Review: SketchUp 5 (demo)

I have a soft spot for most of Google's work. With the exception of Google Desktop, I've been a big fan of all their desktop applications. Then it should come as no surprise that I'm absolutely in love with their latest acquisition, SketchUp. This is one of the most powerful applications anyone who has ever wanted to convey a visual thought should have in the software toolbox! SketchUp is a deceptively simple 3D modeling program. I have toyed around with commercial 3D applications for a long long time, always with the intent of doing something relativley simple that looked decent. I wasn't trying to make a movie or a photorealistic model. This program gives a user the ability to quickly create a 3D sketch that looks incredible. The polygon and 3D surface tools are extremely intuitive. The built-in hands on tutorial is the BEST tutorial for any application I have ever used, period. I went through it (very worth the while) and afterwards was comfortable with 90% of the program! Just to prove the point, here is what I created after finishing the tutorial and using the program for one hour; a scaled model of my house! I've only tested the demonstration version and there are a few features such as terrain modeling that are not included with this version. The import and export capabilities are truly outstanding and there is even a plug-in for Google Earth to allow KML exports right into Google Earth for sharing. I'm still working on getting the placement of the house just right so stay tuned and soon, you'll have a Google Earth version of Fort-Knight! As you've noticed, the product is a demo and is time expired after 500 minutes of use. This is more than enough to get a feal for the power of the program. The full version costs $500 which when compared to other similarly featured packages isn't that bad. Aside from the house, I've also done several other models including one of a product I'm working on for work as well as the tradeshow booth it will go into!
This one is going in the toolbox! Just go to the website and check out this video!