Google Sketchup tips & discussion

[Iwant1]

Yep with free version of SketchUp.

Go through all Google's tutorials for each tool then the getting started vids. This will take an hour or so. Next I found 'sketchupforwoodworkers.com' to be very helpful. The guy their designs some cabinets but talks his way through explaining every tool as he needs it. This was the best and really got me wanting to have a go. These drawing are my first ever SketchUp workings. I never even followed their tutorials, just watched and took everything in. One important tip is to have a mouse with a clicking wheel. The wheel acts as a zoom, when you hold the wheel down, it orbits the screen, and when held down with the shift key it becomes the screen panning tool. Lots of time is spent on centering on and zooming in the piece you are actually working on and using these techniques really makes it fast.

Lost of cnc machine parts are available in the SketchUp marketplace, which you get to from within SketchUp. All the rails, bearings, spindle, motors, ball nuts, etc are available. Have a search

Let us know how you get on.