General assembly drawings

[dirk martin]

I'm making a few items, that others will be cutting and assembling.
I'm wondering how I can make some kit drawings.

When you read an article in Wood magazine, they usually have many drawings that show the wood cuts that need to be made, along with the assembly of the object.

Is anyone aware of some software out there, that would work well for making such drawings? I can draw squares, circles, and rectangles, and include lines and arrows showing how they piece together, but many of these nicer plans have drawings of smaller items like screws and dowels which really make them look nice.

Are they doing this in Visio? Sketchup? Some other specialized software?

Kind of something like this:

Drawing.jpg

[Rob Feldner]

You could give Sketchup and DraftSight a try. They're both free and you can do quite a bit with both. It will probably be a question of which environment you are most comfortable in. I like DraftSight because I'm used to AutoCAD, but someone who prefers (and has more experience with) Sketchup could probably chime in and tell you what features of that program would appeal to you.

[Dave Richards]

You could do something very similar to that with SketchUp if you want. The nice thing about SketchUp is you can make a 3D model from which you can make all the required views. That way if you need to modify the drawings, you can do it quite easily. SketchUp is pretty easy to learn, too.

[johnny means]

I use a photo record for projects that I ship out. I'll photograph the part or parts, then the hardware used in the step, then how the parts go together. So far my clients say it works great. If I was doing larger volumes I would probably opt to have proper drawings made. My projects also don't require cutting, which would seem to complicate things a bit.

[Dave Richards]

Here's the tool holder. I didn't bother with screws and text but it was pretty quick to draw.

[Art Mann]

Sketchup sounds like just what you are looking for. I use it all the time. I wouldn't begin a complex project without a Sketchup model to work from. It may be a little difficult to get used to if you are accustomed to showing things as combinations of circles and rectangles because it is a true 3 dimensional modeling program. I started out 20 years ago using 2-D autocad and it took some adjustments in my thinking. 3-D models are soooo much more useful than 2-D drawings. It is worth the effort.

[dirk martin]

David, did you do the toolholder in Sketchup?
How did you do the wood grain? I played with Sketchup a little, over the last couple of hours, and didn't see any "wood" skins.....
Or did you use some other software?

[Art Mann]

Click on the little paint bucket and choose a wood pattern from there. You can also "wrap" a photographic texture around an object if you want to do your own wood.

[Dave Richards]

Dirk,

I did use SketchUp to draw the tool holder. Art is correct, you can get to some wood materials by clicking on the Paint Bucket tool and choosing the Wood library. The materials I used are ones I added to my libraries of wood materials and that's something you can do if you wish. I also used a line style I made for the edges in those images.

FWIW, I make all of my own materials and don't use the ones that are included. It's easy enough to do and you can make much better looking materials.

[dirk martin]

Well, Dave, you seemed to make that tool holder in Sketchup, quite quickly. That makes me feel that it indeed may work for me. All I have to do is get past the learning curve. Thanks.

[Dave Richards]

Dirk, the learning curve really isn't too bad. It's like anything you might learn in woodworking. If you learn good, efficient techniques, the process can be enjoyable. If you learn poor techniques, the process can be miserable.

[Rick Alexander]

Actually the guy that does the great majority of those drawings for Wood magazine is Bob Lang. He does those in Sketchup and goes around the country teaching a 3 or 4 day class for a fee. He came here to GA for one of those sessions for our WW'ng club and I took the class with him. He's a great teacher and the class was really fun and well worth the money IMHO. The software is free which gives you a little room to spend a little on taking a class or two to get started. Also, there's literally hundreds of tutorials in youtube on about every aspect of the software. I'm one of those that just learns better in a classroom setting to get started in software. After that class you'll be pretty darn good in Sketchup - at least good enough to draw just about anything you want much quicker than with a pencil and in 3 D. We now have a separate little group that meets once a month to share skills in Sketchup based out of our club now and I have to say the software has improved my woodworking skills more than any single thing I've learned since I've started.

[Dave Richards]

Actually the guy that does the great majority of those drawings for Wood magazine is Bob Lang.

When did Bob start working for Wood Magazine? I thought he was at Popular Woodworking.