It doesn’t have to be free, I’m happy to pay for the right product.
I like to make things for around the house, out of wood. I’m not a master crafter or anything, but I can be handy with the tools I have. When I get an idea, it seems to take me forever to figure out what sizes to cut things, and then halfway through I realize I have forgotten something and now I’ve wasted some (expensive, these days) wood.
So I’m looking for a simple drafting program for small projects. I don’t want to build a house with it, usually these projects are small enough to carry. Years ago I used to have a program but it wasn’t popular enough to be worth it to the developers to upgrade to various succeeding Windows platforms – I don’t even remember the name of it now.
I’m really only interested in hearing about programs that people here have actually used (or know someone who has). Please don’t google it and then throw random suggestions at me. I’ve already done that for myself, ad nauseum. Simple and intuitive are the key things to remember, and it would be even better if it has a good tutorial available.
For many years I used Sketchup to design woodworking projects and then later 3D printing projects. I think it’s very simple and intuitive, but pretty limited in functionality. The last few weeks I’ve been learning OnShape, which is enormously more functional than Sketchup but has a somewhat steeper learning curve. I’ve also used Fusion 360 but would not recommend it. It’s probalby about as functional as OnShape but much more difficult to use. I never got very proficient with it before I gave up on it.
This is easy to use, though quite limited. It is free though. Depends on your use case.
Not sure if this is necessarily a good suggestion, because there is a reasonably steep learning curve, but the free 3D animation software, Blender, does have ability to render non-animated (static) scenes and export them in a bunch of formats, some of which can be used by 3-D printers, if you want prototypes.
I had very little issues with very basic model creation; I was not trying to make movies, just slightly complex shapes. In my case, a balled up piece of paper. It took about two days to get a reasonably realistic looking 3D model. I did do several tutorials, though.
I use Fusion 360 for just about everything. I find it pretty straightforward, personally.
There’s also Tinkercad. I’ve used it for simple 3D printed things, but I mainly see it as a toy. That said, since Tinkercad and Fusion 360 are both from Autodesk, it’s relatively easy to get your feet wet in Tinkercad and “graduate” to Fusion 360 later.
Tinkercad is totally free and Fusion 360 has a free hobbyist option, limited only by the number of active projects you can have going at once. It’s easy to juggle your active projects, though.
I have used Sketchup a long time ago, but not for this purpose. That is, I don’t think I ever used it to get dimensions for parts for a woodworking project. Maybe it would be good for that, I don’t know. Maybe I should try it again. Apparently I still have a login.
I signed up for Tinkercad, and I see they have a tutorial that is aimed, apparently, at kids. That should be about my speed for starting out. I’ll give that a try too.
Thanks for the responses. I remember in the early days of Windows, version 3.1 if I remember correctly, I could wander into the Egghead Software store and they had all kinds of quirky programs for all kinds of things, like desktop publishing and designing objects. They were made for hobbyists and amateurs, not professionals. Virtually everything one finds online these days is targeted at professionals, and contains way more than any hobbyist or amateur would want. Oh well. End of old person rant.
That’s a good point. There seems to be a missing middle ground in a lot of software. Microsoft Publisher vs. QuarkXPress, say. Well, at least tutorials and such are much more available now. No need to take a class at the community college.
For what it’s worth, I did use the free Sketchup to make some really basic plans for some outdoor fixtures (sink holders and tables and the such) and it was very helpful for that purpose, especially for someone with no CAD experience. It was about as easy as pen and paper, but with accurate measurements and the ability to view it from many angles and with or without perspective and texture and lighting and all that.
I apologize for not having an easy tool that you can just launch and play around with and get immediate good results. This is apparently a gap.
For simple drawings, I have used QCAD. It’s not a toy application, but it is not a modern fancy one either.
QCAD is a 2D drafting program that reminds me of real honest pencil-on-paper drafting. It takes me back to my drafting days when I was in high school, using pencils and triangles to draw electronic schematics and being told by my boss that my lettering sucked.
It takes some getting used to, but really does have the feel of drawing construction lines and then using dark lines for the actual drawing.
For more ambitious things–3D modeling–I use FreeCAD.
Neither is simple enough to use without watching a few tutorials, but neither is overly complex.
I think that if I were just doing a quick 2D sketch, I would open FreeCAD and figure out a way to create a standalone Sketch.
These two tools show two different schools of thought for drawing: QCAD is more traditional, where you draw your object to size then put dimensions on it, and the dimensions reflect the actual length of whatever you drew. In contrast, FreeCAD is parametric–you draw things and add dimensions, and the drawing resizes itself to match the dimension you type in.
The latter is much better since it leads to thinking like “Make this part half as long as that part” thinking instead of dealing in absolute dimensions.
I started using EasyCAD, from Evolution Computing, in 1988. It was very good and very easy to learn. It’s a 2D program. I used it for nearly 30 years before Corporate IT made me switch to something very big and messy. It’s $295. Now that I’m retired, I’d probably shell out for it personally, but my home computer is a Mac and they’re a Windows-only product. Even so I might yet get some Windows emulation software so I can use it…
You probably want to specify a budget. Drafting software can range anywhere from free to around $10,000 per seat, and even if you’re willing to pay, you’re probably not willing to pay that much.
For 3D design, I favor Tinkercad, which has a lot of features (I would even say very important features) that aren’t replicated by any of the “professional” 3D design programs. But it’s not very good for 2D design, because that’s not what it’s designed for, so if that’s what you want, look elsewhere.