Getting started with SketchUp was pretty straight-forward. It has a friendly UI and a lot of powerful tools. Everything should be easy in theory, but that wasn’t quite my experience in practice.
The first issue I ran into when modeling my house was glitchy snapping/editing tools. In other 3d software I’ve used, the automatic snapping and symmetry were fluid to the point that I almost forgot they were there. However, In SketchUp, there were multiple times that I had to compromise on the realistic features of my model and repeat the same task to achieve a passing model.
The copy and paste tools were also finicky. I ended up drawing each of the windows individually because the paste function botched the textures or didn’t place entities correctly. Maybe these were just issues with the browser version I was using.
One thing I would suggest to new users of SketchUp is learning the keyboard shortcuts. Most of the shortcuts for tools are intuitive (like O for orbit, P for push/pull, etc.) and they can really save you a lot of time while modeling.
Overall, I had a good first experience with SketchUp. I can understand why it might be used in digital humanities to provide context about a given topic. Software like SketchUp could be used to bring detailed models of historical artifacts, ancient civilizations, geographical features and much more. With the ability to digitally represent objects and locations in three dimensions, I think more people will be able to gain insights into research across disciplines.
Hey Cole! I also had major issues with the copy/paste feature, so much so that I ended up simply giving up. To be honest, I doubt that was the browser; seems like a plain software issue.
Hi Cole, what kind of operating system were you using? I also had issues with the copy/paste features on the program using my Mac. Good catch on the shortcuts. I was wasting a lot of time doing the manual commands so I will try the shortcut commands next time around.
Hey Kwaku! I also used Mac OSX while modeling in SketchUp. It never really crossed my mind that SketchUp might not be optimized for OSX. Maybe I’ll have to try things out with Windows!
The house looks great Cole! Those with experience in other 3D software often have a harder time of it than novices, since SketchUp thinks differently than most.
Copy and paste has strange behaviors that are best avoided: to copy something your best bet is to use the Move tool and toggle the option key (Mac) or ctrl (PC).