup to document/plan a telescope that I'm making to house optics bought from Surplus Shed. (Hobby.) I got started by importing some 3D print files. Then I tried to use the cloud version to view them, but the delays made that impossible, so I switched to the 2017 version. Now, I've tried the free cloud version again, no longer using the 3D print files, and find it harder to use than the 2017 version. So much for that.

My first question is that it seems this thread hasn't got much traffic lately, and I'm wondering why? So, will asking anything here do me any good?

My real question has to do with getting help for the 2017 version. It seems that all the general online help is either obsolete, or strictly for the cloud product. Finding help for the 2017 version seems hard. At least that's my impression. I'm avoiding the official sketchup user forum for now under the assumption that there will be a bias against the 2017 free version because there's no money in it for Trimble.

So, here I am. Hoping to get some clarification, little my little, on how to run this really cool tool.

Dave

Dave R · 21 Feb 2020, 12:49

Dave, welcome to Sketchucation.

The majority of the discussions you'll find here about using SketchUp will apply to 2017 Make. There are surely some that will apply to features that have been released for the pro users but you can probably ignore them. There's not as much, yet, on using the wed-based versions because those versions are newer. The web-based versions are very usable (on my computers the SketchUp Free and SketchUp Shop run very well even with large files) and have some benefits over the desktop client versions. If you need to be able to access SketchUp without an internet connection or you need to use extensions, though, the desktop version is the way to go.

Your assumption of a bias against 2017 Make is just an assumption and it couldn't be more wrong.

robinwallington · 22 Feb 2020, 02:59

Hi!
My name is Robin. I am a new SketchUp user and I just signed up with sketchucation today. So far I love this software and I am looking forward to getting acquainted with all it's potential. I first did the 30 day trial of SketchUp Pro 2020. While I was in the middle of a SketchUp course my 30 day trial was up. Since then I have been using the SketchUp 2008 version to continue learning but I noticed that I cannot retrieve my classwork I was doing in the 2020 version. My questions are: How can I open files from the 2020 version, in the 2008 version? And, when I do decide to buy the SketchUp 2020 license, will I have trouble transferring models from the 2008 version into the 2020 version?

dabird · 22 Feb 2020, 06:51

@dave r said:

Dave, welcome to Sketchucation.

The majority of the discussions you'll find here about using SketchUp will apply to 2017 Make. There are surely some that will apply to features that have been released for the pro users but you can probably ignore them. There's not as much, yet, on using the wed-based versions because those versions are newer. The web-based versions are very usable (on my computers the SketchUp Free and SketchUp Shop run very well even with large files) and have some benefits over the desktop client versions. If you need to be able to access SketchUp without an internet connection or you need to use extensions, though, the desktop version is the way to go.

Your assumption of a bias against 2017 Make is just an assumption and it couldn't be more wrong.

Thanks for the reply.

The attempt that I made on the web that failed was with an stl file that was intended to print. I had imported it into sketchup. Being from the stl may have had something to do with the difficulty; don't know. All I can say for sure is that it took so long between view changes with orbit and zoom that it locked up.

Thanks for correcting my assumption. This made me look elsewhere for some of my issues, and having corrected one of them, I'm having better luck now.

BTW, what is the relationship between sketchucation.com and forums.sketchup.com? Without my assumption of the heavy hand of corporate profit, why the seeming redundancy?

So lastly, where should I go from here?

Thanks again,

Dave

TIG · 22 Feb 2020, 13:17

To interject...

The forums at Sketchup.com and SketchUcation.com are separate entities.

A quick history lesson...

SketchUp was developed by some guys who left AutoDesk [@Last]...
It had its own active forums - at that time many of us now here 'met' up.
They then sold Sketchup to Google.
Google weren't interested in the forums and that side effectively died out.
Meanwhile a group of enthusiasts set up SketchUcation.com to fill the void.
So SketchUcation's pages have existed much longer that the now 'official' forum.
At that time there was not good central repository for Plugins [later Extensions] - so we developed the SketchUcation PluginStore for RBZs, the Shop for models etc.
Meanwhile SketchUp itself changed hands again - to Trimble - and they relaunched their forums, and developed their own Extension Warehouse [turning down our offer for a join collaboration] and 3d-Warehouse.
Several authors like myself use only the SketchUcation PluginStore for our RBZs.
Many authors prefer the more friendly way our store works - but of course the corporate power of SketchUp has grown considerably in recent years and dominates in some areas...
Most of us here [like me and DaveR] are active on both forums - some of us are also 'Sages' involved in general problem solving, and also advising SketchUp 'behind the scenes', and of course we have a good relationship with SketchUp's guys, and meet at events like Basecamps and Devcamps.

Dave R · 22 Feb 2020, 13:18

Sketchucation started shortly after Google purchased SketchUp from @Last Software. It was started to provide support to SketchUp users but is totally separate from SketchUp because Google was doing a poor job of that. The SketchUp Community Forum was is owned by Trimble.

Edit: TIG gave a better description of the situation.

As to where you should go from here, that's up to you. There's plenty of help available that will apply to SketchUp 2017 Make if you want to continue with it.