One week ago I received a surprising and satisfying email titled “I’ve Finished Your Book!!”

I must admit that this was a first. I receive many emails regarding my book, but none have claimed “finishing” it. I expect people to “finish” novels – but SketchUp books???

The subject title of his email may have surprised me, but the writer was readily recognized, Steve Rosenblum (“Riffler” is his handle on Finewoodworking.com).  I’m not sure when Steve started on my book, but I know when he started writing to me about his experiences and issues.

The first time I heard from Steve he was already into Chapter 7. It was May 2011 and he was having some issues with the joinery and the ogee shape in the Magazine Rack. Pretty soon he was into Chapter 8 with questions on dovetails. Then Chapter 9, on elongated holes …… and so on.

I followed his hard work right through all the chapters in chronological order. The pieces of furniture came in sequence also – Chamfered Post Table, Windsor Chair, Shaker Stool, Connecticut Stool, Armchair, Breakfast Table, and Maloof Rocker.

I asked Steve if he would write a short paragraph about his experience, and here it is:

I have gone through Tim’s book on SketchUp and have completed all the exercises. In general I found the book’s material very helpful in discovering good ways to work with SketchUp to make drawings of woodworking projects. Before I read the book I had tried several tutorials online to learn SketchUp techniques, but never felt confident enough to use it for complex designs beyond rectangular objects. Tim’s book has given me the confidence to tackle these types of projects. Completion of the drawing of the Windsor chair was a major breakthrough for me. His willingness to offer help with some of the inevitable roadblocks that I encountered in carrying out the exercises was invaluable in keeping me moving forward.

The main systemic problem that I ran into using SketchUp was with difficulties encountered after operations of “Intersect with Selection”, Even after magnifying the object ten times beforehand as Tim suggests, I often found that there were unexpected holes in the bounding planes of the object due to lines not fully reaching their intended destination. Magnifying the drawing and searching for the disconnection often did not help and I had to resort to multiple attempts to find the missing connections by trial and error, which was frustrating and time consuming. I think a tutorial on how to find and fix these problems would be an invaluable addition to the book.

I am very pleased that he stuck with it, and I could be of help. I will miss his periodic notes.

Tim
http://killenwood.com