SketchUp: A New Planning Tool

What is SketchUp?

SketchUp is a drafting/rendering program produced by Google. On sketchup.google it’s defined as “software that you can use to create, share and present 3D models.” It’s new and it’s fun, and with it you can design a Monolithic Dome home, school, church, gymnasium — or whatever. SketchUp comes in a free version as well as one that users must pay for. The free version has many options and can do quite a lot of sketching.

Available through Monolithic

We’ve received numerous requests from folks asking us to put some of their drawings on the Internet. Through Sketchup, people can do this on their own. On this website, Monolithic now has demo drawings; they end with .skp or .dwg. After loading SketchUp on their computers, users can modify and change the sketches on Monolithic’s website. We think this is a good idea and could be fun for all.

The free version

Monolithic clients who wish to use the free version of SketchUp can do so without charge. Think of it: a fun, free evening of planning and designing for those of you who want to SketchUp your new dome-home.

To get started, go to Google and load SketchUp on your computer. We then suggest you do some of the tutorials. Then go to our website and pull up demo drawings that end with .skp or .dwg. We will start with a few following this article.

We plan to soon have a number of .skp files you can download onto your computer and modify, using your newly acquired SketchUp skills. You can then email your drawings to us for evaluation, which we will be glad to do.

You can also load the .dwg files into SketchUp, but you will need to do more modifying of them. Our plan is to put all of the President Choice floor plans on our website. In many cases you will need to go to Shopify to load them.

We think SketchUp will provide a lot of valuable and entertaining ideas for those of you who care to learn it. We wish you all good times with this valuable tool.

Note: November 20, 2008