Here’s the rough idea for rebuilding the arbour of our broken dreams.

I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with Sketchup. It’s in a world of its own, interface-wise, and not entirely in a good way. My pattern seems to be as follows:

1. Decide to use Sketchup for something.
2. Realize I have an old version.
3. Install newer version.
4. Spend half an hour trying to re-learn how to pan, zoom and rotate at the same time.
5. Spend another half an hour re-learning how to draw a damn 2×4.
6. Re-discover that’s easier to just delete an entity and draw it again rather than try to re-size it.
7. Get more or less up to speed and eventually finish a primitive drawing that’s accurate enough to generate a Home Depot shopping list.
8. Ignore Skecthup for another 8 months of so.

For accuracy, there should be a probably be a step 4a: Walk away in disgust, come back later when I’ve had more tea.

Anyway, this will do for my purposes. I can estimate the number of 2×6’s to buy, and have a good visual in mind when knocking this thing together. There will be bracing and blocking involved that’s not shown here, and the shaped ends of the rafters (if that’s what we call them) will either be more elegant than shown, or else just a straight taper as I did previously.