Adventures with SketchUp

I approached the assignment to model my house using SketchUp with great trepidation. I found SketchUp a year or two ago as I was searching for a less expensive Photoshop alternative, and found it incredibly non-intuitive and frustrating. (As an aside, the programs have completely different uses and Acorn is a much better Photoshop alternative.) Of course, when I first encountered SketchUp I assumed I’d be able to figure out its functions without the help of any tutorials. It didn’t go well.

This time, with the help of a few basic tutorials, I was supposed to create a model of my childhood home. I discovered that after watching the tutorials, accurately representing my house was more difficult than using SketchUp itself. While I had a good sense of what the house looks like, I did not have any idea of the sizes of porches and windows in comparison to other parts of the house. I likely could have made my final product look more realistic by using SketchUp’s sizing tools more often, but I found that I preferred some free-hand drawing in this situation, as I was not going off of a picture or other plans.

There were several areas where SketchUp still proved incredibly unintuitive, especially when it came to changing the base color of a texture (which was necessary to give my house the blue cladding on its walls). I also discovered that while the technique for making a roof shown in the tutorial works, it had a tendency to glitch, leading to my house initially possessing a terrifying roof which appeared to fold into itself. I discovered that drawing a roof that meets to a point in the center (as parts of my house’s roof does) is easier using a freehand

In sum, I found SketchUp significantly easier and more powerful then I remembered it. However, it is not without its quirks, and the software definitely has a steep learning curve! Now that I’m more familiar with it, I find it much more enjoyable to use.