Drawings of woodworking projects

[Admiral]

I have a scale and graph paper, and I draw out a fairly detailed drawing which helps in both initial milling and sizing of stock as well as details of drawers and doors. Doesn't take long, I'm a big believer in "plan your work and work your plan."

[Handplanesandmore]

Drawings, yes for most projects. They are hand-drawn sketches, not to scale with all the measurements including rough cutting lists. Joinery used will also be laid out roughly.

99.9% of the time, the final measurements of the finished products are different from what I put on the sketches, though.

I also put cautionary notes such as cutting certain parts first or gluing certain components before others, etc. My sketches can be un-readable or hard to decipher to other woodworkers as symbols I use may not be understandable to them.

Sketchup? Or computerized drawings? NO WAY! I would rather spend time doing the actual work than learning how to use them.


Simon

[ez-duzit]

I always make freehand sketches of any complex assembly or cabinet. Usually these are drawn as isometrics and include virtually all/critical dimensions. From these I make a quick cut list. This info is supplemented by patterns of the irregular shaped opening on the yacht in which the cabinet will be fitted; these patterns are made from 2"-3" wide strips of door skin, hot glued together, with additional markings scribed using a pencil compass.

[hbmcc]

My background is design, so building a project on paper--or computer now--is almost as far as I go to beat a concept to death at the finest detail. If you can get away with it, don't draft. 

Paul Sellers had a lifetime of sketching and drafting, which really helps to complete the wow! drawing. I did similar years ago, but practice is needed to continue. I wanted to learn Sketchup and could have since the early to mid 90's when it came out, but AutoCAD was bread and butter. I learned to sketch via CAD. Today, design software and associated hardware are out of date before you download the the application. Worse than 15 to 20 years ago; and it's no better. My Sketchup Viewer needs to be replaced every time I try to look at a file..... Forget it! 

If you need to, buy some graph paper, a ruler, and mechanical pencil. That's all you need to be proportional. Maybe $5, rather than at least a thousand for the cheapest software.

[MsNomer]

Depends on how your mind works.

[Paul K. Murphy]

I've done drawings before, and I'll do them again.
For cabinetwork (furniture construction is cabinetwork too) I always lay out a rod. Every craftsman/craftswoman lays out rods slightly different, but the important thing is that the key information is there. Sadly, I don't think many people lay out rods anymore, and I think the trade is diminished because of it. Some day, I keep telling myself, I'm going to blog, and I plan on sharing my understanding of this basic task.
I often explain it like this...
In those old Navy war movies, the enemy submarine looked like a green dot on a screen to the sonar man. Now, we all know submarines don't look like green dots, but the green dot had more value than a picture of what a submarine looked like. With that geeen dot, the sonar man knew where the enemy sub was, what azimuth, what depth, what heading, what speed, etc. A rod has a similar quality. To the average person, it looks like a thin, long plank of wood with lines penciled on the surface. Truly, it looks like it has no value. In fact, it can be compared to the DNA of the construction. Even the most complex and difficult jobs can be detailed on a rod; and if the rod checks out, and the work is done with fidelity to the rod, the work checks out.

[Daniel S]

I like to draw the things that I'm working on. It gives me a reference that is as close as I can get that I can check out later. A lot of the time I find places to make changes. I doodle in meetings at work, I try to sketch out ideas, and I either draw something on paper or with CAD of something I'm thinking of building. I'm in no way an artist when it comes to drawing, but it's fun. I would echo the graph paper route for a place to start. Seeing things in scale can be a good gatekeeper. Nothing ever comes out exactly like what I'm drawing, but it gives me a good starting point.

I posted this in a different thread, but here is a drawing of the coffee table that I'm building and the table in progress.




I have been trying out some new flower forms in steel lately and drawing things helps develop. I sketched a bunch of possibilities and am trying to complete a few.










Besides being something that helps me remember ideas, drawing things helps me to develop a goal. Nothing I make is exactly to the drawings, but they help me to develop my ideas.

[Bob Lang]

The Rockler DVD intro to woodworking advises that every hour spent in planning will save hours of time and grief in the shop. This is true! I find SketchUp a pain to use, but trying to build my project (bookcase, armoire, etc) in my mind with SketchUp makes me think through every joint, every piece, every step. On the other hand if I just start a project without plans, I make so many mistakes.

For me, the huge advantage of using SketchUp is that when I make a model I am pretending to build the thing. It is easy to go nuts and generate lots of pretty drawings. There's a place for that if I need a sales tool or I'm preparing something for publication.  I usually discover a problem while making the model that would cost a lot of $$$/time in the shop. I'm convinced that the bench is the last place I want to be to make design or engineering decisions.

I was trained to prepare drawings manually and used AutoCAD for many years before I learned how to model in SketchUp. The ability to figure things out on the computer before heading to the shop is a powerful tool that is well worth learning how to use, if your goal is to actually make stuff.

[RonB1957]

Well put. I unfortunately learn  the little bit of drafting during the early years of computers. SO for me the old Frank Lloyd Wright drafting table and machine was always my go to. Would always work out the joinery, cut list , and occasionally an iso drawing. Ienjoyed the process of visualizing the project and putting it on paper. These days I do spend a little bit of time hear and there trying to learn some CAD using draft site mostly. I need a tutor for that stuff. I can learn calculus easier.

[Adnick]

Depends on the project complexity,. A lifetime of using computers and using CAD professionally has caused me to revert to drawing, enjoy putting the idea on paper and if it merits a to scale drawing, then that's the next step. Have a collection of projects on paper, some just simple sketches others are done to scale.

When drawn to scale, the next step is to draw out the joinery, then a cut list of sorts.....by the time I'm done, I could almost build the thing from memory. On occasion some projects require a full size rendering,to "view" the concept and I may use butcher paper or MDF for that step....have only built one or two full scale models, try to avoid that :-) myself.

Avoid using a computer these days, and only have an IPad in the shop, not sure I'd even use CD or Sketchup if I were a vocational builder, would depend on projects and customers.....

Andy

Mos Maiorum