When I was young I enjoyed drawing. Not artistic drawing, but diagrams and architectural drawings, often on graph paper. I thought that I could perhaps be an architect when I grew up. I remember once, when the only computer we had in the house was an already ancient Compaq “Portable” computer (the sturdy leather handle did little to relieve the back strain that carrying it could cause) with an add-on EGA monitor, I asked for a program that would let me create these sorts of drawings on the computer. I didn’t know about CAD (computer aided design) software at the time, and was ignorant that the CAD software of the day was expensive and wouldn’t work on our old PC. My dad took me to a local software store anyway, where it was quickly apparent that all I was going to find there was a DOS based painting program, with aproximately the drawing ability of Microsoft Paint. We left empty-handed.
Later, in high school and then college, my friends and I were fans of iD Software’s groundbreaking line of first-person video games, starting with Wolfenstein 3D, then Doom, and later the Quake series. These games spawned communities dedicated to creating additional levels for the games and making other modifications to them. Various 3rd party level editors for these games appeared, offering CAD style tools that allowed users to design environments that they could virtually walk around in when they were done. Clumsy recreations of schools and houses were common. I tried these various programs and found them tedious and difficult to use, and of little practical application.
Fast forward another decade, and what do we find? Along with astoundingly faster computers, in which hardware 3d acceleration is standard, comes another great program from Google, called SketchUp. SketchUp was originally developed by @Last Software in Boulder, Colorado, as an easier to use CAD program. Google purchased @Last in 2004 on the basis of their plug-in for Google Earth.
Now on version 7, for Windows or Mac OS X, SketchUp is indeed easy-to-use CAD software. Now that I have a bit of practice with it, I find that I can easily take the ideas in my head and “sketch” them as easily as I could on a piece of paper. Easier, really, because I can achieve accuracy down to 1/16 of an inch, and view my work from any angle. In a few hours, I modeled what we’d like to do with our backyard.
SketchUp is great for drawing out home improvement projects.
SketchUp works by letting you easily draw lines, and then being smart about how to fill in the surfaces between the lines. The genius of SketchUp is that it works with you, always trying to anticipate what you mean to be doing, while being flexible enough to not force your hand if it guesses wrong.
I could teach you how to use it, but I don’t think I could do a better job than Aidan Chopra, author of SketchUp For Dummies. I learned how to use SketchUp by watching the series of videos on his site. If you’re looking to try SketchUp, download it here, and watch the videos at Chopra’s site.
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