All posts tagged: SketchUp Pro

Old World Table Woodworking Plan in the Works

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I have begun work on my 15th free woodworking plan; a plan which may very well be my last free one (see all my woodworking plans here). A 2018 goal of mine is to return to trying to make money from the plans I create and to that end, I hope to make a series of more simple plans to be sold on Ebay. I have sold my plans in the past, but the income has been pitiful. Maybe this time I’ll at least be able to recover the cost of the software used to make them. I have been trying to come up with a normal size dining table design. I have one dining table plan, my apartment sized table which is perfect for a small dining room or an eat-in kitchen area. But my wife and I are still using a hand-me-down dining table and it would be nice to have a hand crafted table for the more festive times of the year we actually use our dining room. I had originally come …

Goofing Off with SketchUp

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I hate to say it, but I have done ZERO woodworking since last weekend. Sometimes you need a break and I did need to recover just a little. After drilling all those holes in end grain which required jack-hammer like force to accomplish, both of my elbows hurt a little. Almost like tennis elbow, so I guess it is possible for a woodworker to get cordless drill elbow? You heard it here first. Today, I am off to source some plywood. For my window seat bookcase, I am thinking about making the back and lower shelf (highlighted in blue above) from cherry plywood. Plywood will make the bookcase more rigid and I don’t have to worry about cross-grain wood movement if I decide to glue the plywood in place. Forming these parts from plywood will also be faster than creating a frame and panel back and shelf out of multiple parts. So plywood is on my mind today. What I have been doing… SketchUp. I continue to explore using SketchUp Pro for my next woodworking …

Book Review: SketchUp to LayOut by Matt Donley

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A lot of woodworkers use SketchUp, but I consider myself to be in a small group of woodworkers which view SketchUp as an illustration tool. SketchUp is the main drawing program I use to illustrate woodworking plans. I hope one day to be able to make truly magazine quality woodworking plans. The only thing holding me back is time and experience with the right software. I have often wondered if SketchUp Pro is software that can help me reach my goal. There is one aspect of SketchUp Pro which makes me curious: LayOut. It’s a software package which comes bundled with SketchUp Pro. LayOut is a tool that takes SketchUp images and inserts them into a template leading to high quality documentation (examples here). This is where LayOut might improve the quality of my woodworking plans. But SketchUp Pro currently sells for $495; probably a good value, but I just don’t know a lot about it and I have seen at least one negative comment on it. I came real close to buying SketchUp Pro …