Thank you for your message. I probably could get away with not doing this project but since I want complete authenticity and have a very long lead-in time for my book (over two years) I am prepared to learn and achieve what I want to do. I’m perfectly happy to purchase the full version but not until I’ve mastered the free version first. I hope that there is enough learning material out there and community support to help me.
Regards.
Andrew
My goodness. That looks so easy (but so is anything when you know how, I suppose) and so accurate. It has given me great encouragement.
Kind regards.
Andrew
If I understand correctly SketchUp Make, the Win/Mac free software version of SketchUp, does support extensions. If I understand correctly, the free online version of SketchUp is a new somewhat scaled back version of SketchUp Make.
You can find download links for SketchUp Make here:
SketchUp Make is no longer being developed, and the download links may vanish at some point. I’m using SketchUp Make on a Mac, and other than a few whiny quibbles of no real importance, I’ve very happy with it.
Whoops, I’m just repeating what Box said here.
Yes, that’s what I’d do also, master free first.
This fellow does a good job making tutorials. He starts from square one, the very beginning.
That is certainly a good plan. Just be aware that when/if you do purchase the Pro version (or Make, for non-commercial use), the desktop GUI is quite different from the Web GUI. All the same stuff is there (and more) and it all works the same, but it is significantly rearranged. There will be period while you relearn how to find the tools you want to use.
Well, I made my first model last night, a 48" arm with holes bored exactly where I want them. So some progress, thanks to your encouragement.
I have found but two of this person Justin’s beginners’ tutorials for the Web version but cannot find any more. I found them very useful.
Can anyone tell me where I can find more?
Regards.
Andrew
Justin has a whole channel
There’s also SketchUp’s own Learning Centre learn.sketchup.com.
Congrats!
In about 4 days you’ll be sucked headlong in to SketchUp to the point where you no longer sleep or eat or get up from your desk for days on end until you can only barely remember what your life used to be like. Your friends will finally stop calling, your family will move out, your dog will wander off, your grass will grow 5 feet high around your house. And you won’t notice until the city finally turns the power off. And then you’ll jump up and yell, “HEY! I’m modeling here!”
Um, don’t ask me how I know all this, because all I can tell you now is that Trimble wants to eat your brain. 
Oops, gotta go, just had another modeling idea!
(PS: I mean, c’mon guys, somebody had to warn him.)
What extension is it that you are using here?
And/or, could you upload the result here? I’ve offered to help Andrew (@Quadhurst) make some of the components, and learn how to for himself.
Box how did you make all the tiny segments. did you use divide on all edges one by one? Did yuo duplicated one divided edge and copy to each edge?
Nuke-- add SketchUp Make 2017 to your profile. When people answer your questions, they’d know that you might be able to use plugins (some plugins of course don’t support all older versions).
Ok, thanks, did it.
Vertex tool by Thomthom, a commercial plugin.
Quad face tools, can split faces with a few clicks.
Thank you, @Box.
If you do start using Vertex tools John, be aware it needs vertices to work with and not just a solid face.
That’s very helpful. I haven’t ever used Vertex Tools. I wondered how you had done the twist so smoothly.
I did it manually, but with only four segments in the twist. Looks ok at a distance, but not close up.
I’ll download them and try to follow your example. As usual, a MOST helpful animated GIF.
I’m modelled half a dozen parts for Andrew now and offered to help him, both to learn SU, and to draw some of the parts for him.
Trying for the third time to draw the most difficult of the parts he showed here - the saddle. First time, not well proportioned. Second time, about 1/3 way through, SU did a bug splat, and stupidly I hadn’t saved it so no AutoSave or backup. Lost maybe half an hour or a bit more. Tsk tsk - slaps own wrist.
Will post an image and model here when a little further along.
Dear John
I feel very humbled by your kind help. What an incredible application SU must be if it inspires such conversations S I am witnessing between you and other experts.
Again, I can only thank you and hope that I can learn. - quickly.
McKinsey regards.
Andrew
Well, it has also got an incredible range of experts who contribute freely of their own time and expertiseon this forum - I sometimes can help with simpler issues, but the real experts are the Sages. They know the software in and out, are familiar with the very wide range of extensions that add enormously to SU’s power, versatility, and ease of use. It was started almost two decades ago by @Last software principally for architects, bought by Google in the early 2000s to help them populate Google Earth with 3D building models, and sold by them to Trimble in about 2013 if I remember rightly, when Google found other means of putting 3D models into Google Earth.
The earliest models I still have kept are from v6 - almost a dozen years ago.
I and others find it by a large margin the easiest 3D software to pick up, and there’s not a lot it can’t do in the direct modelling sphere, though there are many other more complex and (mostly) more expensive software tools, with some free open source alternatives more focussed (as I understand it) on industrial design or modelling organic shapes, some free and open source like Blender.
Here’s where I’ve got to with modelling some of the pictured components, and a sample pole with them mounted on it.
And the model, in SU 2017 format.
Sample telegraph pole.skp (3.5 MB)
