Training Courses

Authorized Training Courses.

These curricula have been defined by the SketchUp Team and are prerequisite in order for a trainee to obtain an official certificate of the completion of the authorized training courses (no matter SketchUp is owned by @Last, Google or Trimble).

SketchUp Essentials 1 - this course is intended for new Google SketchUp users or anyone interested in learning the basics of Google SketchUp.

SketchUp Essentials 2 - this class is intended for those who have already taken the Essentials I class (see above), or who possess the equivalent knowledge and skills.

SketchUp Advanced Skills - this class is designed for experienced SketchUp users who want to investigate advanced topic areas including working with CAD, creating curved surfaces and employing advanced presentation techniques for SketchUp models.

Advanced Landscape Modeling - this class is designed for experienced SketchUp users who want to create custom face-me plant material, import and export models to Google Earth, utilize various plug-ins and ruby scripts, model terrain and understand advanced techniques working with large files. This course can also be an introduction to working with various organic forms ranging from golf courses, through skate parks to sculptures.

SketchUp for Geomodeling - this class provides students with a comprehensive overview of the process and benefits of exploring the interoperability of SketchUp and Google Earth. Although now, with Trimble's acquisition of SketchUp from Google, this course may seem to be obsolete, by now a growing number of businesses and government agencies have realized the various, useful ways SketchUp can be used in this field.

LayOut - this class provides students with the strategies and techniques needed to effectively and efficiently present 3D SketchUp models in digital and print formats.

Specialized Training Courses

Although the "Authorized Training Courses" are always pre-defined by the SketchUp Team, SketchUcation can (and may - i.e. "is allowed to") give other, more in depth or more specialized courses of which we issue our own respected certificate of completion. Moreover, members of our team have been dealing with various problems and questions of users all over the forums for years and only the "Core Team" (see above) has more than 50,000 helpful answers during the years. Without going into extreme details, our team can offer expert, in depth training in the below fields:

• Architecture - from expressing early stage design ideas to exporting to CAD applications or importing existing CAD drawings for presentation purposes;
• Landscape architecture - from dealing with different surveying data to optimizing the models for enormous poly-count;
• Engineering - from dealing with tiny geometry to assembling complex structures in a presentable way;
• Urban planning - from dealing with huge, complex models to presenting them in different ways;
• Woodworking - in fact, everything about woodworking;
• Interior design - the mos effective ways to adopt in the design then in the presentation period;
• Product design and organic modeling;
• Archaeological data processing - from dealing with data collected from field through stratigraphical analysis to reconstructions of finds;
• Photorealistic rendering - from basic introduction to the general terms to advanced tips and tricks in a multitude of rendering applications
• Parametric modeling - from the basics of SketchUp's native dynamic components to the use of various, 3rd party plugins;
• Ruby scripting - for the very stout-hearted who wish to write their own plugins in the future
• and many-many other fields...

Using Plugins

Let's face it: since the acquisition of @Last SketchUp by Google back in 2006, SketchUcation has become the hub of 3rd party plugin development. We maintain confidential beta forums for developers and our team is not only expert at installing, trouble shooting and using all sorts of available plugins but also some members are the leading plugin authors and contributors of the community.