I stumbled across SketchUp a few years ago on Google's site. I thought it was pretty cool. However, I didn't have a lot of time to play with it. A couple years ago, I was working on an expansion project for my church and found out that all of the architects that I talked to were using it for modeling. I had no idea that it had such deep roots in the Architecture field. I thought it was just another cool tool from Google that had some fad flare.
Last year I started my first SketchUp "Project". A community Canoe Rack for the lake access area where I have some vacation property. (I can see a SketchUp vacation home design in my future). With this project I learned just how powerful SketchUp really is.
I've created many designs that were much more complex in AutoCad and in Solidworks. However, I found that it was actually easier to do this design in SketchUp than in the other CAD packages
This was a great experience and a now I'm off to bigger and more complex projects. I'm also working on some Plugins using Ruby Scripts.
So Far I like this tool and it's capabilities.
As time progresses I'll post some of my napkin SketchUp's here...
Download this SketchUp Model
