Shelter
Documenting a personal quest for non-toxic housing.
Monday, September 6, 2004
Tools
Some readers have asked me about the modeling tools I've used for the pictures on my site so I thought I would pass along news on a new modeling package I learned about from a product note in Desktop Engineering magazine. Called SketchUp, this modeling package looks like a real successor to the easy-to-use Deneba CAD which I have used for many years but which has not been updated for a long time. Designed as a conceptual design-level tool for architects and industrial designers, this package features a very intuitive user interface, some very clever tools, a large assortment of rendering modes, and some good features for doing live presentations. It's available in Mac OSX and Windows versions and free demos are available for download. The nearly $500 price tag is not exactly cheap but it is very inexpensive compared to a lot of other professional modeling packages which are very difficult to use for casual interactive modeling. You might not be able to do CAD-CAM with this, but for getting a design started with the least hassle this looks very promising. I'm considering saving up for it when Deneba CAD has become too long-in-the-tooth to use.
Documenting a personal quest for non-toxic housing.
Monday, September 6, 2004Tools
Some readers have asked me about the modeling tools I've used for the pictures on my site so I thought I would pass along news on a new modeling package I learned about from a product note in Desktop Engineering magazine. Called SketchUp, this modeling package looks like a real successor to the easy-to-use Deneba CAD which I have used for many years but which has not been updated for a long time. Designed as a conceptual design-level tool for architects and industrial designers, this package features a very intuitive user interface, some very clever tools, a large assortment of rendering modes, and some good features for doing live presentations. It's available in Mac OSX and Windows versions and free demos are available for download. The nearly $500 price tag is not exactly cheap but it is very inexpensive compared to a lot of other professional modeling packages which are very difficult to use for casual interactive modeling. You might not be able to do CAD-CAM with this, but for getting a design started with the least hassle this looks very promising. I'm considering saving up for it when Deneba CAD has become too long-in-the-tooth to use.
9:32:43 PM 