It would give you more time to focus on other critical elements of technical theatre that students might be less familiar with. If the students already know how to use SketchUp from middle school, I might be tempted to go with that software instead.
That said, I have heard wonderful things about SketchUp - specifically its ease-of-use. It's beneficial when everyone's speaking the same language. When I bring in professionals from the local theatre community to mentor our students, they more often than not use Vectorworks. Most of our pre-professional design students (the ones graduating on to CMU and Northwestern, etc.) come into our program with Vectorworks already installed on their laptops. Most of the designers that I know use Vectorworks. (Your students will need to provide evidence of their student status, such as a letter from the school or a scan of their student ID card.)Ģ.
It's also free! Your school can get a donated lab license and/or your students can download free individual copies of Vectorworks on their computers at home. My two reasons for sticking with Vectorworks are:ġ.
However, we've used Vectorworks for the past five years. Someone else can probably answer this better than I can as I've never used SketchUp in the classroom.
