I had a lot of fun playing around with SketchUp. After watching the tutorial videos, I spent a while longer building random shapes and buildings so that I could get more comfortable with the tools.
When it came time to recreate my house, I did not have too much trouble making the general structure of the house (I especially enjoyed making the triangular roofs), but I did struggle with adding windows. I wanted to make the window frames protrude out from the wall, but I could not figure out how to make all of the protruding pieces even so I ended up leaving them flat against the wall.
In terms of useful tools that I discovered, I found the “offset” tool to be very helpful. I only figured out what it did after I had done most of my windows, but it is extremely helpful when you are trying to make window and door frames. Speaking from experience, using the tool is much easier than manually making smaller rectangles within an existing one!
