Sketchup

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grave
Bronze Member
Posts: 1
Joined: Wed Aug 23, 2006 7:58 pm

Sketchup

Post by grave »

Hi every one. Im new to the forums,and hope Im doing it right. Here goes,has any one tried GOOGLES SKETCHUP [FREE] AS yet? I have been told that after you download it for a short time you have to pay for it. Is this true or false? Thank's in advance.
GRAVE
hfmann
Gold Member
Posts: 268
Joined: Fri Dec 08, 2006 9:04 pm
Location: Perrysburg, Ohio

Post by hfmann »

Hi Grave,

I just started playing with free SketchUp. From what I can tell, it's totally free. There is an upgrade version that you have to pay for. But supposedly you can use the limited version for free as long as you want.

I can see in a lot of various forum postings that people are indeed using it. .

Hal
charlese
Platinum Member
Posts: 7501
Joined: Fri Dec 08, 2006 10:46 pm
Location: Lancaster, CA

Sketch Up

Post by charlese »

Hi Grave:
To answer your question directly - No, you don't have to pay for it. I've had it for several months and no dings to pay for it. Guess you can get more features by paying for them.

I don't really favor the Sketch up program, although I have used it to sketch out a telephone table with a arched and curved back. My favorite is Design CAD Express. This is a 2D program that renders very nice printed out designs, once you draw them. So far I have drawn out a complete renovation of my dear wife's sewing room and several cabinets. You can try this program for a trial time of a couple of months for free. If you want to buy it then you can. Design Cad also has a 3D program, It is just too complicated for me at this time.

Best Wishes, Charlese
User avatar
dusty
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Posts: 21359
Joined: Wed Nov 22, 2006 6:52 am
Location: Tucson (Wildcat Country), Arizona

Sketchup

Post by dusty »

I down loaded Sketchup about 6 weeks ago; I believe it is free. If it is not, it will come off my computer immediately. At first, I thought it was great and it is if you are doing houses and yards. I can't figure how to scale it down to do smaller projects like furniture.

Charlese, maybe you can solve that puzzle for me.

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hfmann
Gold Member
Posts: 268
Joined: Fri Dec 08, 2006 9:04 pm
Location: Perrysburg, Ohio

Post by hfmann »

[quote="dustywoodworker"]I down loaded Sketchup about 6 weeks ago]


Dusty,

I too was having a rough time with it. Then I spent a couple of hours with various online tutorials and found a lot more power than I thought would be available for free. I'm using free sketchup to design a new bathroom vanity for us.

[ATTACH]31[/ATTACH]

But I found out I had used the defaults and it was sized as big as a house. Then I found the scaling function. The tool bar and icon for scaling looks like this.

[ATTACH]32[/ATTACH]

Or you can get to it from the menu.

[ATTACH]33[/ATTACH]

I'm currently drafting all my projects now in sketchup. Its fun and gives me a lot better idea of what it's going to look like. Now I've got to figure out how to draw drawers on that curved front.

Good luck,
Hal
Attachments
sketchup vanity.jpg
sketchup vanity.jpg (41.71 KiB) Viewed 20838 times
sketchup scaling.jpg
sketchup scaling.jpg (7.59 KiB) Viewed 20833 times
sketchup scaling menu.jpg
sketchup scaling menu.jpg (29.88 KiB) Viewed 20826 times
charlese
Platinum Member
Posts: 7501
Joined: Fri Dec 08, 2006 10:46 pm
Location: Lancaster, CA

sketch up

Post by charlese »

Hey Dusty - Looks like hfmann (Hal) has the solution! I can't figurre out how to copy my sketch up of the phone bench to this forum. If I knew - I would!
My work is not as pretty as Hal's. I tried to draw up the bench piece by piece and them fit them together. This was handy as I could see how the joints fit. Not a real pretty sketch, but does show dimensions.

As for size, because I don't know any better, I just zoomed in to the size desired. The person in the corner becomes HUGE!

Thanks for the help, Hal!! Can you tell me how to copy the Sketch up Pix to this forum? I know you can. If you would be so nice to endure the effort, I'll try to understand the instructions.

