Making a Prototype with a Woodworking CAD Program

I'm here with my friend, Bruce Kieffer, and we want to 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 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, kind of figure out, while you're building.

On the fly, yeah. I know this in advance, and then, when I'm working with a customer, it's 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, I can even take that one step further, and I can put it in their room, I can build the walls, I can put the carpet on- All on the computer screen, not- On the computer 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 expenses of materials. How much time did it take you? A couple of days, good couple of days.

It took me, less that a half hour. And the problem, of course, I run into, I've got the prototype done, now the legs I found were too long, and the whole thing was standing up too high. So, I had to make a new set of legs, which, for you... What's your process to change your legs? I explored leg options, and I had four different options, and I just snapped right through this one, this one, this one, looked at it- 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 very much accessible and- Less expensive, a learning curve? There's a pretty good learning curve, but once you know it, it's pretty easy 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've built up a library of drawings, you can call upon then to help, so you're not redrawing, you're not from scratch every time, at this point. Well, the leg's a good example. 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've got a leg to stand on for other drawings? Yeah. Couldn't help, but say that one. So, 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 in your shop.