SketchUp is a Corner Stone of 3D design
January 29, 2020

SketchUp is a Corner Stone of 3D design

Oral Tosun | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with SketchUp

I use SketchUp designing 3D contents for my clients' projects. SketchUp provides quick 3D model creation possibilities via its useful mouse commands. I only use SketchUp since MiniFabrikam is a small online desktop 3D printing company. I use SketchUp mostly on architectural projects. SketchUp provides many ready-made 3D models for all kinds of things in its 3D model repository called 3Dwarehouse. This feature saves you a lot of time on your projects. You select the ready-made models from the 3Dwarehouse and could use your own projects.

Pros

  • SketchUp has a vast 3D model repository. You don't need to design the wheel from scratch.
  • SketchUp's extension warehouse provides a lot of solutions for different design problems. You could solve your design bottlenecks via extensions. I often use SketchUp's STL exporter extension to get 3D printable designs for my business.

Cons

  • It is a little bit hard to get manifold 3d files from SketchUp. Manifoldness is a must-have rule for a 3D printable file.
  • SketchUp cannot import well-known CAD file formats.
  • SketchUp caught many urgent new customers for me.
  • I advised my non-technical customers learning design on SketchUp for their simple projects.
Fusion 360 and Onshape are much more suitable for 3D printing. These tools were not available at the beginning, but SketchUp was. SketchUp's 3D repositories, 3Dwarehouse was bigger than the Thingiverse.com. I used to get 3D files from 3Dwarehouse for my 3D printers on those days. The surface topology of the SketchUp designs is not suitable for 3d printing. But this could be eliminated by applying retopology tools on other CAD systems.
SketchUp has an excellent support team. But the software's capabilities are suitable for other industries rather than 3D printing. There are not many things to do with the support team. SketchUp's nature is not suited well for the 3D printing industry. I give it this rating because SketchUp's internal support team is excellent; there are a sufficient amount of user forums and groups for SketchUp.

Do you think SketchUp delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with SketchUp's feature set?

Yes

Did SketchUp live up to sales and marketing promises?

No

Did implementation of SketchUp go as expected?

No

Would you buy SketchUp again?

No

I think SketchUp is best for architectural designs. It could be used for both interior and exterior building designs effectively. SketchUp has some difficulties regarding 3D printing applications. There is always some "STL" file format exporting errors on SketchUp. (3D printers utilize mainly "STL" file format.).The other file formats which are supported by 3D printers cannot be usable with SketchUp. But SketchUp provides rapid 3D design creation possibilities, which are suitable to use in urgent customer projects.

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