What drawing/drafting programs do you use?

[myxpykalix]

I'm trying to design a wainscoting panel and I took to drawing it on the mdf to get a general idea of what it might look like and the picture is not that great but you can get an idea of what i'm trying to do if you look at my thread on waincoting: http://www.talkshopbot.com/forum/messages/312/17076.html?1167181459
What i'm trying to find out is when you sit down to design something what program do you use? I'm assuming it has to have something like graph paper or some way to keep it to scale so that you can then transfer that to part wizard to create your cutting file? Does anyone design on one of those electronic "graph table" (don't remember the actual name)? Is there a way to show parts that might have a higher elevation? What the picture shows is a raised panel in the middle, with a 2" rail on top/bottom, 3" baseboard, and 4" fluted column on both sides. See the thread quoted for a better picture.

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[bcammack]

CMS IntelliCAD PE
http://www.intellicadms.com/

Works great for the price. We use it in our production environment all day long doing countertops.

[bill_l]

Jack,

Do you want to machine this from a single piece of MDF?

If so I believe that ArtCam Pro would be the easiest program to build the relief in. Machining the panel would take considerable time though, with several tool changes.

To just create the drawing, I would use either my CAD program (TurboCad) or Corel X3 and then export the drawing or parts of the drawing to whatever program you use to tool path (I use VCarve Pro, ArtCam Pro and Vector for tooling).

I believe the "Graph Table" that you are thinking of might be the WACOM Graphire Tablet. You can sketch with it but not the tool that you would want for a job like this.

Bill

[myxpykalix]

Yes Bill, my thought was to make this out of a solid piece of mdf. Where you see the raised panel my thought was to mill that to a lower thickness. Where you see the fluted pilasters that would be left at 3/4" thickness and milled. Scott J. gave me some great advice, "do not overthink this" and gave me some tips on some subtle design changes that tend to greatly UNcomplicate some of the things i've been trying to figure out. I'm anxious to see if with his help and yours I can pull this off. It will be the most ambitious project i've tackled yet but I think in the longrun will make this project go faster than if i tried to create the various pieces by traditional rail and stile, raised panel joinery. Keep the suggestions flowing!

[davidallen]

You might want to check out SketchUp. There's a free version through Google Earth (used to make 3D images for maps).

I've used Rhino for a number of years and find its modeling features very good. The learning curve isn't nearly as steep as TurboCAD.

Once you have a model, converting it to toolpaths is easy through a number of options.

da

[paco]

Here something I read about on the SILO forum recently; from what I've read about, I believe it's "RHINO" based (nurbs modeling). It's named MoI (http://moi3d.com/) as Moment of inspiration. So far it's looking very promising but it's still at the BETA stage... even though it's working very nicely for me so far...

It's more for solid/non-organic purposes if you ask me but it can do organic stuff... check it out by yourself... I personally prefer something else for organic models.

I believe that for this particular kind of projects (the one this thread is about), it'll be well suited and since it's "free" about this BETA stage, then... give it a try. You can toolpath it's exports from most small 3D CAM like VETRIC's 3D Cut or else.

[paco]

Unfortunately, FREE SketchUp doesn't save or export in any other 3D format than SKP file format.

Still SketchUp is very fun and easy to use for drafting 3D...


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