We need a new space to store our firewood. We started with some basic drawings on a legal pad.

But the project was large enough, that it wasn't clear exactly how it all went together from the fidelity of the drawing. We needed a better model before we actually started cutting pieces.

I usually see such projects mocked-up in Sketchup, so I decided to finally bite the bullet and learn it. I'd opened Sketchup a couple times in the past and found it too unintuitive to just bluster my way through. This time, I did a search specifically for "woodworking" and "sketchup". I found several forum posts who all highly recommended: http://sketchupforwoodworkers.com/

Two quick tutorials, and a couple hours later and I've got a reasonable design. It could use a little bit of cleanup, but I'm pretty happy with it. Sketchup file.