No text manual for download?

Lemastre

Sketchup looks slick, but without a well-indexed manual, printed or online, I'm pretty much frustrated. The video tutorials go way too fast and of course cover up whatever you're working on.

I've screwed with the program a good bit over a span of about 40 hours and haven't completed a single simple building. Also, I'm not sure the program is entirely compatible with my MacBook, OS 10.4.10, since the select feature works poorly, and the cursors now and then leave trails of colored dots, which quickly fill up the work area.

Is there a way to do plans and elevations separately in 2D and have the program combine them to produce the 3D images? I have no time to be dragging stuff around the screen trying to hook it together or warping flat surfaces to create hip roofs using a program that sees movement as happening on three axes while I see only two. It's worse than playing chess while viewing the game at board level with one eye.

Gaieus

Lemastre,

Here are the online manuals:

SjatchUp for Mac and
LayOut for Mac.

There are pdf versions of the manuals, too, bit I forget where to download them on one hand and they are hundreds of pages long on the other. The online ones are nice for easily navigable and searchable - I suggest them.

BTW - If you happen to go to your Help menu, these are the User Guides that are linked there...

For the coloured dots may I suggest you to turn off fast feedback and/or hardware acceleration (play with the settings) in Window > Preferences > OpenGL tab.

Have fun...

TaffGoch

The PDF manuals can be downloaded from the Google Help Center:

http://sketchup.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=36213

Regards,
Taff

Gaieus

Thanks Taf...

I kind of find SU pages hard to navigate - you always need to "collect" info from 3rd party places...

TaffGoch

Wanna know my secret?

There happens to be a 'full dump' URL for the SketchUp Help Center:

http://sketchup.google.com/support/?fulldump=1

You can then use your browser's 'find-on-page' feature to find words or phrases that you may recall being used in a Help Center topic.

Or, of course, you can read through everything to familiarize yourself with the wealth of information available. Hope you like reading...

Regards,
Taff

Gaieus

Now that's great, Taff!

I might make a sticky about basic help centre aritcles, tutorials etc. in this forum and this will definitely be included!

Thanks!

rhankc

lemastre,
I dont know shat version you are working with, but the software is definatly more powerful than the price! The possibilities with SU are there, you just have to quit thinking your working with cad. Hang out around here, check out back-to-school tutorials, the standard SU tuts, and there was a guy around named diedre bur (sorry about messing up the name) who had some very good plan drawing tutorials that will get you started quick. I think he is found on the Spirit Cad site. If that doesn't work I can get you a contact. good luck.