Google SketchUp For Dummies

Aidan Chopra has always had a thing for computers — his parents thoughtfully sent him to Apple camp instead of hockey lessons like every other eight-year-old in Montreal — but he learned to draft and build physical models the old-fashioned way, working for his architect father. These days, Aidan is a Product Evangelist at Google, where he’s been since that company bought SketchUp in the first part of 2006. In the three years since he graduated with a Master of Architecture degree from Rice University, he’s done a lot of writing and lecturing about the way software is used in design. Aidan writes the SketchUpdate, a monthly e-mail newsletter that reaches a half million SketchUp users worldwide. He has taught architecture at the university level and, at Google, works on ways to mediate between power and usability; he believes the best software in the world isn’t worth a darn if nobody can figure out how it works. Aidan is based in Boulder, Colorado, even though he is what many would consider to be the diametric opposite of a world-class endurance athlete.