Sketchup

[Mark Bolton]

Quick answer - the price is FREE (for Fusion360 if you are hobbyist or small business with annual revenue under $100k)

Watch this Fusion360 tutorial for a woodwork example (dovetailed drawers)
https://youtu.be/nZ2ymIljiWk


I find it is far more logical in how you approach modelling. And parametrically driven 3DCAD makes life so much easier; you can tweak your model easily, and "intelligently" scale without distorting (for example, make a cabinet 10% higher wile the baseboard and material thickness remain the same.) This video shows how you can leverage parametric design in a simple woodwork project (bookcase)
https://youtu.be/IGsAAB9S_g0

Ross,
And no different than any other model in todays word (Autodesk has done this dozens and dozens of times with other titles) they will offer up the options "free", letting their user base de-bug and provide all the free customer service and tech support, and then when they get the hook set to a point they feel valuable, they will monetize the software. Fusion will not be "free" forever.

I will capitalize on it all I can while it is. But dont delude yourself. There is a profit motive there for sure. They have released several applications that received a lot of traction and were then monetized. Enjoy it while you can.

[Ross Manning]

Ross, And no different than any other model in todays wor(l)d...

Agree - and that includes SU. No company is building software as an altruistic exercise, and all have to pay the bills. However there are numerous examples of how companies monetize their products other than asking for license fees. SU is also moving down this path - the writing is on the wall - for example from Trimble blog recently "...As SketchUp evolves, our free software is shifting from desktop to web..." Likely a step toward an annuity fee model.

Anyway, that's not really the point. At the moment Fusion is free for the majority of hobbyist woodworkers, and its a great tool - far more capable & far less frustrating to use than SU for what I do, but your mileage may vary. I do urge people who want to use computer modelling in their work to at least look at it.

Here is another woodwork related video that explains benefits well https://youtu.be/5JZKSDSyP6g

[Ross Manning]

Ross, I'm familiar with Fusion360 and have a subscription. I don't believe it renders like some of the fancy examples in John's post, however, but I could be wrong. It certainly is very capable and is a very good tool.

It has a really good rendering engine. In fact you get multiple levels - the ability to apply texture to your model, a "pre-render" mode, and the ability to fully render photorealistic images and videos.

[Dave Richards]

Amateur, huh?

All SketchUp modeling.

[John K Jordan]

You created all these models yourself? I'm impressed!!!
How much time did you spend modeling these?
What rendering software did you use?

Or are they pictures you found on the internet?

BTW, they all suffer from the Flicker "not found" syndrome for me when I tried to see the detail.

JKJ

Amateur, huh?

All SketchUp modeling.

[Dave Richards]

The first one is mine. The rest from friends and acquaintances. the photo-realistic ones from various renderers. The last five are nothing but SketchUp and LayOut.

As to the amount of time spent on them, I can only speak to the first one. I have less than an hour in it which includes modeling the clock and rendering it. FWIW, the case and the knobs are also 3D printable.

BTW, they all suffer from the Flicker "not found" syndrome

I don't know why that would be. They are all marked as public on Flickr.

[Mark Bolton]

You created all these models yourself? I'm impressed!!! JKJ

All you have to do is subscribe to one of the SU feeds on google+ or any other of the feed engines out there and you will see drawings and renders daily that are, to the untrained eye no different than a photograph. The photo-realism is often backed up with a fully accurate model. There are a lot of people in SU drawing at an engineering level regularly. We have done this for customers many times simply to allow us the ability to show how our work will interface with others and with as-built conditions. We can leave it at 2D if needed, take it on through to 3D, to photo rendering, and in the end we can export the entire thing to a cutlist or CNC and run the job.

[Rick Alexander]

I was actually an early student of Bob's when I learned SU many years ago. I first learned it to improve my woodworking and give me more time building rather than planning out there - Which it did in spades. I just finished a full kitchen using SU as my cut list at the very beginning and able to trust the measurements were perfect as long as I stayed accurate cutting. I actually enjoy drawing my projects about as much as building them. Now I have the paid version at work (work in a laboratory) to do various schematics, design parts for automation - redesign labs etc -etc- etc. I'm in the process of moving toward learning a couple of new programs that are more compatible to our 3D printer which is getting hugely helpful for our lab. Amazing where that first class in SU has led me in life. Now I get paid at work to play with programs I absolutely love working with and using 3D printers to model the most amazing things - pretty darn cool.

[Bob Lang]

Good to see it paying off for you. Doesn't seem like it was that long ago to me, but it's been a while.

Hope all is well with you and yours.

Bob