Comments on: The Tool That Changed My Woodworking Life

By: Jamey Amrine

Jamey Amrine — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 14:02:19 +0000

I can’t seem to get on board with SketchUp. I think it is great that so many people have found it to be a useful tool, but I am an engineer and use CAD for work all the time. Believe it or not, I actually like a break from that stuff when I get home. Also, in my job, just like in my woodworking, I do my best design work away from the computer. A notebook and pencil allow more creativity and enjoyment. I find on my of the pieces I make, I draw the exterior to determine proportions, but as I start to work, things get adjusted to account for available stock dimensions and appearance.

I also really struggle with the fact that SketchUp is not parametric like the software I use frequently at work. I just can’t get my brain around that.

Tablesaws and CAD are great tools for woodworking, but I enjoy the craft much more by ignoring the existence of both when I am at my bench.

-Jamey in Ann Arbor

By: Christopher Schwarz

Christopher Schwarz — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 00:25:12 +0000

Exactly!

Chris

By: Wes

Wes — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 23:45:19 +0000

"The end vise was a component we had on hand from an earlier SketchUp drawing"

So you stole it from Bob Lang’s 21st Century Bench?

By: Christopher Schwarz

Christopher Schwarz — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 21:13:18 +0000

About an hour, total.

The end vise was a component we had on hand from an earlier SketchUp drawing. The face vise I drew from scratch.

I find it very quick. And I kinda stink at it.

Chris

By: Aarf

Aarf — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 20:36:34 +0000

I’ve spent a few hours with SketchUp 7.

Can you give us a rough sense of how many eight-hour days it took you to make the model pictured at the top of this post? Are the dimensions to scale? You DID do that model entirely on your own, right? With SketchUp? No other CAD tools? No downloaded models?

Because from what I’ve seen of SketchUp, it would be easier and quicker write the code to render that workbench in C# than try to do it in SketchUp. That’s C#. In C++, probably a toss-up.

By: Wes Smith

Wes Smith — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 19:42:18 +0000

Sketchup does have a learning curve.

A borrowed copy of "The Sketchup Book" by Bonnie Roskers and a rainy weekend gave me the basic tools to exploit this wonderfull tool. I have also got it to run under Fedora Linux using wine!

Great resource for Sketchup Woodworkers with nice Ruby script site.

http://www.srww.com/google-sketchup.htm

By: Mark Wells

Mark Wells — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 14:45:21 +0000

Maybe I’m the only one who feels this way, but I tried to use SketchUp several years ago, right before Google bought it. I followed the tutorials and found it WAY too difficult. I have relatives who are artists and they had the same reaction. I’m sure I could learn it, but I’d rather spend time in the shop.

For my design work I use Visio. It’s not "real" CAD, but it has a simple drag-and-drop interface and will produce accurate 2D drawings with measurements. Visio is not free, but I need it for work, so that’s "free to me."

I find it much easier to visualize a 3D object in 2D than actually go to the effort of drawing it in 3D. I have also used pencils and rulers. They still work as well. The only thing I don’t like about pencil drawings is that they are difficult of modify.

Mark

By: Jacques

Jacques — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 06:25:53 +0000

I’m a mechanical engineering draftsman. That is, a mechanical engineer, who does drafting full time. I do concept and detailed designs for mechanical systems on 3D CAD 8 hours a day.
I also go visit the workshop quite often to see whether the artisans understand what I drew and are building the parts correctly.
When I’m planning the next woodwork project, I put together a model and some drawings in half of my lunch hour (illegally using company equipment for private use, but hey).
I don’t see how anyone can do woodwork without CAD, specifically without 3D CAD. The only time I don’t use it is when I do "craft" type woodwork, like carving salad spoons or the like.
I struggle to use Skechup though. It’s too limited. But then, I get to use the really high-end 3D programs for free

By: Jeremy

Jeremy — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 20:26:01 +0000

Interesting… the use of the word design and CAD interchangeably can be a serious problem. I have been a CAD jockey for some years and after designing many projects with CAD I have greatly improved my designs by … not using CAD.

It is helpful to get measurements and such from a CAD model, and it shows light on a questionable joint areas long before you get there with tools, but I’ve found most everything I’ve designed strictly in CAD lacks the spark that comes from a pencil line or a free flowing hand. These can’t be duplicated as well in even high end CAD programs, well maybe PIXAR but that’s different.

I realize your design seminar will be more than a CAD tutorial, but to quote Einstein "Not everything that counts can be measured. Not everything that can be measured counts." I think this applies to Design well, as CAD struggles with non linear. Of course maybe that’s why I’m more enamored by the more organic forms of Sauer & Steiner than the perfect Holtey lines, obviously no offense intended toward Mr. Holtey.

By: Rob Cameron

Rob Cameron — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 17:14:38 +0000

I few months ago I put together a site just for teaching Sketchup to woodworkers named, appropriately enough, Sketchup for Woodworkers!

http://sketchupforwoodworkers.com

Learning new software sucks, and learning 3D software REALLY sucks, so I put together some tutorials specifically for woodworking. Almost all the tutorials I found online were about modeling houses and other architecture work and I found it hard to equate those concepts to something like half-blind dovetails. I figured I could save lots of people the same heartache by just recording my screen and talking through the moves. I’ve got tons of positive feedback so it must have worked!