Sams Teach Yourself Google SketchUp 8 in 10 Minutes [Paperback]

Google Sketchup is a powerful, free, 3d drawing program. Some aspects are immediately intuitive, some become intuitive with practice, and some parts... well, having a book helps a lot to figure them out. (But before you buy one, try out Sketchup's built-in tutors, and the extensive online help.)

This book is mainly about basic capabilities: drawing simple geometric or freehand objects of various types. It introduces a variety of 2d shapes you can draw, and how you can push or pull them into a third dimension. It tells you how to make them measured sizes. All of the basic shapes in Sketchup are covered. The book discusses moving, rotating, scaling, and taking cross sections. Essentially, the purpose of the book is to explain what each Sketchup tool does, separately.

The problem is, the most complex thing they teach you to do is to create a solid abstract geometric object. They do tell you how to cut holes into it. What I need to do is to build real models. The back of the book says: "...you'll learn all you need to use Google's free Sketchup 8 to create pro-quality 3D models of practically anything!" but there is no example of combining shapes or objects to create real models of the sort you will find in the 3d warehouse, which are compound models made from creating separate objects and assembling them precisely.

While this book does discuss groups and components, it shows separate simple 3d objects that are placed near each other, but not positioned accurately or joined. If you think about how a real object is built - a simple table, for example - it involves assembling separate pieces that are each simple 3d objects (think of pieces of wood) that have surfaces snap together in specific locations. You can do that in Sketchup, which will infer points or edges to snap to, but this book does not cover that, and they are not obvious. Until you know these tricks, it is very frustrating to try to position two objects precisely in a 3d space.

Now consider how you would model a picket fence. The picket would be a component, but drawing an accurate picket with a pointed end requires combining a rectangle and a triangle, then removing unneeded edges, and pulling it into 3d. There is a way to make a copy of the picket a specific distance away, and even a way of telling Sketchup how many of these pickets you want it to repeat. Except for pulling into 3d, none of this is covered, nor is there an example that walks you through something like this.

There are many features in Sketchup that I consider to be essential for any meaningful modeling. Here are some that are not covered:

* Measured move, to reposition an object a precise distance in a specified direction
* How to use the Move tool to create a copy of the original object and move it a precise distance, and how to cause that action to be repeated any number of times, to create a series of identical objects that are evenly spaced
* It tells you how to select one edge, one face, or one object. What about selecting multiple edges, faces, or objects, where the selection rectangle isn't specific enough, and you have to add them one at a time? How do you deselect an edge, face, or object while leaving the others selected?
* They talk about selection with a single click. But Sketchup also has double- and triple-click selection, and they are not discussed.
* They don't discuss the difference between using a selection rectangle where you draw it from left to right, vs right to left, and how these do different things.

There is a lot of repetition in this book. Every exercise tells you how to start up Sketchup as the first step. Many of the exercises have the same early steps to create a cube, and it is the same each time. In the sections on creating measured lines, rectangles, etc, the same explanation of the numbers and units you type in is repeated, even though it was covered two pages earlier.

I suppose this book is okay as far as it goes, but it really is just Part 1 of a useful book. Part 2 would tell you how to take the basic shape-making to build real-world models from the elements of Part 1.

I have not found the perfect Sketchup book, but the one I like best so far is Google SketchUp: The Missing Manual, because it presents many more details, and it walks you through examples of building real-world models from assembling he basic shapes.

BOTTOM LINE: There is not much in this book that you can't learn by experimenting with the program. Click on a tool, click and drag on the work surface. The book explains it the behavior of the basic tools, but the basic tools are obvious enough. The hard parts, how to arrange things together into a composite model, the hidden shortcuts that aren't obvious in the icon and menu interface, those are the things you need to read to find (either online help, or a book), and those aren't here. This book isn't worthless, but it was not helpful to me. One specific chapter of "The Missing Manual"
got me unstuck with the composite arrangement problem, and other nuggets are there to be found in that book.

NOTE: I have no connection with the authors or companies who publish either book; what I say is my unbiased opinion from having used both books.

Great book to get you going, and excellent reference for pointing you in right direction when you are trying to figure out a new SketchUp function.

Helped me begin to become proficient in SketchUp, after a few false starts trying to build more than simple shapes. But if you are already somewhat familiar with SketchUp, might want to look elsewhere.

Good book. Plenty of detail, many tricks and tips. Not super advanced - but then, it's not supposed to be. Clear and well-written good coverage.

› Go to Amazon.com to see all 3 reviews  4.0 out of 5 stars