Learning Sketchup

I'm completely new to 3d printing, would I be right in assuming that I need to learn Google sketchup? Would it be better to learn another program?

Yes, there are several packages out there but Sketchup is certainly a good place to start (and finish if your happy with it).

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Waitaki 3D Printer

Sketchup is good to learn with.

You will need to download an STL saver from the Plugins section.
and you will learn how to design and the process in creating 3d printable files (eg. creating manifold parts)
otherwise it could slice wrong.

also you will need to repair the STL, just to make it perfect for printing.

also, the circles are made up of straight lines, and not curved lines...

I used sketchup, but i also use Solidworks2012

I'm just starting off as a 3D hobbyist, I'm not so keen to spend $$$ on a program that I would only use as a hobby.

How do I change the straight lines on circles?

you can change the number of segments that a circle is made of, but it will always be made of straight lines.

click and drag to make a circle, then type 36s+enter, then you can drag to final size.

this will create a circle made of 36 segments. you can use as many segments as you want, but using too many will become resource intensive and will become a major headache when trying to use things like the intersect faces function.

I think its best to use as few segments as possible without the straight lines showing up in your prints.

oh okay, I think I have a lot to learn, I'll try to get some sketchup books and see what I can make with it. I have tried to use Blender, but that thing is really hard to use and complex.

you can find some good sketchup tutorials on youtube...at least enough to get you going...

Sketchup is a good way to learn how to 3D drawing/modeling. They've got a fair amount of training info online. You can start here [www.sketchup.com]

I've got Blender but I don't think it's well suited for this sort of work. We need a tool for a manufacturing workflow, not a creative modeling workflow. Other tools like Solidworks and Inventor have not only steep learning curves but steep price tags as well.

Autodesk has 123D which offers various free 3D tools including 123D Design. [www.123dapp.com] I prefer it to Sketchup but but like other software choices much of it is personal preference rather than one tool being better than the other. Either Sketchup or 123D will get you started.

I found 123D harder to use, compared to Sketchup.

ViaCad is a good low cost option as well. Version 7 can be found for under $50.

If I had spent the time that I wasted over the past year learning OpenSCAD instead of fixing problems where Sketchup would not punch holes through the outer surface of objects properly, I would be a master of OpenSCAD by now....

There are plenty of tutorials online for "punching holes" in SUp

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Waitaki 3D Printer

Nine times out of ten, it punches holes properly. The 10th time is a headache, where it seems to stop a rounding error's short of breaking the surface (like 19.9999999mm for a 20mm deep hole) or else goes out past the surface into open space. Maybe the latest version fixes this, but the 2013 and early 2014 versions gave me nothing but headaches with the push tool on a Mac.....

I've installed a copy of AutoCAD from the website, is that a better piece of software to use instead of sketchup? Could I learn sketchup first and then graduate to AutoCAD?

I use sketchup 8, another plugin I find useful is "solid inspector" very handy. then I export an stl file to netfabb to check. with netfabb you can convert and export 3ds. files which then can be imported into sketchup.