I have been using Sketchup for a few months now to design several
projects and am generally very happy with it.

I say generally, because "out of the box" it is time consuming and even
at times difficult to create the detailed drawings needed to build a
woodworking project. In several instances multiple files needed to be
created for a project.

My comments are about the free version because, after looking
at what the "pro" version feature set is, it doesn't seem have features
that I would find useful. Besides which, I also don't have that kind of
money lying around.

I bought a Dummies guide to Sketchup which helped a lot with the
mechanics of using the program, but much
of the book wrote about the pro version which did does not seem to help
with building a woodworking project directly from the Sketchup drawings.

I have two projects on the drawing board now that require
two separate drawings for each, one showing the as built design and
another showing an exploded view (manually exploded since I can't find a
way for the program to explode a project) where I can add dimensions and
other notations that I can build from.

For example, these projects each have a face frame with multiple
components, each of which needs dimensions added, so the face frame
needs to be separated from the carcass. Then the carcass needs to "taken
apart" and details of the design (dado', rabbit' etc) annotated and add
dimensions. Then doors need to be exploded and design details and
dimensions added. I could go on but you get the idea.

At the very least I wish the program had the ability to add pages to the
drawing so all of the design for a project would be in one file. I could
then copy sub-assemblies (like doors, drawers, face frames etc) from one
page to another, take apart the sub-assembly and annotate as needed.
Also the ability to take apart a sub-assembly in a consistent manner
would be nice. Are you listening Sketchup program designers?

I have added a cut list plug-in that helps with the cut list, but it
is also requires some manipulation to get the results I need to buy
materials and machine the parts.

Anyway that is my 2 cents worth. I will continue to use Sketchup as
it is fun to use (most of the time :-) ) I just wish it had more
features that us woodworkers need to build our projects.

Thanks for listening
Marty