Thread: Tech drawing without a drawing board

Dave

That's excellent work.

I reckon drawing up the components you are about to build is nearly as enjoyable as the building.

Well Done

Keith

That's a good idea Dave. it wouldn't take much to make up a board and slide the saw protractor along one edge or maybe rout two 90° channels -bottom & RHS to use as a work shop board.

TT

Originally Posted by Twisted Tenon

That's a good idea Dave. it wouldn't take much to make up a board and slide the saw protractor along one edge or maybe rout two 90° channels -bottom & RHS to use as a work shop board.

TT

That would be a lot warmer than cast iron. Good idea

Dave TTC
Turning Wood Into Art

Next time you need scaled drawings like that, take a look at this: (but not on your Android)

http://www.blocklayer.com/polygon-templates.aspx

Not as satisfying as drawing them up by hand, but might be a bit quicker and not so cold.
Just make sure to print at 100% printer scale (not 'Fit to Page'). Scale setting should be in the dialog box that comes up when you select the Print' menu command in browser or PDF viewer.

If there's other types of scaled drawings you need, or other dimensions marked on the current ones, please let me know and I'll try and knock them up.

Dave, I still have my 1969 model drawing board (Western Red Cedar) and all the instruments. The T-Square is still with me, 'cept it ain't square, along with the various set squares.

The most often used instrument these days are the compasses, but the set squares, flexi-line, circle & elipse templates and radius markers all get a run from time to time.

In fact I have my big sister's French Curves which she acquired in 1965, and use them fairly frequently.

These days I do all my drawing on Powerpoint. Did both the front double carport and the large back shed for certification including all the associated house and land plans/elevations. Even my smaller projects like the aluminium framed box on the back of the camper and my lounge TV/display unit were done that way.

Originally Posted by dai sensei

These days I do all my drawing on Powerpoint. Did both the front double carport and the large back shed for certification including all the associated house and land plans/elevations. Even my smaller projects like the aluminium framed box on the back of the camper and my lounge TV/display unit were done that way.

I'm the same but different - I use Excel, where the shapes and dimensions can be controlled a little bit better than in Powerpoint.

Perhaps give SketchUp a crack. It's is awesome. Every job I do, I now do a design for. Clients absolutely love it.

Originally Posted by Evanism

Perhaps give SketchUp a crack. It's is awesome. Every job I do, I now do a design for. Clients absolutely love it.

Can you use it on android tablets?

Dave TTC
Turning Wood Into Art

I tried Sketchup, but didn't find it intuitive. I used to use DesignCad, which I bought after a write-up in FWW, and found it fantastic, intuitive if you're used to hand drawing, great for drawing parts separately and then assembling. You can draw parts in orthographic projection, jump around between views, swap to isometric or perspective, specify the viewer position and move around - great piece of software. Unfortunately, it runs on Windows, and as I no longer have Windows on my Mac I no longer have it.

These days I do most of my drawings in isometric on tracing paper over downloaded iso graph paper for clients.