On 11/21/2013 7:53 AM, Lloyd E. Sponenburgh wrote:
Swingman fired this volley in
:

They both have their strong points and, as with any tool, the choice
and
use depends upon the job.

'modeling' is a pretty loose term as pertains to Sketchup.

Using Sketchup, I've build full photo-realistic panoramic 'models' of
theme park sets for designing fireworks presentations. I love it for
what it's intended to do. It's simple, quick, and CRUDE. You don't seem
to quite understand what underlies its drawings.

I defy you to get any precise measurements or 'fits' out of any Sketchup
model.

Define precise, I'm an old AutoCAD user and find that for woodworking
Sketchup is plenty precise.


Vertices don't align, vectors overlap and/or mis-match at ends,
'snap' points randomly 'fly' to other dimensions, textures just 'float'

Until I learned to use Sketchup sufficiently I had that problem too.
What you are describing is not a problem that I have noticed any more.




in the same plane as the surface to which they're applied, and are
transparent from some viewing angles... it just goes on and on. It was
_designed_ to make pretty, "3D-looking" shapes for on-screen
presentations, not for creating detailed items for machining.

Define Machining. Works great for machining wood. perhaps not steel.

AAMOF I use very few dimensions in my drawings of furniture. I use them
to verify over all dimensions. Like a piece of furniture that has many
components so do my drawings. From the drawing I use a plug in program
to recognizes, list, and import those components into an optimization
program that takes my on hand inventory of materials and tells me which
inventory pieces to use and which components to cut from them. Often it
is only at that point that I actually know the over all dimension of an
actual component. Then If that particular component needs to have
dado's, rabbets. mortises, and or tapers I reference the drawings.



Sketchup models can _look_ pretty, but they aren't representations of any
real solids, and cannot be used (even crudely) for creating a part from a
drawing, unless measurements don't matter a whit. Even then, it's a
stone bitch to translate a Sketchup model into something CAM can handle.

I'm saying all this from the perspective of a (past) _heavy_ user of both
Sketchup and several true 3D CADs. It doesn't sound to me like you have
extensive experience with either genre.

Nor you.