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Every woodworking niche relies on design this includes the wood crafter, the carpenter, and the cabinet maker. Here comes the list of design software for woodworking. In the old days, designs where done on a sketch pad or drawing sheet using pencils and technical drawing tools. The use of digital technology in almost every aspect of life also caught up with woodworking design. Today, diverse software applications exist that simplify the process of woodworking design.
These applications come with features that ease the design process, provide 3D visualizations of designs in real-time , and simplify editing.
The 3D visualization features of woodworking software also eliminate the need to build smaller prototypes to troubleshoot ideas before scaling up.
The applications on this list will include both paid and free software to ensure you get started with designing without having to go above your available budget. There are few free drawing applications as popular as this software and these are due to its history.
Today, SketchUp is owned by another company but its popularity remains due to its features. The drawing software was built for both 2D drawings and 3D modeling. Woodworkers can make use of the hand or a stylus pen to draw woodworking designs on its responsive workspace and interface.
These 2D drawings can then be turned into 3D models which provide a more accurate view of designs. SketchUp also comes with a wide array of tools that simplify drawing from scratch or editing already existing ideas.
Autodesk Fusion was built as an excellent mobile tool for editing CAD files and working on-the-go but today this has changed. Fusion has in-built features that ensure woodworkers can create high-level woodworking designs with it. Fusion was one of the initial software applications to provide product creation and CNC GCode on one platform.
The success of this initiative made many commercial or professional woodworkers use it to design products for CNC woodworking. It also integrates 3D visualization features and 2D documentation that enhance a design. Unlike the other options above this application, SketchList 3D was designed solely for woodworkers.
It is not a suite of packages with woodwork design features but a suite of tools solely built for woodworking designs. To this end, the features are easier to use, and in many cases, woodworkers design by dragging and dropping components to make a functional design. SketchList comes equipped with design features such as one-click curtains, one-click joints, drill hole emulation, different wood types, and custom design materials for woodworking.
The extended repository of components it offers also simplifies the task of creating woodwork designs. You can also choose to input designs from other platforms and edit them using SketchList. Pro bills itself as a woodworking and cabinetry software for cabinet makers, interior designers, and commercial woodworking outfits. It is a custom application any woodworker can use for presentations, woodwork design and visualizing design ideas.
The application also supports 2D drawing and 3D modeling powered by a powerful 3D rendering engine. This specialized design software comes with regular drag and drops design tools and more advanced options. These options include the ability to generate reports like cut lists, and cabinet list, and choosing design materials. Commercial woodworkers can also take advantage of its costing and pricing feature which allows you to estimate the cost of a design.
As its name suggests, this application was designed with the aim of enabling woodworkers to create designs as quickly as possible without any prior CAD knowledge. To this end, it comes with simplification tools such as one-click design features and reporting features.
The software enables 2D drawing and creating 3D models. Easy Woodworking Design Software is a woodworking project management system which means it does more than just design. Users can use this application to develop reports and analyze building costs. It is also an excellent editing tool that supports the uploading of external designs into its interface for enhancements or cost evaluations.
The software also provides documentation features that ensure your ideas are clear and can be shared with collaborators. After creating a model we want to do something with it. If you designed something for the CNC you want to create gcode that the CNC can execute to cut out the shape you designed. This is called CAM. For traditional furniture it is important to have a good drawing and ideally a cutlist that helps you to cut everything to the right dimension.
There is however an important difference. This could however change every day. Other solutions are open source software where you do not only get a CAD system but also the source code — so to say the assembly instructions for the software and you will always be able to use it.
In the following picture you can find a quick overview of the strengths and weaknesses of the solutions:. It is similar to Illustrator so you can draw simple shapes but also get very artistic and design organic shapes — such as the patterns for the living cell table design.
Besides templates Inkscape can also produce shapes for a a lasercutter or a CNC machine and it even includes a simple CAM solution that can create gcode. The only disadvantage of Inkscape is that it is not parametric and not able to easily produce measured drawings. If measured 2d drawings and parametric design are important for you you might want to look at LibreCAD. However when a project requires a parametric 2d shape you can create it also in a 3d CAD program.
