I've hesitated to do any software reviews up until now mainly due to the rather short lifespan of the product or version thereof and because of the effort required to describe them adequately. I ultimately decided to do a review of Sketch-Up because a lot of woodworkers have picked it up for their use.

Sketch-Up is basically a 3D wire frame modeler as opposed to a solid modeler; the difference is important. That means when a 3D rectangular object is drawn in Sketch-Up it is a hollow box and not a solid cube. The reason this is important is because the world is not typically made up of hollow forms, solids tend to dominate.

The facets of "objects" can be colored or have bitmaps applied to give a more realistic surface texture look. This operation also includes transparent effects such as glass. Sketch-Up is NOT a photo-realistic modeler but it can present a close enough approximation to get an idea across quite well.

In a program such as this, true ease of use is not wholly defined by how easily items can be drawn. It is mostly defined by how easily existing objects can be manipulated or edited. I found that it is actually easier to edit items in Sketch-Up than in some 2D drawing software in many cases.

While it may seem like 3D would be the answer to all the perception issues when compared to 2D drawing tools, this is not actually the case. Quite often, there seems to be something in the way of what you want to see at any given time. To gain the desired view standard Zoom and Pan commands are available but because this is a 3D program, an Orbit tool is added and is used quite extensively.

Because one often needs to change a view to draw or complete drawing operations, it is especially handy for the commands to be "nested". That is, DURING a Push/Pull operation for example, the Orbit tool can be invoked which suspends the Push/Pull. This allows the view to be rotated and zoomed to obtain a view of the proper snap point at which point the Push/Pull can be resumed to complete the operation. A scroll wheel mouse will also operate the Zoom In/Out function. Between all these tools, the operator has very good control over the basic commands needed to obtain the desired 3D view.

The user interface is very intuitive up to a point. The simplified interface is good for the most often used tools but I don't believe the interface is as logically organized as many other CAD packages. For instance the Move and Copy commands are invoked by the same icon and the Mirror command is extremely well hidden and non-intuitive to boot.

When separate objects are pushed together their surfaces become glued together. In some cases, this is exactly what one would desire to happen, in others not. Specifically, when drawings are created with a "sub-assembly" mindset this is not desirable. Oddly, layering a drawing does not serve to protect it from this effect. This, I believe is a major error in the design of the product.

I've also noticed an oddity in that it appears to be entirely too easy to move an edge or surface from one layer to another unintentionally. The effect is that with a layer turned off, it is possible to move aspects of that layer when working on other objects only to find that when the layer is turned back on, some geometry is totally messed up. It also tends to open the "sides" of the "boxes" or boxes with facets having no edge. This basically means that the program does not naturally produce a model with good integrity.

The "integrity" problem can be easily observed by creating a multi layer drawing with each layer separately grouped and even locked. When all the objects are ungrouped and unlocked at once, the objects will be changed from their original design often corrupting the model.  I have found on more than one occasion where the edges of object are transferred to other layers but are not actually visible when all other layers are turned off.  It is virtually impossible to correct this as the geometry just doesn't behave.  This can lead to significant wailing and gnashing of teeth when encountered.  I believe @Last just simply does not have a good handle the proper function of layers or integrity in general.

A quick perusal of a gallery of Sketch-Up drawings will reveal that the problems are ultimately not a show stopper as there have been some fairly complex models created with the program; it is just a sub-optimal design and irritation.

Like any good program, Sketch-Up allows Components or pre-drawn elements to be placed into the drawing. These can include both 3D and 2D items such as people, vehicles, trees, etc including Components you make up yourself.  Sketch-Up also works with the Ruby scripting language with allows the functionality of the program to be extended or to allow complex operations to be turned into a parametric macro.

The import and export functionality like most graphical software is a bit hit and miss. The PDF save will save the drawing as a raster (bitmap), most drawing programs would save this as vector. An EPS output will save as vector but not be 100% true to the original. The best 2D Graphic export seems to be DWG, DXF also works well but still not 100% true. The export function will be useful when greater text annotations or more optimized printed output is desired.

A woodworker however will be inclined to draw a project much in the same way the physical project would be built in order to determine part sizes and joint details. This is NOT the original design intent of the software and it will require much more work and special attention during the process to ensure that parts do not merge into one another.

Like other CAD software the program has the ability to measure (as in query) or display dimensions on a drawing. Like the drawing itself, the dimensions also float in the 3D environment. The numerics behave as 2D components which are enabled with the "always face me" property. This works well but the 3D view can sometimes obscure them so some attention must be paid to this when printing. Printing is not one of the strong suites of the program as it is much less controlled (crude really) than typical CAD software.

Like printing, text is also not one of Sketch-Up's better aspects. As mentioned, there is some intelligence built into the dimensioning tool which will allow for (generally) proper viewing (and printing). Non-dimension text also has the "face-me" characteristic but because it isn't really attached to anything, it can appear in inconvenient places when the 3D view is changed.

Sketch-Up offers several different formats for display. Among these are extended lines for a more "sketchy" hand drawn appearance, hidden lines, black and white, rendered, and transparent surfaces, with and without shadows. There is also a Section Plane tool that will allow the model to be "cut" for display purposes. This last is somewhat at odds with reality however since it exposes the hollow form nature of the drawing when you are pretending to draw solids.

Sketch-Up is capable of saving the drawing with several different view settings, these views are called "Pages", these can be turned into a sort of animated presentation of the project if desired. These can also be used to save a particular view for printing or as a section cut-away for example.

• Fairly easy to use and learn for the basics considering the power of the tool.
• The "Always Face Me" action of 2D components.
• The price. Reasonably good tool for free, can't beat that!
• Video tutorials.

Misses:

• The propensity for elements to jump layers, disappear and cut into another mating surface is the definition of not being able to control the integrity of the drawing.
• Once a certain number of geometry's have been created, operational speed can decrease to the point of being quite noticeable.

Wishes:

• 100% drawing integrity. Meaning that once an item is drawn it will stay as drawn unless intentionally modified. This would require a change in how surfaces currently merge as well as a minor behavior modifications to the selection tool.
• Orbit with Pan tool. Orbit should behave as per current but when the scroll wheel is held, it will enable the pan function. To get the proper view for drawing, Obit and Pan have to be used constantly; this would save a lot of icon selecting.
• Due to the integrity issue and just because it is handy to have anyway, I would like to see a version control file saving option. This would save a version of a file every time the drawing was saved.
• Double left click = Zoom Extents while in Orbit tool.
• Double left click = entire "object" selected while in Select tool.
• Real curves instead of line segments following a curve.
• Layers protect from objects merging. Better layer tools.

Summary
@Last Software claims that Sketch-Up is not really CAD software. I suspect they mean that the product does not have the greater depth of features required of a production drawing tool (which it does not). However it really is CAD software and can be used well as such up to a point.  This review is only a glimpse into the capabilities of the product. The best thing about Sketch-Up is that it has an interface that will allow people with little CAD experience to be able to draw items three dimensionally with less effort than any other 3D CAD package I am aware of; this is a great improvement over the previous status quo in CAD software and a boon to a beginning CAD user.

However, because it does not maintain good drawing integrity and because parts of the interface are a little imprecise or cumbersome, I think it falls a little short. Work-a-rounds can help mitigate these issues but coming up with work-arounds for program flaws is not how a designer wants to spend their time. Experienced CAD users will probably grow weary of the interface quickly and downright mad at the integrity issues and slow response of complicated drawings.

I hope the product gets better in upcoming releases. For what it costs and how easy it is to get going, it is worth looking into especially if you have been avoiding CAD software because of the learning curve.

Special thanks to Mark Marzluf for help with this review.