SketchUp 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 SketchUp 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. SketchUp is NOT a photo-realistic modeler but it can present a close enough approximation to get an idea across quite well.

Along with these direction cues, snap points are "inferred" rather than commanded; these behave somewhat like "running snaps" other CAD programs use. All this makes for a fairly seamless operation once the user has gotten used to it but it does require paying attention to the cues and especially the snap points in order for the operation to be successful.

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 SketchUp than in some 2D drawing software in many cases.   This is especially true of "grouped" (and component) geometry's.

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.

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. One needs to "group" and "component" any geometry's considered to be a "part" in order to keep these merges from happening.

In previous versions of this software I have made note of an "integrity" issue.  That is, drawing geometry's may jump layers or when overlapped grouped objects are all "exploded", the result may create new unintended geometry's.  To date I have not observed this behavior in this version of the product.

Like any good program, SketchUp 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.  SketchUp also works with the Ruby scripting language with allows the functionality of the program to be extended or to allow complex or tedious operations to be turned into a parametric macro.

The export functionality is a bit lame, unless you want a bitmap.   Printing a PDF produce a raster (bitmap), most drawing programs would save this as vector.  The free version of the software used to work with CAD files such as DXF, version 8 has disabled those functions.  There is purported to be a DXF importer plug in that will work with SU8 free but I have not tried it.

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.

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.

SketchUp is capable of saving the drawing with several different view settings, these views are called "Scenes", 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.   These are quite helpful in full visualizations and presentations.

• Fairly easy to use and learn for the basics considering the power of the tool.
• The price. Reasonably good tool for free, can't beat that!
• Video tutorials can get you up to speed quick.

Misses:

• No installed help system
• Once a certain number of geometry's have been created, operational speed can decrease to the point of being quite noticeable.
• Printing is very basic, sub-par to any CAD program I know of (Layout which is part of the Pro package is supposed to be the answer for this).

• If you are drawing "parts" (items that should behave as a discrete unit), keep all the geometry's on the same layer and Group the geometry's together as soon as possible.  This will make handling, modification, and management much easier.
• If you have a large complicated drawing or duplicate "parts", consider using Components to improve performance and ensure that a modification to one, is made to all.
• I learned long ago NEVER to draw anything on layer zero.   This layer is (incorrectly) treated as special.  If you draw something on this layer, you may NEVER be able to move it off of it.  A lot of people draw exclusively on this layer, I don't.
• If you find that despite all your best efforts and tricks that the program just will not create a whole face (as in leaving out little facets), try scaling up the geometry by 10x and doing it again; then re-scale back down.

The loss of DXF import capability is sorely missing from version 8; this was available in version 7 of the software.  Since there is little difference in the free versions of 7 and 8, one solution is to stick with 7 (actually 7.1 with the DXF fix).