I seem to be spending more time lately checking out a variety of free office software. The idea is very promising and the concept of having a open document format standard is very cool (where was that in 1994?!? ).
Recently, I commented to one of our Engineering Managers that he should switch out all of their uber-expensive CAD software (ProE, Igis, SolidWorks, etc.) and just start using Google’s new SketchUp which is part of the long list of offerings from Google.
I thought it’d just be a nice silly comment that would go away and not get treated seriously. Four hours later, he sent me renderings for a new cabin:
The PDF file he sent me had views from every angle, views with walls removed, etc. Wow! Its a great example of the power of some of these tools. And while it won’t be replacing any of our other tools any time soon (its not very good with round extrusions) it may be used for some limited applications around the company and probably will be what is used to do most of his cabin designing from now on.
What people here are saying…