Sketchup proved to be quite a frustrating learning experience for me. After I mistakenly spent a great deal of time creating the floor plan for my house, I then realized that the assignment was only for the outside. I pressed on, disappointed with my human mistake, but still determined to make something house-like. Unfortunately, I think my complicated internal features messed up how easy it was suppose to be to craft outside features of the house, such as the roof. I could only stretch the roofs on a two dimensional plane, and I could NOT figure out how to make it go upwards. Occasionally, I thought I had gotten the roof to raise and wept for joy, only to discover that it was still two dimensional when I moved the camera.
Luckily, I had an experienced friend to help me. Kevin showed me how to create a roof with lines, so I was able to work around my problem. Lines made it easier to create three dimensional surfaces when the move or push pull tool were being frustrating. To create a shape, you could just draw the lines of that shape and it would create the surfaces for you. Although it’s a little more work than using the other tools, I think I would’ve wasted more time trying to use those tools than just drawing the shapes.
I also could not figure out how to make an oval shape for a pool, so I settled on a hot tub. I was very satisfied with my hot tub after the whole roof situation. The hot tub is probably my favorite part of the house, along with the hedge area within the fence.
I could see this tool being used for brainstorming on how to make the most out of a certain amount of space, whether it’s being used to shelter people or as new creative place. Or both! Although Sketchup frustrated me a lot, it was largely because of my own dumbness. I think that if I started off on a better note, the experience would’ve been a lot nicer for me.
3 replies on “Sketchup? More Like Fed Up!”
It’s really interesting to know that you can create a shape just by drawing the lines – I hadn’t known that and I feel like that could be really helpful in the future, especially for building more detailed models!
Shannon, you win the prize for best title! Don’t let your “human mistake” get you down — it happens to all of us and one of the goals of the class is to have permission to learn from minor failures and iterate to better futures. Your house looks nice in the end and your post details your process very well.
Thank you! I ended up having more fun with it then I admitted in the post, but the title was just too good to include anything but my frustrations. 🙂