Best wishes for the New year to you both!

Charlese
hfmann
Gold Member
Posts: 268
Joined: Fri Dec 08, 2006 9:04 pm
Location: Perrysburg, Ohio

Post by hfmann »

charlese wrote: Can you tell me how to copy the Sketch up Pix to this forum?
Charlese,

I've been slowly working through these tutorials. They've been a big help. http://www.caddtutorialsonline.com/sketchup-tutorials.html

As for posting sketchup pix, I used a commercial screen capture program (Snapit) for all those items in my previous post. I'm wondering if there's a freeware alternative to program I used. I couldn't find a way to directly convert a sketchup file to a format that'll upload to the forum.

Well, I just found a way.
1) Do a printscreen. (Alt + Print Screen)
2) Open Microsoft Paint program
3) Paste the screen image into the paint window (edit, paste)
4) Save as jpeg file.
5) upload to fourm

Here's a sample of the process I just described.
Image

Its much better though if you have some sort of more powerful photo or image editing program to use instead of MS Paint. You can then crop the image or resize it to be more manageable. You can see this screen print includes everything on the screen when I did #1 above. Way more than you might want. In fact the file was bigger than the forum allows for uploading via "attaching".
hfmann
Gold Member
Posts: 268
Joined: Fri Dec 08, 2006 9:04 pm
Location: Perrysburg, Ohio

Post by hfmann »

charlese wrote: Can you tell me how to copy the Sketch up Pix to this forum?
Charlese,

I've been slowly working through these tutorials. They've been a big help. http://www.caddtutorialsonline.com/sketchup-tutorials.html

As for posting sketchup pix, I used a commercial screen capture program (Snagit) for all those items in my previous post. I'm wondering if there's a freeware alternative to the program I used. I couldn't find a way to directly convert a sketchup file to a format that'll upload to the forum.

Well, I just found a way.
1) Do a printscreen. (Alt + Print Screen)
2) Open Microsoft Paint program
3) Paste the screen image into the paint window (edit, paste)
4) Save as jpeg file.
5) upload that file to fourm

Here's a sample of the process I just described.

Image

Its much better though if you have some sort of more powerful photo or image editing program (e.g., Adobe Photoshop) to use instead of MS Paint. You can then crop the image or resize it to be more manageable. You can see this screen print includes everything on the screen when I did #1 above. Way more than you might want. In fact the file was bigger than the forum allows for uploading via "attaching".

Hope that helps. Bottom line though, SketchUp (even the free version) seems to be very powerful. A lot more than I originally thought. Use the tutorials I referenced above and then just keep playing. Sucks up a lot of time and is frustrating, but for me, its been worth it so far.

Good luck,
Hal
charlese
Platinum Member
Posts: 7501
Joined: Fri Dec 08, 2006 10:46 pm
Location: Lancaster, CA

sketchup

Post by charlese »

Thanks for the info. The print screen/paste into paint method didn't work for me. The paint wouldn't give me a paste command. I got it copied as a jpeg and mailed it to myself, but that method only allowed me to open "sketchup" from my e-mail. Bedtime! I'll look at the link you gave me tomorrow.
Thanks again for the info.
Charlese :)
hfmann
Gold Member
Posts: 268
Joined: Fri Dec 08, 2006 9:04 pm
Location: Perrysburg, Ohio

Post by hfmann »

charlese wrote:The print screen/paste into paint method didn't work for me. The paint wouldn't give me a paste command. Charlese :)
Hi Charlese,

I suspect you couldn't get a paste command in Paint because the image wasn't really in the clipboard available for pasting . Here's the instructions from my help scren for copying screen contents to the clipboard.

To copy the window or screen contents
To make a copy of the active window, press ALT+PRINT SCREEN.
To copy the entire screen as it appears on your monitor, press PRINT SCREEN.
Note:
To paste the image into a document, click the Edit menu in the document window, and then click Paste. (this last sentence also applies to pasting into Paint - hal)


Give that a try. However, even if successful your image may be larger than the Shopsmith forum allows to be "attached." But give it a shot.

Good Luck,
Hal
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