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80% of the time when designing my own ___________ I....

80% of the time when designing my own____, I...

  • wing it.

    Votes: 10 18.5%

  • work from rough sketches.

    Votes: 20 37.0%

  • work from hand drawn plans.

    Votes: 8 14.8%

  • use Sketchup.

    Votes: 11 20.4%

  • use another drawing software (please specify in a reply).

    Votes: 5 9.3%

  • other (please specify in a reply).

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Total voters
    54
Darren Wright

Darren Wright

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Staff member
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Location
Springfield, Missouri
Just wondering what methods you use most of the time with designing and building your stuff. I found myself winging it last night (using a bevel and tape measure) on my booth project and could have saved a lot of time by doing a quick sketchup to get my angles and lengths exact.
 
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I am still mainly building rough stuff. Mangers, feed bunks, stall walls, so it is acceptable as I use material I have on hand that fits the situation. If I were building furniture, that would be a different story. The kitchen build that I have to do/complete, it is being revised as rough sketches and probably will be built from rough sketches because if I took the time to learn a program to draw it, would be past the age of being able to complete the project possibly!!
 
Had this poll come up a year ago I would have fallen somewhere between wing it and rough sketches. No more! Now I'd be hard pressed to build anything without first taking a stab at it in Sketchup. Thanks Dave! :bow:
 
Sketchup, Even for simple things. I like to make sure the measurements work out and SU helps me do that...
 
Dan Mooney said:
I've tried several times to get into SU, and to me it's like trying to learn Klingon
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I'm typically a rough sketch guy, but now that I have the office with a computer, I'm using SU more and more. Yesterday's experience just concreted the fact I'll save time and material by doing it.

Dan, I had a good experience with the online video tutorials. Also a wheel mouse is a must and printing out the shortcut key chart helped too.
 
It all depends on what I am building, boxes, cutting boards, etc., I wing it. When I drew my kitchen plans I used Adobe Illustrator (AI) as that is what I use at work and am proficient using it. I am working on plans for a bed and an entertainment wall and am using AI for those. I would like to learn to use sketchup as drawing in 3D and all else that SU has to offer is good for creating plans, just need to get it (the full ledge version) when I can afford it and learn it:)
 
Tom Niemi said:
It all depends on what I am building, boxes, cutting boards, etc., I wing it. When I drew my kitchen plans I used Adobe Illustrator (AI) as that is what I use at work and am proficient using it. I am working on plans for a bed and an entertainment wall and am using AI for those. I would like to learn to use sketchup as drawing in 3D and all else that SU has to offer is good for creating plans, just need to get it (the full ledge version) when I can afford it and learn it:)
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Tom, you don't need the professional version the free version will do all you need to do 3D rotational etc etc.
 
larry merlau said:
darren can you link to the online videos you mentioned?
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These are the ones I used, drill into the links to see more, they have a tutorial for each tool on the free version of sketchup, did a few a day and learned a lot very quickly, but need to go back and re-visit them.

http://sketchup.google.com/intl/en/training/videos.html

Rennie is right. A lot of good ones by Dave and other contributors for Woodworkers on the fine woodworking site. The ones above are for learning basics and what each of the tools do though.

One tip that Dave gave me that helped was creating your own template that you can start up to each time. Can be as basic as removing the person in the basic template and saving it as yours or adjusting more advanced settings that you prefer to be set each time.
 
thanks darren but right now i can sketch and measure faster than i could pull and push sketchup:)
just went there to have a look and thats GREAT i had played with sketchup some time back and got threw some of the stuff the hard way but this made sensce of what i had remembered and i am gonna give it go on these dressers now so i can see what i got ahead of me.. thanks again for the link..
 
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ok way back when dave suggested a template that worked well for those of us starting out do you have one that would be a good starting point darren and if so can you email it or post it here?
 
larry merlau said:
ok way back when dave suggested a template that worked well for those of us starting out do you have one that would be a good starting point darren and if so can you email it or post it here?
Click to expand...

I'll have to get the one off my laptop at home, don't have one here at work. Dave's link seems to be broken as fine ww has moved some pages around.

Here's the pdf version of the shortcut cheat sheet also: http://support.google.com/sketchup/bin/answer.py?hl=en&topic=13702&answer=116693

Edit: Here's one of the how-to's on setting up a template. You don't have to follow everything. I typically start with the architectual feet/inches template, open the large tool box set (View>>Toolbars>>check large toolbox set) and remove the "Person" in that template, finally do a "save as template" from the file menu and leave the checkbox for "use as default template" checked. I think the whole purpose is to start with the things you prefer when drawing, toolbars, minimum fraction size, etc.
 
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Visio

I posted 80% with another drawing program. That is a bit of a lie---I do about 50:50 with Visio and a fairly neat sketch with dimensions.

As I was writing a box came up and informed that I could not be connected with Family Woodworking. What I wrote went to lala land. I could not connect with any of the other threads either. So I tried again later. This is version 2 of my reply.

I am a Sketch Up drop out. I tried it twice several years ago. I found it much more difficult than learning AutoCAD and Corel Draw. Of course I was much younger when I learned those two. #2 Of course age has nothing to do with it. If I get time I am going to try SU again.

Enjoy,

JimB
 
JIm, I too gave up on sketch-up when I first started using it. But after taking the online tutorials, listening to Dave:thumb:, and just a lot of practice, I got prett proficient with it. I find myself taking the time to use it along with Cutlist to get my material list. The cutlist add-on is great IMO. The amount of time and money it saves me is huge. I find it a little easier then AutoCad. But to each his own I guess. I think it all depends on what you are comfortable with.
 
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