Which design software if any

I'm a carpenter/woodworker who has spent the past 20 or so years working for various GC's, cabinet/furniture shops, etc. I'm finally just about over all that and looking toward going out on my own. The idea would be to start off small, doing simpler free-standing furniture pieces or accessories of my own design. There's also a chance I'll approach some of the local architects and designers I've worked with about producing some of their designs as well. I'm definitely trying to avoid getting pulled into full scale cabinet jobs, but the occasional built-in or vanity wouldn't be out of the question. This is definitely a "start small and see where it goes" sort of endeavor with a push for more time in the shop and less on the job site.
My question is which (if any) software I should be looking at for design work. I would be starting from just about ground zero here. I played around with sketchup a few years ago and honestly I had a really hard time making any sense of it. I've seen some mention of Fusion 360 with the caveat that it's a steeper learning curve than sketchup? I'd be pretty tempted to just stick with rough sketches on paper and full-scale drawings for dimensions and details, but I'm curious what others with more experience have found. I'd think it would probably be easier to get to a nicely refined, well thought out design using some kind of 3D modeling tool. I'd also assume that most people who are willing to pay for a commissioned piece will want to see a professional drawing or rendering before they say "go", and I certainly want to make sure they know what they'll be getting. Any suggestions?
Thanks for your insight.
Patrick

I've used both Sketchup and Fusion 360. Sketchup is MUCH easier to learn. There are advantages to Fusion 360 in that if you change your mind about the size of a part later, if you set it up right it will automatically resize everything. But other than that I find I can do whatever I need in Sketchup with lots less effort. Fusion 360 was just way too wonky and fussy. There are lots of online tutorials for Sketchup for Woodworkers and those were really helpful when I got started.

I was just saying to another member the other day how I have attempted to teach myself sketchup several times, as I would love get more into designing the things I make... but I just cannot get my head wrapped around it. It's like my brain is not wired to comprehend the 3D modeling and controls. I wish there was a 'design software for dummies' option, but to be honest, I'm afraid Sketchup IS that option and I'm just too much of a lost cause.

Check out Rhino 3D.

I find 3D design programs to have a very steep learning curve and not particularly useful when you're done. I took a class and spent three solid 60 hour weeks trying to learn to use Sketchup, trying to give it a fair shot at getting over the hump and getting productive work done with it. I failed. Yes, I could make drawings that sort of looked OK, but I found it to be buggy and unintuitive as heck. There was always some hidden surface that messed up the drawing, and the crowning glory was when I wanted to produce simple dimensioned shop construction drawings it required almost endless fussing and workarounds to produce crude approximations.

At the end I just don't understand the use of 3D drawings for those of us building for ourselves with regular wood shop tools-- I get why you need them to drive CNC machines, but I don't have any of those. As far as I can tell they convey no more information than a traditional top, front. side 2D set of drawings does, are much harder to make, and are much harder to use as construction drawings. Again, I get the value if you want to show someone what their new kitchen is going to look like. When I'm designing a piece of furniture that view already exists in my head and in sketches, I don't need to draw a 3D representation of it because I'm not selling it to someone else. If I'm not sure about shapes a quick mock-up out of foam or whatever tells me way more than any drawing representation will.

Your needs may vary, I'm sure if you need to show designs to clients the pretty pictures can be useful. For myself, I still find a dimensioned 2D view I can produce in an hour or two with paper and pencil to be a far better use of my time, and ultimately more useful.

I agree with Roger 100%. I have tried SketchUp several times and became frustrated. I attended a hands on class and that did not help. I attended a presentation by a user/fellow woodworker, still frustrated. I showed the software to my BIL who uses CAD and he was no help.

Bought a drawing board and some paper, frustration over.

Not a lot of love here for SketchUp. I couldn’t design without it. Yes, it does take some time to learn but that is true with any software. I find it invaluable for visualizing scale/proportion and complex joinery. I am a terrible drawer with pencil and paper, although I do try and at least have a rough sketch before I dive into the SketchUp model.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Tom Bain

Not a lot of love here for SketchUp. I couldn’t design without it. Yes, it does take some time to learn but that is true with any software. I find it invaluable for visualizing scale/proportion and complex joinery. I am a terrible drawer with pencil and paper, although I do try and at least have a rough sketch before I dive into the SketchUp model.

