Google SketchUp

New Experiences, and Brighter Beginnings


Learning and using Google SketchUp

Google SketchUp is an application that I never knew had existed until recently when the class was assigned to make a house from scratch. At first I was anxious at the thought of starting an unfamiliar program and process, but quickly learned. To explain, Google SketchUp is a 3-Dimensional program that is fun to use and easy to learn, especially when you get the tool shortcuts down. Despite it's few limitations on angles, it lets the user create whatever they can imagine. 

Starting Off

After mastering quick transitions between the various tools, it was finally time to figure out what model worked best with what I believed I cold do. To look for inspiration, the website, www.houseplans.com, gave a search engine providing what was needed. It was time to start work on the actual project, and it started with a rectangle following dimensions located from the house plans found from the website. Using the push pull tool to then take it to the height of the ceiling, not the roof, a line was drawn midpoint to midpoint long side. Now here is where the move tool comes into play, hovering over the line drawn, I take it up to the top edge of where the roof would end dimensionally.  

Adding More

When the body is finished, tools will be needed to add detail such as segmenting off various areas or pulling out stairs that are needed, whatever is thought of really. Finding a model assisted the creation of my model because I could go off of a reference point. The main difficulty of this part was the precision and accuracy of unmarked measurements in blueprints onto SketchUp. To do this, comparing two different objects from the photos to the 3-D program prevented confusion and improved on overall estimation.
My Completed Model

Overall, the assignment was enjoyable and easy to get used to, as well as relaxing to start off my day during school. 

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