This site is full of 3-D drawings of “Golden Age of Rail”
http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/cldetails?mid=4bd692e40e73adb12ffe1766e521736b&ct=hpr1
another group of American structures
http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/cldetails?mid=28369be7343d7b998d23d54c94aaf1d0&prevstart=0&start=0
I have so much fun in sketchup
I am working with the Chicago Clinic group about giving a clinic/lesson on Sketchup for the NGRConvention.
Any comments or thoughts?
Dennis
Very detailed models! I pulled this one down as a test, and am impressed:
(http://freightsheds.largescalecentral.com/users/dawgnabbit/misc/daytondpt2.png)
(This is just what I needed–another way to waste precious hours at the keyboard!! 
) Thanks, Steve
<<I am working with the Chicago Clinic group about giving a clinic/lesson on Sketchup for the NGRConvention.>>
How about some lessons here?
I downloaded the program and a building,
But don’t have any clue what to do with it. 
John: There are lots of sketchup tutorials on the web. Here’s a link to skechup’s own “New to SketchUp” video tutorials:
http://sketchup.google.com/training/videos/new_to_gsu.html
Caution: Sketchup is a powerful program, but it’s not really intuitive (at least it wasn’t to me). Just slog through the video tutorials, beginning with the most basic, and pretty soon you’ll begin to catch on to Sketchup’s way of thinking.
Another caution: Sketchup is a great time consumer…good luck.
Steve
John
What do you want to do with the drawing. Do you want to create a plans for bulding this model?
True there are several tutorials but a lot of them only make sence if you are somewhat familiar with the program.
Dennis
There was a simple “minnow” shack I liked.
Can’t do a thing with it, so I dumped the program.
I can draw scale plans on grid paper faster than using that program.
Maybe on a cold snowy day I’ll play with it some more.
Sketch up is good for drawing plans from pictures. If you have no known dimensions sketch up still can be used. I’ve used sketch-up to build plans from pictures. One of the neat features I really like is that if you have pictures of different sides of the building, say north side & east side, you can merge the images together to create a fuller picture of what it looks like. I really haven’t learned to much about sketch-up but it does seem to be easy to learn. I’m building a feed mill for example and I have only a 3 pictures from different perspectives total (about 8 total), plus a building footprint. Each picture is slightly from a different angle so by merging everything together I was able to create more dimensions that I didn’t know.
Craig