Introducing the FOCUSED SketchUp Learning Portal

Table of Contents

For the last few years, taking a FOCUSED course meant living in two places. The lessons were on a course platform, and the help was in a private Facebook group. It worked, but it was never how I wanted it to work.

That changes today. Every FOCUSED course now lives in the FOCUSED SketchUp Learning Portal at learn.focusedsketchup.com, a home I built specifically for designers learning SketchUp, rendering and AI. The courses, the support, the community, and the people are all in one place, and it does more than either of the old pieces ever did.

If you have been thinking about a FOCUSED course, this is what you get now. Here is the tour.

Key Takeaways:

• Every FOCUSED course is now hosted in one learning portal, with your progress tracked lesson by lesson.
• Every lesson has its own comments, so you ask right under the video and the answer stays there for the next student.
• The community is built into the portal. No Facebook account needed, and no feed to fight through.
• A member map and directory show you the designers working near you.
• Points, levels and a leaderboard reward the people who help others.
• Buy a course today and you are inside in about a minute. Existing students: your set-password email went out yesterday.

One classroom for everything you own

Your Classroom is the home screen. Every course you own is a card with a progress bar, and one click takes you back to the exact lesson you left off on. No hunting through emails for a login, no wondering which platform a course was on.

Progress is tracked at the lesson level. Finish a video and the lesson checks off, the module fills in, and the course percentage moves. It sounds small until you are 40 lessons into a 120-lesson course and want to know exactly where you are.

Lessons built for actually learning

Each lesson page has the video, my written notes, the downloads and links for that lesson, and the full module list down the side so you always know what comes next. But the part I am most excited about is at the bottom.

Every lesson has its own comments. Stuck at minute seven of the components lesson? Ask right there. I answer right there. And the next designer who gets stuck at the same spot finds the answer waiting under the video instead of buried in a group post from two years ago. That single change is the reason I built this portal.

Comment on the lesson, not the course

This is the part I want every new student to understand before they start. Under the video on every lesson page there is a Comments section that belongs to that lesson alone. It is not a general course forum and it is not the Community. It is the place for the question that only makes sense while you are looking at that exact video.

Here is how it plays out in practice. You are working through the kitchen cabinet module, you follow along with the doors lesson, and yours will not snap the way mine did on screen. You scroll down, type what happened, drop in a screenshot of your model, and hit post. I get a notification, come to that lesson, and answer with the fix. You get an email that I replied. Two weeks later another designer hits the same wall, scrolls down, and the answer is already there, under the same video, in context.

Bigger-picture questions, like which render engine to choose or how to price a project, still belong in the Community, where everyone sees them. The rule of thumb is simple: if the question is about the video you are watching, ask it under the video.

A community that doesn't need Facebook

The Community tab is where questions, wins, and works in progress go. It is organized into categories so things stay findable: Announcements, Course Updates, Wins, Help & Questions, Show Your Renders, Tools & Finds, and General. There is a search box that actually searches, and a pinned Start Here post that tells new members exactly what to do first.

You do not need a Facebook account. You do not need to scroll past anything to get to the help. It is students only, every member is a real FOCUSED student, and the recent questions and answers from the old group came along with us so nothing useful was left behind.

There is also a short set of community guidelines. They boil down to: be respectful, keep it on topic, and help each other. That is what makes a group worth being in.

Find the designers near you

This is the feature I did not know I wanted until it existed. The Members directory shows who is learning alongside you, and the Member Map puts everyone on a map at the city level.

Open the Members tab and your own card is first, followed by the members in your city and your state. Want to know which other kitchen designers are in Atlanta? Now you do. Every profile has a short intro and links to their Instagram, website and the rest, so you can see each other's work and reach out.

Your pin is placed at your city, never an exact address, and you control it from your profile settings.

Points, levels and a leaderboard

Posting, replying, and getting likes on your work all earn points. Points move you up through levels, and your level shows as an icon next to your name everywhere in the portal. The Leaderboard shows who has contributed the most over the last 60 days and all time.

I am not doing this for gamification's sake. The best thing about the FOCUSED community has always been the students who answer other students. Now that gets recognized.

What this means if you are on the fence

Nothing about the courses themselves changed. The same FOCUSED Method, the same step-by-step lessons, the same lifetime access. What changed is everything around them.

• You are in within a minute. Buy a course, choose a password on the next screen, and you are looking at lesson one. Your welcome email follows a few minutes later with the three things worth doing first.
• Help is where the work is. Ask under the lesson, or in the Community. Either way, real students and I are the ones answering.
• Own more than one course? They all sit together in your Classroom, with one login.
• Every course includes the community. There is nothing extra to join and nothing extra to pay for it.

If you have been waiting for the right moment to start with SketchUp, rendering, or AI for your design work, the platform I always wanted to teach on is finally here. Pick your course below and I will see you inside.

Already a FOCUSED student? Check your inbox

If you have bought a FOCUSED course before, your account is already waiting for you with every course you own and your progress carried over. Emails went out yesterday, September 16, with a personal link to set your password. Look for a message from me with the subject line "Your FOCUSED courses have a new home."

The link in that email is good for 24 hours. If it has expired, or you cannot find the email, go to learn.focusedsketchup.com/reset, enter the email address you bought with, and a fresh link is on its way. Your old course login keeps working until September 23, and after that the portal is the only place your courses live, so do not put it off.