Wednesday, January 23, 2013

SketchUp: my new nemesis




Meet my many dormer windows.

   
I'm trying to learn Google Sketchup, since I think it will help me with my work.  I figured that with lots of practice, then given in about 6 months, I should be able to do basic illustrations for proposed projects at work.  I signed up for an online SketchUp class and was feeling pretty optimistic about my abilities to learn and master this new tool (with lots of practice, of course), almost all the way through the first lesson.  Then, at about 80% through the lesson, the instructor demonstrated how to create a component--in this case, a dormer window--and add it to a house we had already created earlier in the lesson.  We created a window, made it a component, and then (basically) pasted the window onto the other side of the house.  Well, of course, since it was created on the other side, when we paste it, it faces the wrong way, and we needed to rotate the windows so they faced out instead of in.  My windows wouldn't rotate properly, to start with.  It took me about an hour to figure out how to rotate objects.  To be clear, I can see what I'm supposed to be doing, but I can't seem to do it, and I know it's operator error, which is very frustrating.  I finally got the window facing the right way, but when I add it to the roof, it just sinks right into the building.  I've tried changing the axes, I've tried creating a new version of the component that will glue to any surface, I've read several different help pages and watched a video from a different instructor, and still no luck.  And even if you don't know anything about Sketchup and don't know what all these terms mean, let me break it down for you:  there's a task in a drawing/modeling program that is supposed to be very simple, and everyone else on the planet seems to be able to do it, and I can't figure it out, and I feel like an idiot.  But I will triumph.  It might just take me a liiiiiitttle bit longer than I'd planned.  Maybe about 8 years.

Anyone have any ideas how to make my windows work?

3 comments:

JLR said...

Man, I feel so bad for you. In that kind of situation, you just get angrier and angrier because it just.won't.do.right. But keep at it! You will get there! Or you'll throw your computer out the window.

Some Tech Guy said...

When you put it on the roof when it sinks in, can you use the push/pull tool to raise it back up?

Im starting to fool with sketch up before I go to revit and other autodesk programs.

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