Google Sketchup - for 3D drawing and design

Let's kick this off with something well-known, robust and fun:

Title: Google Sketchup
Purpose: 3-D Design Program
My use: Woodworking
Where can you get it: http://sketchup.google.com/
What platforms: Windows, Apple

Before you run away thinking 3-D design, this is already too complicated. Hear me out. The beauty of Sketchup is it is extraordinarily easy 3-D design program to learn. It comes in two versions: free, and much more feature rich pay version. But, for the average user the free version is just fine. It downloads to your computer as a stand alone program - no online interface or forced advertising.

The purpose of the program as you might imagine is to do design work in 3-Dimensions. If you can draw circles and blocks you can use this program. Don't let the overly complicated designs shown on the Sketchup homepage scare you off, this program is mighty useful for simple projects.

I use it mostly for Woodworking. I became very intersted in a 3-D program after building a full-sized custom-designed armoir for my bedroom with only 2-D design tools. 2-D just seemed to leave a lot to chance and required multiple individual drawings to get my design right - translate - lots of time and work to get a design together. I used Sketchup to design my recently built workbench and I found it to be a lot easier.

Not surprsingly I have started to see Sketchup pop up and being reviewed in Woodworking magazines. Wood magazine had a Sketchup tutorial in a recent issue and ShopNotes is offering Sketchup design download for subscribers for the jigs and fixtures they detail in the mag.

I also used the software to draw the inside walls of my parents bonus room to help them determine the size and shape of built in shelves. We had the room together in about 20 minutes and propsals being compared within an hour - amazing!

An additional bonus is the well done tutorials available on the Sketchup Website and the 3-d model warehouse hosted by Google full of free downloadable sketchup designs. No other program comes close to the kind of free support and tutorial materials offered by Google.

One sad note about this program is that it is not currently available for Linux. Google claims Wine will support Sketchup on Linux but my experience on Ubuntu is that it is buggy and the graphics rendering is poor compared to Windows XP pro. Am I "whining"?

Have you used it? How, for what types of projects? Is there a better alternative out there that is free? What do you like? What do you hate? Please share!

The Interface - see, it's not too intimidating:




My workbench built - thanks Sketchup:



C'mon, give it a try and tell me what you think!