Topic: Sketchup anyone?

[jharr]

This is a pretty cool free design tool. For those of us who like to make stuff, it is handy. This is an 8x10 pinhole I will be making from foam core.

[Indofunk]

I'm going to design some French fries with Sketchup.

[Francois]

Played with it during my "I dream of a 3D printer" days.
Once you get used to it, it's not too bad.

[Jack Johnson]

Played with it during my "I dream of a 3D printer" days.

Same here. There were (are?) places that you could send a SketchUp file and they'd price and cut lumber to spec, so you could do things like your dream doghouse without the perpetual measure-twice-cut-once. Could be a fun way to build a cabin if you know what you're doing (which I don't).

Or a 4x5 box camera. Hmm....

An online acquaintance switched to Tinkercad for all his 3D print design work, and I've only played with it briefly but it also looks like fun.

[Francois]

Eventually when I feel like spending a lot of time learning it, I might learn to use Blender. Infinitely more powerful than sketchup but what a pain to use.

[jharr]

Yeah, Sketchup is the right tool for this job. Just rectangles. It took some time, but it did save me on a couple of bad measurements. I created all of the pieces first and then 'fit' them together. That's where you find that intuition is not always the carpenter's best friend.