Great tool for a 3D design

Here I will talk about the amazement I had when i discovered something I had been searching for quite sometime, from the least expected quarters. Here is the full story.

I needed to physically design a rather complicated piece of furniture for my kid's study that I just started working on lately. On a nice Sunday morning, we all family members got together and brainstormed about the idea and managed to get a mental picture of it. Designing in mind is much like designing in air. One hectic day at office is all it takes to lost it, especially for people like me, who forget things very fast. So, i started to search for a tool which can help me put that in my computer. I laid my hands initially on AutoCAD (I happened to have a copy of that in my friend's computer) for the purpose. But, I discovered soon that there is a disconnect. Fundamentally, I didn't need something of that calibre to suit my purpose. But, I was so obsessed with it, that I literally wasted 'hours' to learn how to use it, before i finally learnt that I flawed.

The other day, i just was browing the internet as usual. I happened to go to the Google lab pages. I found something vaguely similar to what i had been looking for - SketchUp. I didn't believe it could well, but nevertheless decided to try it out. Download and installation didn't take much time and hence I was ready to use it in just around 5 mins. To tell you the truth, i was amazed. No complications, a cool interface and a really awesome set of features is what this tool has. Technically speaking, this tool doesn't differentiate, between 2D and 3D objects, from a user perspective. Just draw a line (even free-hand drawing), and choose a menu item to visualize it in 3D. It is as easy as that to use it. There are lots of cool features, all of which I won't describe here, but someof them are orbit, walkthroughs, camera position adjustments, look around etc. It is a great tool for all those non-techie people, to create a 3D picturization. Even if you are a techie, you won't too much disappointed with all those advanced features like layers, texturing, alternative rendering, dimensioning etc. The best part of it all is that it is absolutely free! So, what are you waiting for? Start using Google SketchUp.