Sketchup is a software design company that offers a free version of their Sketchup software. They also have the SketchUp Pro Statewide K-12 License Grant which is available for FREE to public K-12 teachers who want to work with SketchUp Pro licenses. They’ve issued grants to state departments in 45 states in the US. You must have your state technology director apply and administer the license grant. They can find the application here.

According to SketchUp, “We do our best to make great tools for drawing. For our users, drawing is thinking. They draw to explore ideas, to figure things out, to show other people what they mean. They draw because they love it, and because nothing great was ever built that didn’t start with a great drawing.”

Visit their website to learn more.

Click here for the step-by-step instructions for how to print on your MakerBot.

However, when printing with SketchUp make sure that your outside faces and inside faces are all labelled correctly or else it won’t print out right. Read how this happened to TC Central Senior High School and how they are dealing with it.

Download SketchUp Make

Follow the instructions below to install and start designing.

 

Tutorials

Do you want to see the capabilities of SketchUp? Do you have it downloaded and don’t know where to start? SketchUp has provided tutorials are available online.