The next software on our list is Blender. Blender is a super powerful 3D modeling and animation open source software. You can create entire short films in Blender and we use Blender to edit our videos. Blender is a perfect solution if you want to sculpt a model or if you want to modify a file before 3D printing it. While it is excellent for creative modeling Blender is not parametric and while you can use it out of the box for traditional CAD work it is a bit cumbersome.
While there are a few CAM addons for Blender none of them seems to be actively developed and maintained. For a long time Sketchup was our go-to solution for 3D modeling. It is a great solution especially for complex assemblies with a lot of parts.
Another great feature is that while the drawings are mediocre with an addon you can create a cutlist that is very handy for woodworking projects. We stopped using Sketchup for a couple of reasons:. First the vendor of Sketchup, Trimble, offers the new version only on the web — which means that they can limit the access easily — in contrast to the old version that would run forever on your local computer. Secondly the ruby scripts such as the cutlist addon mentioned before no longer work in the web version.
You can still add drawings but the lack of the cutlist addon is really bad news for all woodworkers. Thirdly Sketchup is not parametric and the free version is missing some critical features such as Boolean operations that make it very hard to use it for single shape 3D printing models or any sculpting work. The same is by the way true for Onshape.
Which brings us to the next solution on the list: Fusion Fusion is perfect and comes with all the features you ever wanted. It is parametric, has an easy user interface, allows for sculpting, creates CAM paths for your CNC and can create renderings as well as technical drawing.
Now you might argue that it is pure paranoia. Why would a respected company such as Autodesk offer a solution for free, build up a community, invest in the product just to discontinue it or charge money for it? The reason is pretty simple. They are driven by shareholder value. If you feel uncomfortable with putting all your eggs in one basket given that the rent for this basket might be a few hundred bucks going forward have a look at FreeCAD.
That means you can download and modify the source code of the software. Even if the website closes down you will always be able to use the software and adopt it to your needs. FreeCAD is still under heavy development but it comes with a fully parametric design system and is able to create gcode as well as technical drawings.
While FreeCAD was at the publishing of this article a bit clumsy when it comes to multipart assemblies a lot has changed and I published a post on FreeCAD for woodworkers and a detailed instruction on multi-part assemblies. It might be more difficult to get used to the software but for us the benefit of using an open source solution easily outweighs the more difficult learning curve.
The last tool on the list is a bit of a niche solution. With OpenScad you create your model with a simple programming language. We mainly use it to create models that need complex parameters like these voronoi vent covers and to create parametric models for Thingiverse. When we draw something we usually use Inkscape. We also use Inkscape to send designs directly to the vinyl cutter. For the laser cutter we only needs a free 2d CAD solution.
When a lot of parts have to fit on a single sheet we use the open source software deepnest. When a 3D printed design such as this router jig needs to be configured with a lot of parameters we create it in OpenScad to make it easier for people to configure their own version on Thingiverse.
For creating or modifying STLs from Thingiverse or other sources Blender is the most convenient tool. It is easy to cut away part of the model, merge several models together or modify the mesh. We are not experts on the CNC and while using Fusion never managed to wrap our heads around the more complex options of adaptive paths and all the other advanced CAM features.
For us this lack of features is actually an advantage as it means we have less possibilities to mess things up. For woodworking and metalworking projects choosing the right free CAD solution is quite difficult. We did some models in Fusion and are missing the the possibility to create a cutlist.
FreeCAD has some possibilities to create a bill of material — which is a very good starting point to create a cutlist in another software such as cut micro. Arranging several parts in FreeCAD is either simple or parametric. Moving parts in FreeCAD is easy but these connections are not parametric. As soon as this feature is stable FreeCAD should be able to provide everything you need to model furniture. Till then we will have to work with assembly options rather on the level of Sketchup than what Fusion is offering.
This approach is described in this article. This was a quick overview of the free CAD software we are using. Are we missing something? What software do you use? Let us know in the comments.
January 17, March 20, August 8, May 23, As woodworkers we are a small customer group. But creating a solid is really simple in FreeCAD. Just open the program, select the part workbench and click on the cube icon.



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GUNKA
11.03.2021 at 14:24:58
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