Move the timber frame design out of your head and onto the screen using SketchUp, a 3D computer aided design program very well suited for modeling timber frame designs. This is great for demonstrating designs to clients and for estimating costs, but it is also flexible and accurate enough to use for joinery design and creating shop drawings directly from whole-frame models. Students will learn to use custom extensions for Sketchup designed specifically for timber framers (by the instructor), enabling them to generate precise shop drawings with full joinery detail. This is a full-day, hands-on workshop. Students will bring their own computers and follow along step by step, creating 3D timber frame models that include joinery details. Both timbers and joints are represented as Sketchup components. Successful use of this system requires the user to build up a library of components that represent their personal joinery style. In this session, students will use the presenter’s library to build a sample timber frame including joinery, learn how to make their own timbers from scratch using existing joinery components, and finally, creating joinery components from scratch. The custom extensions also create timber lists for the models, which can be used to derive material lists and project checklists. The timber frame-specific extensions are available at no charge from the presenter. The course includes a 20-page color manual.

You will need the following tools for this class:

lap top computer with wireless capability, mac or pc. The instructor will have free copies of the 2017 Sketch up program available for you to install on your machine.
3-button scroll-wheel mouse