Grizzly shop layout - resizing tools?

[Brian Tymchak]

Morning all,

Couldn't sleep so I was up this morning trying to draw up my shop with the Grizzly shop layout tool which many here on the Creek suggest to use. Got the room drawn OK and started adding benches. I have a bench that is 72x24 that I want to add. The benchtops provided are all a bit wide or a bit long or short and since the shop is a little small, I want to get the dimensions right. The help says I can resize the objects by opening the control panel and editing the dimensions. When I do that, and click OK, nothing changes. Has anyone used this tool and successfully resized something? Is there some bit of magic that I'm obviously missing?

Thanks for your help,
Brian

[Bob Peterson]

I used the Grizzly program in the past with marginal success. I experienced problems similar to what you described when trying to customize things. I switched to google sketch up (free download) and have been very pleased with the results.

[Jerome Hanby]

If you have Visio, there are some collection/templates you can download for setting up shop. That's the best thing I've used...

[Sam Layton]

Brian, I am in the process of using the Grizzly program to rearrange my shop. For the benches, I just grab a corner of the bench with the mouse, and move up/down, and side to side to the size I want. It gives you the changing sizes as you move the mouse.

Sam

[JohnT Fitzgerald]

I have used that tool before with no issues. Your issue intrigued me so I went to The Grizzly site and tried it again. At first I had the exact same issue - I had selected on of their table saws and could not resize it. I deleted the TS, and then picked a plain rectangle shape (from the 'misc' category) and was able to resize it. I then selected the table saw again and was able to resize it no problem. Definitely weird.

[Brian Tymchak]

thanks guys. I tried the same steps John suggested and I was able to resize rectangles. (I hadn't tried anything but benches.) However,I still can't resize a benchtop or any of the tools. Tried all the tablesaws but no go. The icons (for me) do not have the 4th corner that controls resize. But I can create a square to represent the benches and that should be good enough.

Thanks again,
Brian

[Ben Hatcher]

You can't resize any of the objects that represent things they actually sell, like tools, benches, or cabinets. It makes sense given that they probably built the tool to help you figure out if their tools would fit into your space.

[Ray Newman]

I am never able to utilize computer programs for a shop layout -- the image is just too small for me to visualize the final result.

When I had my24' X 28' shop built, I purchased a large roll of brown paper and taped it together to get the size that I needed. I made the paper large enough to accommodate a drwaing of the building using a scale of 2" = 1'.

Using the same scale, I made cut outs of all my tools and bench, then moved them around and planned accordingly. The larger image and cut outs provided me with a better perspective as to how much room there actually was and what would work and what would not.