On Sun, 28 Feb 2021 23:12:20 -0500, wrote:

On Sun, 28 Feb 2021 21:28:17 GMT, Puckdropper
wrote:

wrote in
m:

On Sun, 28 Feb 2021 08:59:16 GMT, Puckdropper
wrote:

I had a semester of mechanical drafting in high school. I'm SO glad I
did. Even though most stuff is done with Sketchup, the ability to
grab a piece of paper and use "that looks about right" for my
dimensions is perhaps the best skill I learned in high school. You
can almost always borrow a pen/pencil and something to write on.

But you can't pick up the pad and spin it around to see it from all
angles, including the inside, and looking through the model. That's
incredibly useful.

Sometimes you don't need that ability, or don't need that ability yet. I
draw houses to 3D print model houses. I just don't need to see inside
the house when doing the external design, so sometimes it's faster to get
it on paper then start doing the detail work on the computer.

But you can show the customer the model house. That's rather useful.

When our mechanical engineers want to show me a heatsink my widget is
going into, she uses a modeling tool to show me but crawling around
inside it. The model is then sent out to make tools for castings. If
it's low volume (10-20), I'll have them machined. Same model file.

Other times I have a more solid idea of what I want and I just start
modeling on the computer.

The cool thing is that the skills can transfer. Working with faces
and edges in Sketchup directly links back to "do I need this line?"
and "what's this line doing here?" from mechanical drafting.

I "need the line" if it's part of a component. Spinning the model, in
normal modes and X-ray makes the "what's this line doing here" far
easier than a 2-D sketch.

Add the ability to add components, other furniture, or perhaps the
room itself, makes even yellow sketch pads pale.

Technology is often better than "GET OFF MY LAWN!". ;-)


Yep. I'm not saying you need 20 years of experience with mechanical
drafting, but having a few months experience with the basics will
positively impact your Sketchup drawings. It's especially important when
exporting from Sketchup to 3D printer slicer, as every line, every face,
you draw ends up in the STL file. It causes big problems with the STL
import if you have stuff you don't need.

You're using Sketchup for something it wasn't designed to do.

Puckdropper