Need Tips/Help with Sketch Up for kitchen plans

16 years ago

I've downloaded Sketch Up, taken the tutorials, and bought a book - Sketch Up for Dummies. So now I'm reasonably OK with the basics.

However, I'm at a complete loss as to where to begin to use it for my kitchen plans. I'm sure that part of my problem is that I'm not yet familiar enough with the tools and rules.

I could use a little help getting started. Should I start with an aerial diagram of the floor plan and then build it up? Or should I do one wall at a time & "pull" it forward?

I welcome any and all suggestions.

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Comments (5)

miaolinwei
16 years ago
This is what I usually do when designing a kitchen. I never used Sketch Up, what I use is 2020 design. First get a paper out, draw and measure your existing walls and the height. Second place your appliances on the paper, since all the appliances spots are set(unless you are moving it to other places), Third figure out what you need, like pantries, spice rack, drawers cabinets, and other things like that, do only the base first, after you done with the base, the wall are pretty easy to figure out.

Good Luck
grannysmith18
Original Author
16 years ago
I'm not sure I understand what you mean. I've already got my kitchen plans drawn on paper, and jpegs on the computer. What I'd like to do is create a model on the computer using Google Sketch Up.
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flatcoat2004
16 years ago
Well I start by building the walls of the rooms I am interested in. If the room is 11'x14', and the walls are 6" thick, I draw a rectangle 12'x15', then I use the offset tool to draw another rectangle exactly 6" inside the first. Then use the push/pull tool to pull the 6" "walls" up to your ceiling height. Voila ! you have a room !

Then you can cut doorways and windows out by drawing rectangles and deleting the openings. The tape measure tool is great for drawing guidelines to make sure you position everything just right, and at the right size.

There are online component libraries that you can simply download cabinets and furniture from.

There's a really good Sketchup tutorial on the IKEAfans website, it got me past the frustration point and into drawing models really quickly.

Good luck !
remodelfla
16 years ago
I"m going to try again with what flatcoat said myself. I tried Sketch-up and was totally daunted. I also tried LiveInterior which was a little easier but I still struggled with it. I had the most luck drawing in Excel but had trouble posting the drawings. You can see my thread that is currently running. I'd post a link to LiveInterior but can't remember where I saw it. You can do a search at the bottom and it might come up. I'll look to see if I can find it for you. You will probably be better with it then I was.
miaolinwei
16 years ago
oh, lol, my bad, I misunderstood, I never used Sketch up, but if you still can't figure it out, I could draw it for you using 2020.