New board with furniture design software

SketchList 3D – Furniture Design Software – Creating a New board

Before you start teaching yourself SketchList 3D free furniture design software – consider the following.

 You goal is to ‘build’ your design by ‘cutting’ boards to the correct size and placing them in correct relationship to one another in some functional or pleasing way.

So first you must learn to create and size a board.

Lesson 1 – Create and size a board. 

A board is any three dimensional object – probably but not always made of wood.

• It has a name. Obvious and easy.
• A board is cut from a material which involves applying a texture or color.
• ‘Cutting’ determines the board dimensions – a thickness, a height and a depth. [Although those last two will changes as you shall see.]
• AND – since boards are cut from some sort of stock – and you probably want to minimize scrap – the SketchList 3D furniture design software needs you to ‘identify’ the board and set its grain direction [if you care].

So far not so bad.

You do all of this using the new board form in SketchList 3D.

To open the new board form drag the icon of the board when you want that board to go.  You can only insert the board into an assembly, door, drawer, or hardware container.

The New Board form will open.

1. Enter the name, which must be unique in this project.
2. Identify what the board looks like from its front by clicking the image.
   1. Shelf-like boards have thickness top and bottom.
   2. Side-like boards have thickness side to side.
   3. Back-like boards have thickness front to back.
      [Hint rails and stiles are almost always this.]
3. Set the grain direction if you care about it by clicking the radio button in the grain direction section.
4. Enter the size of the board. You can always adjust this later or get it right the first time.  It is usually faster to enter an estimate and adjust but sometimes you know the exact size and should enter that.
   1. Notice that the “thickness” dimension changes depending on how you identify the board. This calls out to you which direction of the board is the thickness so SketchList 3D can properly set that board out on its stock material.  For example a material of ¾ inch sheet good will have its ¾ inch thickness matching that of the stock.   The length and width will be rotated to match the desired grain direction of the board with that of the stock.  [Hint – if when you run the optimizer you see a lot of red highlighting, you’ve probably messed up the thickness setting!]

Finally click OK and the board is created.  Notice that it is created in the lower, front, bottom corner.