[Andy A.]

Sketchup is freely available for use here at VTC.

Make no mistake- it is not a real modeling program on the level of Inventor or Solidworks. You do not have anywhere near the control that you do in a 'real' program. The only people who use it here are the Arch students when they want to quickly look at the basic shape a building might take before spending all the time that AutoCad will suck up.

It is easy and fast to use though. It could be useful for those who do not like creating hand drawn sketches or who need to quickly see something in 3d before committing the time and effort to a full up model. It's the diffrence between Paint and Photoshop.

I am looking forward to what ever Google produces from the venture. Knowing Google, it will likely be a web based app that allows you to make quick models you can then send to anyone. That would be very nice, as it's difficult getting people to see your models right now as anything but screen shots.


-Andy A.