What Software do you use?

Red Lion

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Sep 5, 2008
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I'm a wannabe cabinet maker / industrial design graduate. Solidworks is the flagship product design software, but I'm curious if any of you guys or gals use other software like autocad or sketch-up? I'm curious as a blooming design hater / craftsman wannabe.

Thanks all

m@
 
Reg, I'm a big fan of Sketchup, there's a free version and it's really easy to use. With some practice you can do some neat things and it's free.  ;D  For serious industrial design it's not the way to go but for a wannabe cabinet maker it may be a nice fit of ease of use and features.
 
Red Lion said:
I'm curious as a blooming design hater / craftsman wannabe.

At the risk of creating the dreaded thread-drift, what do you mean by "design hater"?

Regards,

John
 
eCabinet Systems software is free and pretty nice stuff. They put on seminars and sell supplemental literature for the system. Check out  the website and the forum.
 
I'm using Adobe Illustrator for detailed planes. If a customer wants a preview, I make it in Cinema 4D.
Josef
 
i use auto-cad, pro E, Rhino, solidworks, 3d studio max,mechanical desk top. and several others. each of these i use for their individual strengths. If you only have a hammer then everything looks like a nail. I am not aware of any perfect software package. Do you need to do FEA, or CFD ect? If not, that opens up the world a great deal.As usual it is the man not the machine, or software. heck i still think pad and pencil is awesome, no OS issues and licensing problems. ;D
 
I agree with Brice that SketchUp is great....small learning curve as well.

What I question Brice about is this

Brice Burrell said:
For serious industrial design it's not the way to go...

Have you seen some of the industrial designs and city planning projects with SketchUp? Some of them are just mind-blowing!!
 
Hi

I'm new to FOG, so pardon a stupid question. I notice that there is quite a grounswell for Google Sketchup. I tried it some months ago and found it cumbersome to get started (I'm not a CAD user - I like the pencil and Paper thing) I noticed that somebody spoke of a training link. Can anybody forward this to me?

Thanks
 
SketchUp has become pretty much the software of choice for many in the woodworking community.  In addition to the relatively short learning curve, there are plenty of tutorials, some which apply directly to woodworking, as well as forums for more information.  That it is free shouldn't be a reason for using it, but rather, a benefit.

While not free, Robert Lang has a pair of DVDs that cover a great deal of material relating directly to cabinet and furniture making.  For example, mortise and tenon joints are covered in the first DVD and the second one shows how to draw dovetail joints and raised panel doors.  There's a lot more valuable material on both DVDs; I think they are well worth the price of admission.

For more on these DVDs, check
    http://www.woodworkersbookshop.com/product/shop-class-on-demand-sketch-up-part-one--get-started-CD/cd-dvd
and
    http://www.woodworkersbookshop.com/product/shop-class-sketch-up-part-two-advanced-techniques-cd/

You can also download this material, at a somewhat lower price than the DVDs.  However, you miss out on much needed shims for tables as well as drink coasters.

Richard
 
joraft said:
I purchased this tutorial ($39.95) from Popular Woodworking magazine. It is very helpful in getting a woodworker up and running on Sketchup quickly:

Woodworker's Guide to Sketchup

John,

Do you have any knowledge of the DVDs I mentioned, and how they relate to the Woodworkers Guide?  Is it one or the other, or both, for best results?

Thanks,

Richard

As long as Sketchup is becoming the focus of this discussion, it might be useful to access this topic:

http://festoolownersgroup.com/computers-gadgets-technology/sketchup-discussions-go-in-this-board/
 
rwdawson said:
Do you have any knowledge of the DVDs I mentioned, and how they relate to the Woodworkers Guide?  Is it one or the other, or both, for best results?

Richard,

Actually, I shouldn't have called the one in my link a "tutorial", it is more of a reference guide. Your links are to the tutorial.

Same author, a lot of overlapping material. Your tutorial is probably the "must have", but having both couldn't hurt.  [smile]
 
Matthew deBeaupre said:
Solidworks is the flagship product design software, but I'm curious if any of you guys or gals use other software like autocad or sketch-up? I

Even though Sketchup is popular because it is free, if you have SolidWorks, you should probably stick with it. If you don't have it, however, then it is pretty tough to justify the cost for designing woodworking projects.

For simple projects, I just design them in my head as I go. If the project is complex enough to warrant a design, then it goes through SolidWorks.
 
Solidworks is the flagship product design software

Not exactly...

Pro/ENGINEER is the flagsihp, Solidworks is a copycat. Unless they have changed since I got out of the biz (about 10 years ago), Solidworks and many other copycats use the Parasolid kernel, which is significantly weaker than the Pro/E kernel with geometry that is difficult to solve. It is also significantly less efficient when it can actually solve the problem. To my knowledge, the Parasolid kernel uses boulean operations, Pro/E doesn't.

Tom
 
My first whack was with autocad lite and turbocad.  Learning cure was steep.  I could do some very basic stuff but that was it.  My first big use was E-cabinets.  It worked quite well and is free.  Being designed for use in cabinets adapting it to other things was a pain but worked.  Finally got sketcup (before google bought them) and really liked it and the learning cure once you had the basics was pretty darn quick.  Thats about all I use now. 
 
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