Getting Started With SketchUp

[Jeff Zanin]

Search Youtube for Jay Bates Sketchup. He has some great tutorial videos that cover Sketchup. And, since he is a woodworker, they are geared towards what you are likely looking for.

I second this. Even his project vids where he quickly runs through making a sketchup drawing are extremely helpful. He calls out the commands as hes doing them. After a few vids and a few attempts on my own drawings it all clicked. Trafitional tutorials were too much of the wrong info for me.

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"space bar, triple click, G for component, enter" - I still hear Jay saying this whenever I work with Sketchup.  And a good thing too because unless you do this at all the necessary times (basically whenever you create a piece of your project) things will quickly go awry when you try to move, push, pull or otherwise manipulate that piece.

I am using the free version for shop furniture and other simple projects and even with my limited skills (mainly from watching Jay's videos) it is nice to have a measured drawing to work from, and to quickly try different things on the screen instead of on paper during the "design" stage.

If I were doing end work for clients I would want better skills and possibly a better product, one that would do cut lists to work from and also print nice drawings to use in presentations and contracts.

But for my purposes and for free with a lot of free online training Sketch is hard to beat. 

Finally, for anyone looking for learning materials I recommend against the DVD "Google Sketchup Guide for Woodworkers - The Basics" with Dave Richards from Fine Woodworking / The Taunton Press.  I found it to be of poor technical quality and intended to return it, but since I still have it apparently I couldn't even be bothered to do that.