Crafting Furniture

There is something strangely cathartic about recreating furniture in SketchUp. Given good measurements, I can craft something recognisable in about ten to fifteen minutes.

As we wait for our planning permission to move through its various stages, I have been building up a model of our future home. The bulk of the building model is finished.

Now I am entertaining myself with little models of our existing furniture and, in a few places, items we are going to need.

Putting together these models reveals all kind of details I had not appreciated before. Dimensions, weights, and volumes all need consideration. You can not cheat with a three dimensional model.

SketchUp is surprisingly productive. It has taken a long while to understand its approach. The software’s demands on you, the operator, are not obvious but they are not too difficult to adopt. I have turned to YouTube tutorial videos many times. Little tips and tricks about typing dimensions, mass copying with keyboard adjustments, are wonderful but utterly hidden in the visual user interface.

As a tool I have found SketchUp impressively productive. The notion of pushing and pulling away material is effective. I initially tried Blender but it never felt enjoyable; a tool I likely need to invest more time into before I get the results I want out.

My growing collection of furniture looks surreal. Floating in a gray space. Ready to be copied and pasted into the house model.