Shopnotes drawings

[Ben Brownbrwn]

Sometimes I wonder how they do the drawings in the shopnotes mag. Is there some software available to do that? or are they sketch up drawings? Though I am still learning sketch up

[Raymond McInnis]

Ben, good question. I too have often asked myself that same question. Wonder whether it has been asked over at woodnet, the discourse board sponsored by august home, owner of SN?

[Colin Giersberg]

Any decent CAD program should be able to do 3D drawings. There is Isometric drawing and Perspective drawing. Isometric drawing uses vertical lines, just like you would see them, but horizontal lines are drawn at 30 degree angles above, or below horizontal. the vertical and horizontal dimensions are the same as in a 2D drawing.
Perspective is somewhat similar, except that the horizontal lines are angled to a "vanishing point". The dimensions tend to be distorted in perspective drawing.
Without their magazine in front of me, I am not sure which one they may use, but I believe that it is isometric.

Regards, Colin

[Jim Becker]

I know from my conversations with friends at WOOD Magazine a few years ago when I was taking "the tour" of their offices, shops and testing facilities, that all the diagrams used to be done by hand, but they do use software now. Unfortunately, I cannot remember any information about "what" software at this point...

I have little doubt that August Home is using the same or similar software since they hired the art dude away from WOOD not long after my visit to Des Moines if my memories are sound on that.

[Wes Bischel]

Believe it or not, there is a lot of these illustrations that are done by hand. Depending on how final a product was, I would do product instruction/description drawings with Rapid-o-Graph pens and Pantone films. It was faster to do the one-offs versus the computer programs of the time. Even now, when I'm in the early stages of a design, I'll pull a few sketches into Photoshop and lay in some color, shadows etc.
Obviously, if there are many revisions expected, the computer is the way to go.

I guess this is a long way of saying they could be either.

Wes

[Ben Brownbrwn]

Well, I have to agree with Jim and Wes. What I have found is they have people called sketch artists who do most of the drawing by hand. They do use some CAD software, especially to create the exploded view. I am trying to recreate it using photoshop. Well whatever, there is lot of effort involved and three cheers those guys. It is a mag which is worth every penny.

[Jesse Kerr]

I can't remember what magazine I was reading but one said they used, and I'm sure that it has been discussed here before. Google makes a 3d CAD type program called "Google sketch-up" I have tried to use it and I just do not have the patience to work with it, as I would rather be in the shop working. You can get it in two types professional ($400) and free. That might work for you.

[John Schreiber]

I'll bet that much of it is done by hand by extremely talented draftsmen. Also, a lot of it is done in 3D CAD programs. SketchUp would work well - especially with something fancy they've got called "sketchy edges" which make the drawings look hand drawn.

But they probably don't use pure output from those programs. They probably output a couple versions, then do some fixing, adding and combining using PhotoShop or something similar.

[Ben Brownbrwn]

I finally found out. They use a product from Autodesk. It is called Studioviz and inventor. Costs about $8000 or more Oops!!