Google Sketch Up -- Don't Laugh

[Gdeaver]

For years now our team has given out the First modeling software in the fall and asked a couple of team members to get up to speed in them with the hope of designing and modeling our robot with them. Every year this has been a failure . We never had any students become proficient enough to do it. This year once again no student was able to take advantage of the provided software. I was very surprised this year when I received a PDF email from some team members, after our first design meeting, of a full 3D model robot. I was stunned. At the next meeting, I found that the students tried google sketch up and with about 2 to 3 hours of practice had become proficient enough to render the ideas we had discussed in the first meeting.
I know that google sketch up is primitive, but I am impressed with the results. To see a group of 8 students hovering around the projector designing a robot for me as a mentor is very rewarding. So if any teams are like our team - try sketch up. Are any other teams using it?