----- Original Message -----
From: "Steve Turner"
Newsgroups: rec.woodworking
Sent: Wednesday, December 30, 2009 2:54 PM
Subject: SketchUp Question - Must View


On 12/30/2009 2:48 PM, Leon wrote:
wrote in message
The most beneficial tools that turned the light bulb on for me when
learning
Sketchup were the simple video tutorials.
Once you understand how Sketchup actually works you can easily learn the
program and then you can add which ever of the hundreds and hundreds of
available tools you may want to add.

(Still a hell of a lot of control buttons around the edges though :^})

The actual program comes with noticably few command icons and they will
do
everything you need to learn the program.

So I presume most of those icons are a result of installing various
"plugins":


Probably. I am only showing/using 72 icons on my version. Of those icons I
probably only use 20 regularily and of those 20 many are simply different
view icons. And I typically use a simple keyboard command in place of
clicking on an icon.

99% of the time I use

"L" for line, "P" for push/pull, "M" for move, "M + CTL" for copy. "T"
for measure, "Space Bar" for select. "Space Bar + CTL" for multiple
erase...

AND THE MOST IMPORTANT KEY OF ALL

The letter "G" to make a group of lines that look like a piece of wood into
a "COMPONENT" You do not have to name it when prompted if you dont want to,
a default name will be provided.

http://sketchup.google.com/intl/en/d...d/plugins.html

Any recommended "must haves" from this list?


Google Sketchup Plugins and you will get a load of web sites with plugins.

Some sites I like are

http://www.crai.archi.fr/RubyLibrary..._sections.html
https://sites.google.com/site/sketchupsage/tweak
http://www.srww.com/blog/?p=117
http://www.srww.com/google-sketchup.htm
http://www.smustard.com/ Smustard even has a plugin to take you to their
site to down load plugins. ;~) Some are pay plug ins.


Plugins I like to have extra

The Angle Dimension plug in.
The Cut List 4.0 plug in for transfering your components in the CutListPro
opt program. Becareful there are other Cutlist plug ins that IMHO are not
as good as CUTLIST "4.0".

And others which I have probably forgotten about due to lack of use.

I also like to assign short cut key strokes to the frequently used icons. I
forget where to look but there is a page to print that lists all the short
cut key commands and mouse functions. I like to orbit by clicking and
holding my middle mouse button and moving the mouse, or in my case my center
scroll wheel and thumb ball. I prefer to not click on icons unless
necessary, I'd rather press a key or two.