SKU_E25 Design with SketchUp
Want to make your projects even better? Sketch them up first!
Jesper Oster will lead you through the basics of using the SketchUp modeling tool to visualize and plan furniture, cabinetry, and more.
Designing your woodworking projects in advance is not only critical to making efficient use of time and materials, but will enable you to visualize your ideas and consider scale, proportion, and construction details—before you cut. While an old-fashioned pencil sketch still has its place, computer-aided design (CAD) software can produce high-quality 3D drawings with ease and will greatly expand your design capabilities.
SketchUp is one of the most popular, user-friendly, and powerful CAD programs available and is great for modeling furniture designs, as it can generate a 3D drawing with several perspectives, and can produce exploded views, which are a great help in planning construction and assembly.
This class will teach you the basics of using SketchUp for furniture design, including drawing a table as a sample project. While the web-based SketchUp Free is a popular option, this class will use SketchUp Pro, which includes some useful advanced features and is available for a free 7-day free trial.
Please download Sketch-up Pro to your computer before the class. You can get a free 30-day trial by going to https://www.sketchup.com/en/try-sketchup and following the directions.
You will learn:
- How to set up SketchUp templates
- How to navigate in 3D space
- How to use tool bars in SketchUp
- Drawing in 2D
- Drawing in 3D
- Measuring and using guide lines
- Using groups
- Moving and copying
- Saving your work
Prerequisite: None. Open to all skill levels.
Tools required: Each student must bring their own laptop computer or a computer with monitor and 3-button mouse and must have SketchUp Pro installed on their computer before class begins. Download a free 30-day trial version at https://www.sketchup.com/en/try-sketchup