New YouTube Tutorial Videos for Sketchup Beginners & House Builder

I first want to thank the experienced Sketchup users on this Forum for helping us to install the House Builder plug-in to Sketchup. It was really frustrating at first but you pros made it work for us.

We are building a Tiny House for ourselves so we needed to be able to use Sketchup for our plans for the Tiny House. We have a YouTube Channel “The Zero Energy Channel” showing our progress on the Tiny House (which will use zero energy from fossil fuels), so since the Sketchup program and the House Builder Plug-in were so useful, we have posted two YouTube tutorials that are very much for beginners to Sketchup:

“Using Sketchup Part I: What Do Those Buttons DO?” This video addresses the disorientation most beginners feel when first sitting down to the Sketchup screen which looks at first like “the controls to an alien spaceship”. Link is here: Using Sketchup Part I: What Do Those Buttons DO? - YouTube

“How to Use Sketchup Part II: Installing & Using House Builder Plug In” This video shows off some of the House Builder tools in a slow and layperson-friendly way, and also links to the Forum discussion where you folks helped us figure out how to install House Builder. Its link is here: How to Use Sketchup Part II: Installing & Using HouseBuilder Plug In - YouTube

So thanks again and hopefully these new layperson-friendly tutorials will help expand the Sketchup community.

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If you come across any newbies who are not nearly as computer-literate as you folks, these videos may fit the bill as a short introduction since they are totally from the layperson’s perspective. The viewers are directed to your Forum at the end of the second video as a place to learn a whole lot more about Sketchup.

So again, thanks!

I really hate to be a nag when your post is so enthusiastic and positive, but you should realize that Google sold SketchUp to Trimble several years ago.

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Thanks, that’s the first I’ve heard that.

This seems the perfect example of how when another company buys a product that has a trusted name and reputation and customer following, they don’t make a big deal about announcing/insisting that everyone know the product now has a new owner. Sure, if you read the fine print etc. you might notice, but this is a free program so we aren’t even being asked much when we download Sketchup.

There are still dozens (hundreds?) of YouTube videos out there that refer to it as Google Sketchup, and a new person like myself is often introduced to Sketchup entirely through those (apparently older) videos. Now that you mention it, I have seen some videos that simply call it “Sketchup” in their title, but frankly I haven’t seen anybody go to the trouble to use the phrase “Trimble Sketchup” in their titles or their audio, So the new layperson like myself wouldn’t always catch that and I sure didn’t. Like I say, I think the new company is wise to not make a big deal about the transfer of ownership rights.

I went back and changed the titles of our two videos to just refer to it as Sketchup so hopefully that will be more accurate now. It also of course helps to have a shorter title.