A Welcome Message to New SketchUcation Members

makizushi

Greetings, all.

My name is Ryan. I work at a church and used SketchUp to create a model of the property so that I could more efficiently plan a haunted house / maze for Hallowe'en last year. I haven't got a background in CAD and have no talent for reading blueprints, but I've worked with Adobe Illustrator some and ported the skills from there to SU as best I could. The result was a usable, if inelegant file. I'd hoped to have become a SketchUp pro by now, and to be wowing everyone with mad-skillz visual walkthroughs of how we're going to do this year's haunted house...but that hasn't happened (yet). So to remedy that I've come to sketchucation for guidance.

My hopes for this forum?

I need a basic vocabulary so I understand the terminology when folks use it.
If someone could point me toward a 'best practices' guide for creating and ordering the components & models - such that I could have multiple POVs, cross-sections, etc.
also, if I want to upload my working file and ask people to critique and/or improve on it, where do I go?

Thanks in advance, and it's nice to be on such a friendly forum.

Gaieus

Hi Ryan and welcome!

There will probably not be any direct guide for most of your questions as some are quite complex.

As for "terminology": there is a "Glossary" in the SU Help Center which explains all the terms used in the application.
As for organising your model and especially using components - whenever there is the smallest bit that is repeated at least twice in your model, you should use a component and its copies ("instances") for it - but of course, this advice is ultimately vague and we could demonstrate much better with an actual example (model).
Under the text area where you are posting, there is an "Upload attachment" tab. You can upload attachments up to 2Gb here (I think smaller for images but of course you need not use 2Gb images) but if your file is bigger, you can always use the 3D Warehouse to share your model and paste the URL here.

Thoryan

Hi Guys,

Just wanted to do a quick intro.
My names Tom, and I'm in the UK.
I'm following in the footsteps of other action figure fans and just trying to create my own mods for figures, and was recommended sketchup by many of the guys on some of the figure forums.

ConnorBC

Hello everyone. I'm new to SU. I've been playing with SU Pro 8 for a few weeks now and really enjoy the program. I have never played with this type of 3D program before and have been told that SU is a great way to eventually jump into SolidWorks.

I have always enjoyed traditional drafting since high school. I am currently designing and developing new compound bow components. I have been submitting all of my traditional drafts to a second party for modeling and would like to speed things up by building the models and generate the required PDF's and DXF files right from the start.

I am able to generate simple components to scale but feel I am still some time away from completing more complex models. I will endoubtedly have many questions while learning SU.

Thanks everyone! I look forward to being an active forum member and hopefully can contribute to the forums very soon.

Connor

mitcorb

Welcome to you, Connor:
I hope you enjoy the ride. Feel free to ask questions. There's always somebody who either has an answer or can point you to a solution.

ricabescobar

Hi my name is Richard, I'm from Guatemala, that is in Central America!!, and I'm an Architec student, but I'm already working as an Architect, and I love to work with Sketchup, my primary job is in Autocad, but everytime that I can, I work something in 3d on skethup for presentations to clients or my boss. I also work with 3d max.
This is my blog and some of my works:
http://visual3drcab.blogspot.com/

I'm very happy to find this web!
I hope to find somethings very useful here.

Supreme Line

Hi Guys

I Am Ryan From Scotland.

I Started Google Sketch Up in May 2011 and since Then I have Created about 15 Ships In Which Iv Made A Ship Line Supreme Line I have 6 Employees that Build Ships For My Virtual Ship Line.

This Is My Ship Line Wiki Page
http://www.peekarica.com/steampedia/index.php?title=Supreme_Line

This Is The Official Website of My Ships
http://supremeline.weebly.com/

My Old Ships are out of date as i am learning how to build better etc.

Hope You Like Them anyway if you have any question please Aks and ill get back to you soon as possible

Waves
Supreme Line

Gaieus

Hi Ryan and welcome!

There are a couple of ship-makers here as well.

http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=81&t=20385&p=170602
or
http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=333&t=33757&p=296873

Have fun!

Supreme Line

@gaieus said:

Hi Ryan and welcome!

There are a couple of ship-makers here as well.

http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=81&t=20385&p=170602
or
http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=333&t=33757&p=296873

Have fun!

Thank You Gaieus

Gaieus

You welcome. I hope you do not mind me linking to those two, superb models. As you can see, you still have some things to improve in your ships (not as if I had ever modelled anything close to those ships linked either).

Supreme Line

@gaieus said:

You welcome. I hope you do not mind me linking to those two, superb models. As you can see, you still have some things to improve in your ships (not as if I had ever modelled anything close to those ships linked either).

Yeah I know I am working on RMS Netherlandic this is my 3rd month on it now and its looking amazing lots more still to do though.

Wiki Page of Netherlandic
http://www.peekarica.com/steampedia/index.php?title=RMS_Netherlandic

Waves
Supreme line

Plastic.Spaceman

Hi All

My name is George, and I am from Melbourne, Australia. I am new to Sketchup and 3D modelling. I have dabbled in the program a few times, but I am keen to learn more, and create some more 3D models. Mainly for my wargaming hobby. I want to build various items in the 28mm (1:56) scale area, which may or may not end up being printed.

I look forward to learning a whole lot more about sketchup, as well as being active on these forums.

See you around the forums.

mitcorb

Welcome, George:
Enjoy your adventure.

xphatjunkie

Hello there newbie here,

Im an assistant Landscape Designer working in Hong Kong, nationality from Indonesia...

please kindly advice from the SU master here, anyway is there any forum in here that provides for landscape architect forum related with SketchUp tools?

regards
rocks

Marcos989

Hello!

I am a greenhorn to SketchUp. I have re-trained recently at my advanced age of 55 and am now a underwater inspector, required to produce drawings of inspected components, so I need to get going with this software.
I do have one question now....the plugin for engineers (3skeng) costs quite a bit and I see nothing else that is free. Most of my drawing is oil platforms, piping, valves ect....from the very little I have seen so far there is not much of this in the warehouse.
Any recommendations?
Likely, I need to just spend time, read, explore and be patient but thought I would ask now.

I was introduced to this prgrm via an engineer on the last job and he made no bones about it that I need to learn this now and quickly. So I am just trying to watch the available video tutorials some what in order. So far they all deal with architectural items.....no engineering ....yet.

Anyway, hello folks...

Rich O Brien

Hi Mark,

There isn't an alternative to Skeng unfortunately.

We've another member here who's involved in the same industry. He's name is Ken and he might help with some techniques.

But it's best to start with a problem then members here usually offer guidance.

We've a moderator named Jean who uses SketchUp in engineering also.

tfdesign

Hi Mark.

I'm also an engineer whose primary CAD Package was Solidworks (although I also dabble in architecture). The problem was that I couldn't afford a seat of Solidworks, so I tried SketchUp instead. Although you need to think a little more, all the tools are essentially there.

You may want to look at the Driving Dimensions plugin for SU too. This allows parametric editing ala Solidworks or Spaceclaim. There's a free version of this plugin.

Tom

And welcome to SketchUcation too!

Rich O Brien

Driving Dimensions plugin can cause alot of issues with other plugins I'm led to believe. So tread carefully.

fxxh

Hi,my name is chenlong .I am a Chinese boy.This is my first post.my English is not good . hope to make friends with you

Mister Iksan

Hi All'

My name is Iksan. im from South East Asian(Indonesia.
it feel so happy have appeared in this forum. just newbie for SU-7.
and i like tried to 3D modeling with SU because so easy & simple to use it. (Thanks Google SU )

regards

Mister Iksan