If you’ve ever looked at 2D plans and strained to visualize the end result in your head, then you might find (as I do) that designing in 3D first can be more intuitive. Here’s our top reasons to learn SketchUp. With just a few hours of dedicated practice learning the basic tools, woodworkers can be building simple plans for their next projects. We find that woodworkers can get to be productive quickly. SketchUp bills itself as the “the easiest way to learn how to draw in 3D.” And that’s hardly an exaggeration. Experiments (and mistakes!) are a lot less costly in 3D than they are in the shop.

SketchUp helps woodworkers design and build furniture in 3D before building it in real life. If you already own “Woodworker’s Guide to SketchUp” visit this page to request your free update as a download.How SketchUp will help you as a Woodworker It’s a great way to learn, and easy to use as a reference. The new file still contains bookmarks that link to chapters, topics within each chapter and all of the videos. In many cases, a quick look at the video is the best way to refresh your memory about how to perform a task. You can also enlarge the online player to make it easier to see and use. This isn’t quite as neat and tidy as it used to be, but the online videos have a controller that allows you to pause, rewind and control the volume. I have uploaded all 51 videos from this book to this website, and added links within the book to each one. Adobe may be willing to leave their customers hanging, but I can’t do that. It took me a while to realize that Adobe was not working on a solution to find an alternative controller for the embedded videos to function in a PDF document. There have been some updates to SketchUp after publication, but the content is still relevant and valuable. Thousands of people have learned to make 3D models of their woodworking projects using this guide.

The videos still existed, and still played, but the visible controller vanished into the ether. That changed when Adobe decided that Flash had reached its “end of life”. In the earlier versions of this work, the 51 videos embedded in the text played nicely within the PDF in Adobe Acrobat Reader. After a good deal of trial and tribulation, an updated version of “Woodworker’s Guide to SketchUp” is now available with links to online videos.

Sketchup for woodworkers free