Google SketchUp is a fabulous 3D Modeling tool to introduce to your kids. SketchUp is a tool your child could use throughout their school and college career, on into the adult workforce and life. It is versatile & powerful, so it can be used for a myriad of purposes. You can even model things for Google Earth with it! With SketchUp you can model anything you can imagine!
Google has provided excellent training videos on SketchUp. And best of all, it’s all FREE. To get started with Google SketchUp follow these steps:
- Watch Make Ideas Real With SketchUp to get an idea of what SketchUp can do. It’s pretty cool!
- (Go full screen when watching the following videos) On that same page, watch the 4 videos “Getting Started with SketchUp” Part 1 – Part 4 (in order).
- Now Download and install Google SketchUp.
- Start Google SketchUp and try out some of what you learned. Can’t remember everything? Try viewing the videos while running SketchUp, and actually doing the actions at the same time in SketchUp. You can always pause the video and go back to anything you missed and repeat it. It is fun and easy to learn! Here are individual links to each video on YouTube:
- To expand you knowledge on SketchUp, here are other training videos. You have done the first 4 under New to Google SketchUp. View the Google SketchUp Toolbar Series videos under New to Google SketchUp. Then, proceed to other video sections in the order listed:
- New to Google SketchUp
- Familiar with Google SketchUp
- Expert in Google SketchUp
- Creating models for Google Earth
- To keep up with the latest on SketchUp, follow the Google Sketchup Blog.
Have fun with SketchUp and please let me know how it goes!!