Google's SketchUp

We ran into a problem with the house plan we picked.  It was for a log home and we want to stick build.  No problem said the log home place, they can change it for just a few hundred bucks.  Seven hundred to be precise.  As it turns out, they'd have to design the house from scratch and not simply click a few buttons, so the estimate now is $3,000.  

If we have to pay that kind of money, we might as well hire someone local in Fulton County to design it for us.  To help speed the process along, I thought I'd learn how to use Google's SketchUp, a CAD program of sorts.

Well, I downloaded it, and I've been sitting here all day going through the tutorials.   This is going to be pretty involved, I think.  It took me most of  the afternoon to create a trestle table following the tutorial that showed me each step.   

I then decided to create a Greek column, just a few cylinders stacked on top of each other.   Easy, right?  Wrong.  Somehow I've got it looking like the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

You can see the table I made, which came out OK.  I have no idea who that lady is or why she's standing there.

Above is a house I was practicing designing.  I think next I'm going to do a floor plan and then use it to raise the walls and stick a roof on it.