Product Review:

School

Google SketchUP level 1&2

You have heard me talk about Google Sketchup before on the podcast.  I have been trying to learn the in’s and outs of this program for awhile.  Although it is a relatively simple program to use, to do anything intricate requires some training.  I looked on the internet and found many tutorials.  But none of them seemed to cover exactly what I wanted in detail.  That’s when I came across the website www.go-2-school.com.  This is a website that is dedicated to be an online resource for Google Sketchup training videos, tutorials and resources.  They offer a lot of free content as well as podcast.  While browsing around on their site I noticed that they sold two training video’s for Google Sketchup.  I contacted the company and asked if they could send the DVD’s out for me to take a look.

The first DVD I looked at was Google SketchUp level one.  On this dvd the aim was to learn the fundamentals of Sketchup.  The DVD promised tips and techniques and that they would show you how to master the tools you need in order to become a better SketchUp user.  First off I think I should talk about the quality of this DVD.  I really liked the way they had things laid out.  Along the bottom of the video you were watching you could access things like a glossary of terms, which was great if you weren't quite sure what they were talking about.  That's not to say that they didn't do a great job of explaining things in detail.  There was also a tab called other resources, where they give you other information such as hardware suggestions to get the most out of your SketchUp experience.  Also they give you other sites where you can get more help.  It’s a great feature to have this at your fingertips at all times.  I also was impressed with the menu’s everything looked really polished and slick.  All this is great but does this DVD help you learn SketchUp, absolutely it does.  The host’s are easy to understand and it’s always better to be shown how to do something than reading information out of a book. They cover the basics like how to draw lines. They also cover the push and pull tool. That is a tool your going to be using a lot of so it was nice to get a better background in how to use it. Like I said at the beginning this teaches you the fundamentals and it does an excellent job of showing you all the tools and how to use them.

The Level two DVD takes your skills to the next level.  It goes well beyond the basics.  They talk about how to deal with difficult models and how to use more advanced workflows.  To be honest I have not fully went through the second DVD because I am still only learning the software.  But from what I have seen it looks incredible and keeps up the standard that is set in the first DVD.

If you’re serious about getting better using Google SketchUp you should definitely check out these DVD’s.  You can buy them on the website www.go-2-school.com for $79.  If you buy both DVD’s you save $29.

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