I notice there is quite some time since anyone posted anything about sketchup.

richs11 said:

Boy, I use Sketchup all the time for anything involving more than 2 pieces of wood! I've used it for room layouts, yard layouts (in the simplest 2D form) as well as woodworking. I've just completed designing a horizontal router add-on to my router table and, as usual, I find that using Sketchup reveals the flaws in my design thinking well before digging through my pile of lumber. I've spent a few days refining my approach (for the router add-on) - rejecting a couple of ideas and adding a couple. The ability to create in 3D and to perform some of the same operations as you would with real wood (e.g. dados) is very helpful in thinking things through - both in terms of design and construction. So now I'm ready to make some sawdust.

I am still using Sketchup 2017 for the Mac, which is no longer supported but my current Mac OS will still run it and it has all the features I need. I've messed with the on-line version very briefly and while I think I could live with it for some things, my recollection is that its hard to save projects and, overall, the features are more limited (at least when I last messed with it). One does now have to use the on-line version to import designs from the 3D warehouse, but I can copy them into my Sketchup 2017 version. I've used it since it was a Google product - and certainly in the time up to the 2017 version, there were improvements that have been useful. But it has served me well - and I've designed a couple of fairly complex projects with it. I still managed to slide back down the learning curve when I haven't used it in a while, so I have to relearn things, but for the most part that doesn't seem to be a huge problem that a few expletives can't fix. Trimble does have some pretty good on-line tutorials and there are some Sketchup for woodworkers books out there - the ones I have are by Joe Zeh and by David Heim

I haven't yet had to confront what to do if the 2017 version won't work anymore (my current thinking is to not upgrade the OS on one of my older Macs just to avoid having compatibility issues arise) - I really, really, really dislike "subscription-based" software (thank you MIcrosoft... not).

- Rich

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