Simple drawing program - Is there any such thing?

[peterlonz]

Hi, hope the general; section is appropriate for this post?

Very recently I wished to send an order to a specialist supplier, I wanted a precision cut "L" shaped benchtop.
OK sounds no problem; until I attempted to draw & dimension this very simple item.
Could not do it in Word or Excel (2010) & eventually did a very rough job using "MS Paint" which is a program I never normally use.

So everyone needs occasionally to draw something.
BTW I tried a few free house layout style programs but useless for my simple needs.

What do you do?
Recommendations please but it must be highly intuitive (that means not Autocad & not photoshop).
Greatly appreciate some guidance.

Thanks

[Sir Stinkalot]

Google Sketchup sounds like it would suit your requirements.

[old1955]

+1 for Sketchup it seems to be a popular program.

[dr4g0nfly]

Is it a dimensioned drawing you need to send or an engineering (CAD) drawing that will be fed through to a machine that will produce the final product.

[Beedeejay]

Sketch up is good, and there are plenty of YouTube how to videos for it,

but if it was just the L shape u we're trying to draw and you were putting the dimensions on your self you could have done it in excel, I can't remember exact name but you just use the cell border tool, and then draw in your shapes and edit which ever one you don't need, all your measurements then could be entered into an adjacent cell,

this would be handy if you were typing in a cut list as well on the same sheet,

sorry if that doesn't make sense And using sketch up would eliminate this problem but if you need any help with the excel side of things, send me a PM as I have spent a fair bit of time on it. :)

Cheers Ben

[Hermit]

Pencil, paper, ruler?

[Paul39]

Pencil, paper, ruler?

Because of the up front learning time I have found that unless one is going to be doing a bunch of drawing using a computer, the above is easier.

If a scanner is available then it can be sent via email.

[Big Shed]

Pencil, paper, ruler?

You forgot the eraser:;

[Hermit]

Because of the up front learning time I have found that unless one is going to be doing a bunch of drawing using a computer, the above is easier.

If a scanner is available then it can be sent via email.

I was sort of half-kidding about the pencil/paper/ruler, but that's how I usually do it - a pencil sketch scanned into the computer and modified as necessary using 'Paint'. As long as it's kept in bitmap format, it stays in scale and prints 1:1. (I had to convert to jpg for the forum, so the scale is lost on this one.)

302116

Sketchup looks good, but takes time to master and is overkill for what I usually do.