SketchUp! is better than hand drawing, really.
SketchUp, better than sliced bread or total enigma? That depends on whether you've been exposed to the program in a context that you can understand and apply to your needs. I believe it can be hard to understand both in its operation and in terms of practical applications. In this thread I'll explore some concepts and techniques to help use SketchUp for drawing complete project plans.
From here on out I will refer to SketchUp as "SU". Let's look at how and why to apply SU to develop project plans.
One very good reason to SU for your project drawing is you are, in essence, actually building your project, at least virtually. You can start off with conceptual models to work out some of your design ideas like scale or structure. These models don't have to be detailed or ever to perfect working scale. (This step can be skipped if you already have your design worked out.)
To get started lets take a look at this image of a kitchen cabinet (carcass only). This is a very simple drawing, it's the same kind of drawing someone might be able to draw by hand without to much trouble (assuming you have some experience hand drawing). How long would it take you to draw this cabinet by hand?
The SU model I used to export this picture from took about ten minutes to create. I started out in SU with a pretty good idea of what I was going to draw from my passed experience building and installing cabinets. Because of that I was able to draw a complete working model with almost no time spent drawing conceptually.
Okay, so let's say the guy hand drawing also spent ten minutes and he ended up with something like I have in the picture above. He now has a drawing showing the project with almost no construction details where as my SU model has almost every detail (the model, not this picture). At this point he has one drawing and I have a complete 3D model to show a client (or spouse). So ten minutes in SU is way ahead.
The next step for hand drawing is to make working plans or in SU's case more workable plans. This is where it becomes harder to hand draw and were SU pulls farther ahead. Hand drawing to scale takes time, in SU it's really no harder to make your model to scale. While the guy hand drawing is busy on his next drawing I'll add some visual references to my model.
This makes things much easier to grasp the scale with the measurements in place but I can do better. I'm going to focus turning my model into something more like building plans maybe something I could print out and take down to the shop.
I've placed a copy of the cabinet in the model to show both a front and side view, but I can do better.
Here I've taken the model apart to get an exploded view to better show the construction of the cabinet. I'm up to a half hour or so, how long would it take the guy hand drawing to produce the images I have here?
For all the great virtues of SU it won't make a cut list for you. That doesn't mean you can't make one.
While building my model I keep track of the measurements of each part (in a separate document) so I can add a cut list in SU as text. There's still a few construction details to cover before my plans are complete.
Now with the details for the dados I've got a complete set of working plans that I can print out to work in my shop or share with anyone. Notice I change the "style" in SU to make everything black and white to make it easy to print out.
Next, how to plan and construct your plans, making use of scenes in SU.
. I sort of went the "Make it Stout and Get it Out" route.
