Woodworking Software – Expectations and Realities

CAD drafting and design technology is helping to create homes and offices faster than ever. Computer technology has come a long way to help drafters and designers draw up diagrams and deal with schematics and blueprints with computer-aided design. Traditional drafting involves the use of free hand sketching, but computers have made this job much easier to accomplish. New technology has helped drafters and designers do their job more efficiently and with better visuals that display their ideas in vivid color and true-to-life graphics. ”

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CAD stands for computer aided design. The origin of CAD was as a replacement and improvement over manual drafting processes. There are variations of CAD encompassing computer assisted designing and computer aided and assisted designing (CAAD). The primary goal is go assist designers during a product design process. It is regularly applied to almost all industries, products, and even processes.

If you browse the Internet for CAD you will come to the conclusion that the power of such programs come at the cost of complexity. Companies offering CAD software also sell training programs (weeks, months in duration), colleges offer courses in CAD, and there is a wide spread industry of CAD consultants who will design projects in CAD or even modify the underlying programs to provide specific functions geared for a client.

No doubt a model generated by an experienced and skilled CAD programmer can be a beautiful and descriptive thing. As users recently wrote:

“AutoCAD was extremely powerful, could design anything (literally), and had excellent help files. On the bad side, it is VERY EXPENSIVE which takes it out of reach for the everyday private citizen and most of the small business owners.”

“It too a good while to learn it and by the time I used it on my next project I spent a fair amount of time re-familiarizing myself with it.”

“I worked with my son, who was an AutoCAD draftsman, to draw plans for a chest on chest project but it was much too time consuming and in no way helped with joinery or cut lists.”

This last point is a very important concept to hear about CAD programs. While there are programs that will communicate directly to machinery to cut and shape products, from the woodworker’s perspective CAD stops at the image on the screen or the drawing on the paper. CAD is one part of the process of building furniture or cabinetry. CAD is not, with the exception of those cases where it interfaces with machinery (CAM), integrated with the process of woodworking. With CAD when your drawing is finished, your design work is not.

An integrated software system for woodworking would not begin with lines and polygons, but with boards. These boards would be constructed (model built) into furniture or cabinetry with an understanding of woodworking techniques and practices. The output of the process would not be limited to renderings (2D or 3D) on paper or computer monitors. The output of this process, in addition to renderings, would include cost estimates, layout diagrams, parts lists, and purchase lists.

The process of building furniture or cabinets extends from customer or woodworker’s requirements to the finished product. CAD can show the concepts, proportions, and sizes, but stops there. Obviously for a great number of designers and manufactures all over the world that itself is a great benefit.

But a woodworker trying to make money, produce better products, and spend more time building and less time in paperwork, CAD does not go far enough. Add in the cost and complexity of CAD programs and rethink what you might have been thinking about using computer software in your woodworking practice.

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