If you already have the nasty Google Software updater on your computer here's how to remove it for good.

Delete the contents of this folder.

~/Library/Google/GoogleSoftwareUpdate

Then lock the folder. It can't reinstall itself after that.

I created a drawing of a house plan in Sweet Home 3d (a free app) some time ago and wanted to see how well SketchUp handled it. The drawing has walls, windows, doors, some furniture, and other ditties. I wanted to see if SketchUp could put a roof on the house but I never got that far.

It didn't crash.

I exported the file from Sweet Home 3D as a .obj file (the only option you have) and imported this file into Cheetah3D (an awesome app). I then exported it from Cheetah3D as a .3ds file.

SketchUp did not import a .3ds file properly at all.

So, I exported the file from Cheetah3D to a .dxf file which SketchUp did import albeit very slowly. The resulting drawing was tiny in scale. This is not right. I need accurate dimensions. The resulting file had over 250,000 entities - what did this thing do, take every itty bitty line and make it an entity?

As a result, moving around is EXTREMELY slow - zooming and panning tested my patience.
I did draw a few things but lost interest in using it because it's performance on this file was so bad.

SketchUp can be used for *simple* drawings containing small numbers of objects and that's about it. It is like 3D electronic graph paper and it might serve your needs so give it a try but don't be surprised if it starts to balk at higher levels of complexity.

I first saw SketchUp at MacWorld NY in 2002 and was immediately taken by it. This was what I wanted 3D to be since first starting to work with integrating architecture and computers! There are more robust programs for CAD and for 3D modeling, but I find nothing easier to use in the design phase - it is like a combination of napkin sketching and clay models. I can very quickly put an idea together and then play with it until I have my thoughts together. I rarely pick up paper and marker anymore to design. Clients also respond very favorably to SketchUp - the ability to quickly see their ideas take shape and look at various possibilities - should this be taller, what if this is smaller...? No, you're not likely to do a full set of construction documents with it, but I have done some small projects that way. And with the TurboSketch plugin you can do some pretty realistic rendering as well.

This product is a very good OS X implementation of a 3D software. Clean and stable release I think it's much better than Live Interior 3d or any over Mac 3D Designer. Easy to use and functional tool to design environements and interiors. I love this product.

This is a good basic CAD type sytem, with a few problems. My main problem with it is the difficulty in dimentioning and constraining items. It can be done in a couple different ways, but none of them are easy, especially when compared to high end CAD systems. It can also have drawing errors if you don't have a new enough graphics card. You really need at least 32mb of VRAM in order to get it to draw correctly.

THIS IS NOT A UNIVERSAL APP! If you are using an intel mac it will not run well. I can run it okay on my 5 year old iBook 500, and it runs well on my iMac G4 700, as long as I keep the geometry simple. Any PPC mac of 1Ghz or more should have no problem at all with this app.