Why I Love CAD

I'm here with my friend Bruce Kieffer, and we wanna talk about ways to prototype projects like this one. Now, I'm a hands on in the shop prototyping guy. I'm actually out there building the thing out of inexpensive materials before I do the real deal. Bruce is a pixel prototyping guy. Bruce I know you're a big fan of CAD, computer aided design, give us the best reasons why you love CAD.

There's no material expenses. I can make changes very easily on the fly. I can look at the proportions of a piece, and I can change the piece, and look at different proportions and explore different design options. I can take it and I can look at a perspective of it, and it, it appears as it would if I. In the real world.

In the real world. And then once I'm done with all my design, I can actually work out all the construction details. Something that you in the shop kinda figure out while you're building. On the fly. I know this in advance.

And then, when I'm working with a customer, its really nice because I can render, and I can show them exactly how this finished piece will look. And I can give that to them in a view that they can understand. And it, I can even take that one step further, and I can if, I can put it in their room. I can build the walls. I can put the carpet on.

All on a computer screen. All on a computer screen. Not, put it in their room, but, Yeah, well, it's putting it in their room virtually. All right, so lets take some of these points, material expense. When I prototyped this, I used MDF and I used pine.

I had to do it twice before I got it right. So I built it three times. And I am guessing I had about a hundred bucks in material in this. So, what you're saying is that you draw this on the computer, pixels are free. Yeah, I had zero expense of materials.

How much time did it take you? Uh, a couple of days, good couple of days. It took me, uh, less than a half hour. And the problem, you know, of course I run into. I've got the prototype done.

Now the legs I found were too long. The whole thing was standing up too high. So I had to make a new set of legs. Which for you, what, what's your process to change your legs? I explored leg options, and I had four different options, and I just, snap right through this one, this one, this one.

You grab a line you shrink it. You grab a line you stretch it. It's almost that easy. Yeah. Now there's a lot of CAD out there.

There are a lot of software pieces available. You use what? I use a program called Vectorworks, and it's a professional level CAD program. But there's a lot of other programs out there that are um, very, very much, accessible. Less expensive?

Yeah less expensive. Uh, learning curve? There's a pretty good learning curve, but once you know it it's pretty easy to, to go ahead and do it. And one of these things, probably like a lot of software, the more you use it, the easier it gets. Yeah.

Now, in your software, over time you have built up a library of drawings. You can call upon them to help. So you're not redrawing, you're not drawing from scratch every time at this point. Yeah, well the legs a good example, is the leg is always there. And if I build another piece in the future, and I need a leg.

I can go grab that one. So you got a leg to stand on for other drawings. Yeah. Couldn't, couldn't help but say that one. So, um, really working on this specific project, this armoire.

Bruce did drawings for it. I built it and prototyped it. And really his work on this made me a big believer in exploring CAD myself. We wanted to pass that along to you with all the advantages there are to prototyping with electronics, prototyping with software. Instead of prototyping in the shop.

Get past the learning curve. And it really brings a lot of advantages to your woodworking, and your shop.