Woodworking Software

[tkiovino]

OK, so how many of you have used Google Sketchup for designing furniture?  I have been toying with it, but I believe that without a mouse (I use a laptop and keep forgetting to pick one up), I'm up the creek without a paddle!

[Dave in Md]

I have not as yet, you may want to start by looking at some of the free libraries that Google has and modify from there.  I know I wouldn't even try without a mouse or trackball.

[Lucas Peters @ WOOD]

I do more and more. The thing I like about it the most is that you're basically building the project before you commit any wood to it. You get to make sure that everything fits, nail down your joinery and get a pretty good idea of what it will look like. The thing I dislike is that there is not an easy way to then convert the different parts into a cutting diagram to print out for the shop.

Lucas @ WOOD

[knotscott]

I have played around with a litte without much success.  I typically consider myself fairly adept at most basic software like PPT, Word, Excel, etc., but Sketchup did not come across as all that intuitive to me.  Perhaps a revisit is in order, but so far my trusty pencil and ruler work pretty well!

[MSWood]

SketchUp has totally replaced my drafting table (and I spent a good bit of money on that drafting arm a few years ago....).

I use it a bunch, and will be a teaching aid at the Marc Adams school next September in a class devoted entirely to SU and a few related plugins and tag-along applications.

There's a lot to the program, and it solves many of the issues that have traditionally plagued designers.  Gone are the days of having to completely redraft an image in order to make one tweak change to show a client.   You can make the change on the fly and save the change as a new file name (I usually save it as a .1 or .2 rev file name to help keep track).  

And a mouse with a scroll wheel is essentially mandatory with SU.    The mouse wheel will handle zoom functions that are pretty much de regeur in operating the program.

[georgenoeth1]

Lucas,

Have you tried the cut list plug- in?  It does a nice job with cutting diagrams.

GG

[Dave at WOOD]

I'm with you, knotscott. I've seen enough quirky things that I don't know that I would trust it beyond just getting an idea of how something will look. I'm not doing anything beyond rectilinera projects/drawings with it, and something always ends up out-of-plane. Maybe I haven't spent enough time with it.

Dave

[Todd A.Clippinger~American Craftsman]

I still sketch things out by hand. I have so many things going on that I have not learned Sketchup.

I had a need for some Sketchup rendering a couple of years ago and I paid to have them done (of course the client paid for the design work.) The clients wanted to have the benefit of moving around the image as Sketchup provides. 

I sketched by hand and gave dimensions for everything then sent jpegs to my Sektchup artist. They drew it up and sent it back. I could make notations to screen shots and they would make modifications as requested.

My motto as a contractor is "I don't need to know it all, just who to call."

[Lucas Peters @ WOOD]

Hey Gadget,

I haven't tried it yet. I've seen you guys talking about it in the old forums. Do you happen to have the link you could post for us? Do you have to you have to be pretty particular about the way you build your model to get it to work correctly? Like being careful to use components and groups?

Thanks

[skunnmann.ee74]

to I learned to use Sketchup throught the tutorials that were posted on the old forums.  The best way is to find one of them and follow them step by step on your own computer.

Once you have the knack you can do some amazing things.

I would like to find a program for laying out cuts on a sheet of plywood or other sheet material.  Any thoughts?

Steve