When we lived in Phoenix we redesigned the kitchen and laundry room. Since we bought the land in Colorado we have designed: a highway entrance, half a mile of road, 2 rv pads, a septic system, and a cabin with shed.

To do all of those designs I have used Sketchup. When I first used Sketchup I enjoyed how quick and easy it was compared to Auto CAD. There is some learning curve but the ability to connect lines and build things is easy and fun.

It has been helpful to watch YouTube videos to see how others use the tool. There are so many ways to build your floor plan. Then you just pull the floor up 8′ and you have your walls. If you remembered to cut out doorways then those are already built.

The web based version is free and works in the browser. Watch a few tutorials and you can start building in no time. From creating first drafts quickly to highly accurate building plans you can use Sketchup to do it all.

Currently I am playing around with some layouts that have a large central living room. Its been fun to see what works and what doesn’t. I find that with Sketchup I am too quick to start building walls and the roof. First I need to get the floor plan figured out.

Sometimes it takes building the walls and roof to see the earlier mistakes. Depending on how bad the mistake is I may undo a few times or I may just start from scratch. The copy and paste capabilities make iteration fast and easy.

One additional tool that Sketchup has is the warehouse. This is where people can upload their Sketchup models for other people to use. I pulled down someones King size bed to scale.

Workout detail

Got up and on a 30 minute bike ride this morning. The smoke from the forest fire was still pretty strong then. The rule of thumb is that if you don’t have 5 miles of visibility then you should not exercise. I could see at least 5 miles but the air still stunk with smoke.

The ride was pleasant and made me feel great all day.