COMPONENTS are the way to go.
- Start off making the simplest things (even mere 2D rectangles!) into components.
- Then practice selecting several components and collecting them into one big new component.
- Find out how to name components, too.
- Clone your components (ctrl+C ctrl+V, i.e. copy & paste). You position your clone after making it.
- Make new components out of collections of components (nests of nests), and practice drilling down into them, changing one thing, then exit.
Notice how, if you clone components, a change made in one clone automatically affects the same bit in all the other clones - this is superbly useful. Notice, too, how you can use "make unique" to stop this happening (does what it says).
Experiment on really simple shapes, rather than an actual project, so mistakes don't drive you nuts.
As a rule, when you are making any shapes (2D or 3D), at the first sensible point you are working on it, make it into a component, EVERY time.
I also second Roger - Dave Richards's tutorials and other videos are really excellent.
SketchhUp is brilliant, but it is also clever, and you do need to understand its cleverness to use it. Time spent systematically "playing about" with it will pay back tenfold.
Have fun, E.
PS: Woodworking SU models aren't very big (filesize), so once you start on real projects, don't be afraid to save several copies: "hall_table_1, hall_table_2, etc. You can always delete stuff you no longer need, but sometimes it saves you from over-writing something you need to keep with a version that later turns out to be a mistake.