---

At least in my case, I WANT to love SketchUp... I see what others do with it and it seems incredible. The ability to make my own plans and designs would be great. I just can't seem to get the hang of it.... How did you learn? Any specific videos or anything that you found particularly helpful?

If you (and your client if any) can visualize exactly what you are going to build then drawing can be minimized. I have built many cabinets from an elevation, plan and story poles. When you need to explore and develop a design 3d software is a big help, especially with furniture and sculptural objects with aspects that are hard to capture in orthographic views. Moreover, many clients have a hard time interpreting orthographic drawings so 3d can be better for presentation.

When changes are made, they show up throughout the design as opposed to 2d drawings where changes have to be updated in 3 planes including details and sections to be consistent. Having worked in a custom shop where the designs saw many revisions and the shop drawings were done in 2d Autocad I have seen more than one situation where a change failed to ripple through all aspects of a drawing, leading to mistakes on the shop floor.

There are many choices of software, and the time spent becoming proficient represents a much larger investment than the license fee, so choose wisely. There is a large Sketchup user base and a lot of teaching material available, so that is an attractive option for many. I think most professional users would say that Sketchup is quick for development of ideas ("sketching") but limited for modeling organic shapes, and it is challenging for producing construction drawings (although I know one design/build firm locally that uses Sketchup exclusively). I am still getting into Rhino, which you might consider. It has the advantage from my point of view of a one time license fee as opposed to Sketchup's annual fee which I despise.

This is convenient. I came to this sub forum to get some design software ideas and see that someone else beat me to it.

I detest cloud based - anything.... I also detest software that you have to pay an annual licence fee.

How about TurboCad? I used it to design a house, but that was 20 years ago...... and 2D. It seemed simple enough at the time. Anyone here use it?

I just hopped over to their web site and they have numerous versions, buy one time, no annual fees. The 2020 Deluxe version is $200. Not sure about additional fees though....

I usually just grab a mechanical pencil and my graphing paper, but it does take a lot of time to draw joints.

I have to say I'm happier just paying an annual fee than suffering though the ritual of gratuitous "upgrades" that add useless features and complexity, reducing usefulness, while dropping support for the older more useful versions as a way to force you into buying upgrades to create an ongoing revenue stream. I think subscriptions are better model that doesn't force poor choices in order to gin up something new.

Sure, it would be great if software companies would only introduce well thought, out useful upgrades we'd be happy to buy, like the next wonder sharpening stone or whiz-bang power tool, but that they don't work that way may be why there are many US software companies and virtually no US tool companies. You've got to keep the money coming in in a maturing market to stay in business. I wonder if Powermatic ever considered selling table saws on a subscription basis where they stop working if you don't keep paying??

After giving up on Sketchup free a few years back I found a tutorial dvd written by Dave Richards who has been teaching Sketchup to many people for years. It is written for wood workers and takes you through the design of a cabinet and then how to make a cut list, and Dave shows how to apply everything needed.

I thought it was worth the 10 or 15 dollars for the dvd and highly recommend it because it is so inexpensive.

It is called Google Sketchup Guide For Woodworkers The Basics with Dave Richards. It is a little dated but seems to still be a good tutorial.

I've been fooling around with sketchup for a year or so, and finally decided to make a decision and learn a design software once and for all. So I downloaded the trials for fusion 360, sketchup pro and sketchlist pro. Sketchlist was ok but kinda clunky, IMHO. Fusion 360 is pretty interesting but I couldn't really get the hang of it. With help from the a fore mentioned Dave Richards, and some decent YouTube vids, in the last week I've really gotten the hang of sketchup, and will be buying the pro version. I found TheSketchUpEssentials by Justin Geis to be pretty good videos, as long as you can get past his sing song intro. After the last 2 weeks of really trying to get a handle on it, I've been able to design table bases with curved legs, M&T joints (easy), even dovetails. So I'm firmly in the sketchup 2021 camp.