Free 3D design programme (Google Sketchup)

Member Name: seantheprawn

Product:	Google Sketchup
Date:	10/08/09 (58 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: easy and fast to use

Disadvantages: no plan and section views not great for details

Google Sketch up is a programme that you can use to design almost anything. Architectural, engineering, furniture design,
Game designers, etc.

I use a number of programmes myself for doing 3D architectural drawings and Sketchup is one of my favourite for a number of reasons. The great thing about sketch up is it's free. You can down load it in about two minutes from the website and it is compatible with windows, im not sure about Macs and it doesn't require a massive memory to run, one of my computers only has 1G of RAM and it works perfectly.

It is also very user friendly and I learned how to use the tools a lot faster than most programmes. There are also free tutorials available which are very good and teach you the in's and out's of the programme.

I use it mostly for doing my 3D architectural drawings, a lot of the time I want to place my building in its correct environment. There is a tool where if I import a map I can pull the buildings up to the correct height and use the paint bucket tool to render the correct material. I can render an area of about a kilometre squared in a couple of hours. There is also a 3D warehouse where you can go online and download absolutely anything to put in your drawings, like a tree or a bus, or a block of flats.

The disadvanges I find with sketch up is it's not very good for doing detailed work because it doesn't really use plan and section views like other programmes.

Summary: very useful for producting 3D views quickly

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