Woodworkers Guide to SketchUp-What About SketchUp 8?

Posted on by May 23, 2015

Update: A revised & updated Version of my book is now available!

CLICK HERE FOR INFORMATION ABOUT THE “NEW WOODWORKER’S GUIDE TO SKETCHUP”

Hi Bob,

Any plans to update your SketchUp 7 ebook to SketchUp 8?

Time frame?

Thanks.
Pete
Hi Pete, (and everyone else who has asked this question)

It’s on my list of things to do, but it’s a long list and it isn’t near the top. There isn’t much difference between SketchUp 7 and SketchUp 8 as far as woodworking design goes. At least with the free version. Biggest changes are for geo-locating buildings in Google Earth. For woodworkers, about the only significant change is the ability to show “back edges” of objects as dashed lines.

There are some changes to the Pro version, the big news for woodworkers is the introduction of solid modeling tools. The solid tools let you use one shape to alter another, for example you can put tails (or pins) in one board and the solid tools will remove material from another board, making the other half of the joint.

I’m hoping that sometime in the next year I’ll find or make the time to go through the book and show the updates from 7 to 8, and fix a typo here and a misplaced comma there. If history teaches us anything, SketchUp 9 will be released within a couple months of me crossing that off my “to do” list.

regards,

Bob Lang

You can buy Woodworker’s Guide to SketchUp from our online store

Comments

Woodworkers Guide to SketchUp-What About SketchUp 8? — 2 Comments

  1. I see that you answer is three years old and SketchUp is three versions older, so I wonder… Did an update get any closer to the top of your list of things to do? Are there any differences in SketchUp 7 and 2015.
    Thanks.

  2. Hi Mike,

    Let’s start with the differences between SketchUp 7 and the current SketchUp 2015. Functionally there isn’t a lot of difference, but with each new release little things that make modeling life easier have been added. No major leaps forward and one of the biggest changes was to the icons with the release of 2013.

    I would like to do a series of books on using SketchUp in different areas, but one of the issues was I didn’t want to repeat the basics of using the program every time. The first half of the original “Woodworker’s Guide to SketchUp” covered this basic information and included a 40-page guide to the most often used tools. That material was adapted and expanded into my second SketchUp book “Building Blocks of SketchUp”, released in 2013 using SketchUp 2013.

      Visit this post (and read through the comments)

    for more about “Building Blocks of SketchUp”, what it covers and how it relates to “Woodworker’s Guide to SketchUp”

    Which brings us back to your original question. I am working on a revised version of “Woodworker’s Guide to SketchUp” and expect to be releasing it in the next few weeks. It won’t repeat all of the basic material in “Building Blocks of SketchUp”, it is being reworked in its entirety to reflect the changes in the program, and more efficient methods I’ve adopted in the last five years. One of the things that takes a lot of time is recapturing all the images and videos in SketchUp 2015.

    When it is released, there will be a special price to bundle “Building Blocks” and “Woodworker’s Guide”, and a special price for previous purchasers to upgrade.

    Stay tuned for the details and thanks for the question.

    Bob Lang