I've been programming computers in a few different programming languages for many years. It's all mostly for my personal entertainment, never made a dime from it except for one program I wrote back in the early 90's. After I bought my table saw, radial arm saw and quite an assortment of woodworking tools, coming up with a plan was the hard part. Putting it down on paper, by hand, just doesn't work for me. One mistake and the whole drawing is useless.
So to begin with I would use MSDOS Basic programming language to draw the design. After awhile I was getting better at coming up with the drawings by programming them. After a few dozen drawings I had an epiphany. At the time I had already been programming for about 10 years.
I wrote one program that can draw, in 3D and rotate it in all 3 angles. It can draw any rectangular design. The way I did it was to create a few text files that stated what files described the design, the dimensions of each piece, the material it came from, the dimension in space it projects into and its reference position in the drawing, all 3 dimensional references. When I'm satisfied with the design, it will estimate a material list, print out a cutting plan and show all the waste. After everything is cut, the projects go together like a kit.
I wrote the program back in the days of MSDOS. It has designed a whole lot of my projects. The whole programming project took a long time and became a total obsession. The results were stunning as a DIY project.
It's funny you brought up this topic because I just went out this last week and bought Microsofts latest Visual Studio. I've been trying for years to convert the program to Windows. I have all the old source code. Everytime I tried it in the past I ran into some obstacle. I've gotten further in the past week than I have before. I even had it running in Javascript at one point. But the problem with writing code for the internet is you can't save anything. That was severely limited.
Before I had to edit all the text files, then run the program to see the result, which worked fine but made it clunky to work with. Now I'm trying to incorporate the editing into the program. Also the old MSDOS program doesn't run in Windows 7. Never knew that until last week. It ran in XP.
I even taught myself some matrix math to do the transformations in the drawings for the 3D drawing. Before I got that right the rotations were doing all kinds of weird things.
This is a link to a screenshot I just took of the a drawing the new program did. it was a block a paper cutter operator uses to jog paper into the cutter. I built it about 15 years ago. The program is still in its beginning stages but it does draw now from the old files. This one of my other hobbies, maintaining my own server. The drawing is in the lower right corner.
http://www.wilzone.org/gencab3d.png
Steve
I use a CAD package called ALIBRE which was at one time available for a one time offer of $99.00 and since it normally cost about 400 I jumped. I don't know if it is still available for that price but if so I'd get it. I simply make 3D drawings of all the individual parts, then assemble them and when I'm satisfied with the final unit, lay out the individual parts on a diagram of my stock and get my best fit.
Now that I have impressed you with how I should do it, I'll tell the truth. I usually get my panels pre-cut in 2 foot by 4 foot panels for ease of handling and then what would otherwise be waste becomes shop drawers, tool chests and all the other smaller niceties I decide to make later on. Since most of my work is cabinets and the likes, 2x4 foot panels work out just right. The lumber yard has a good panel saw and so their cuts are easier to make than would be mine. I'm getting too old to wrestle 4x8 panels on a table saw or through the radial arm, and I'm too cheap to buy a panel saw of my own when I can use theirs for free. I do however make drawings first of all of my projects since it is so easy to get all of the dimensions and angles just right.
Dale in the Flatlands.John S Moss wrote:
I’m looking for a better way to layout a cut sheet for a woodworking project. I have my materials list, but need to figure out what sizes wood I need to minimize waste. Drawing the layout by hand can get tedious and prone to arithmetic mistakes.
What do others use? I found a bunch of software online, but would like recommendations.
Thanks,
John
Death, like photography, is simply a series of chemical reactions.
--Franchesca Woodman
| Reply via web post | Reply to sender | Reply to group | Start a New Topic | Messages in this topic (5) |
No comments:
Post a Comment