Probably on topic but not necessarily woodworking.
Sketchup
For those of you that use Sketchup I have a cool trick for you to try out. I use it on occasion and it is very beneficial. I think that Swingman and have discussed using this trick but I don't think either of us have shared this.
ANYWAY....
When I design a piece of furniture I typically will place the drawing inside a scale model drawing of the room that it is going to go in to. I am currently designing an entertainment center to fit inside our "entertainment nook" The nook is approximately 22" deep, 98" wide, 88" tall on the sides, and then on top of the sides is an arch that reaches
96" tall. I am filling the void basically.I am going to run a sheet of 1/2" walnut plywood, ripped in half, vertically on the back wall of the nook. A walnut cabinet will set below and will be as wide as the nook and be about 32" tall. The walnut panels will be offset from the back wall 3/4" so that they will appear to be floating. There will be a 2" gap between the two panels and at the ends of each panel and the behind exposed wall will be painted flat black. In the center of the panels will hang a big screen TV.
Because all of this fits close to the back wall but not against the wall and almost fills the wall, the details of the TV mounting bracket, hanger strips for the panels, etc. are difficult to see when located in the model drawing of the nook.
Now the trick. I want to see how the whole thing will look before building so I color all the parts of the drawing including the walls the correct color. From outside the nook area you cannot see into the nook, the wall color is opaque. This however blocks the very narrow view of how things are fitting behind the TV and the floating panels. So to be able to see through the walls of the nook from the out side of the nook I change the outer side of the walls to a transparent color/material. The inside side of the nook walls remain opaque. In effect this creates a one way view through the wall, you can see in but cannot see out depending on which side you are viewing the wall.