DevilDog's SketchUp Tips
While not essential for pond construction, Google SketchUp, is very useful for working out all those little "kinks" that come up during pond construction (or any kind of projects).
Before you start hauling blocks and bags of concrete, try your design ideas out in 3D. Its a lot easier to find out on paper that your skimmer design doesn't work, than to tear out some cured block wall.
The program is free for non-commercial use from Google.
The learning curve is fairly easy (it took me about 72 hours and I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer). If your comfortable with terms like "Right Click", "Click-And-Drag", "Mouse Over", etc you should be fine.
I will be posting some of the very basics first to get someone who has never used the program before up to speed. How to download and install, how to start your first model, that sort of stuff.
If you've been using the program for awhile you'll probably be pretty bored with this thread until I start getting into some of the more interesting stuff. Please hold your questions/comments until the end as I would like this to be a very useful guide, that someone could just follow along.
If you want to work ahead, there are tons of tutorials on youTube and Google's Help pages. If you know a better way (I'm no Expert) please PM me and I'll edit the Original Post and credit you.
I'm pretty excited so lets get started.
Can correctly identify Shinola 3 out of 5 times*
*Under ideal conditions
Every Success is nothing more than a string of Failures laid end-to-end.