"Lee Michaels" wrote

I have been reading the Sketchup posts with interest. I got a question
for you Sketchup enthusiasts.

How appropriate would Sketchup be for metal projects to be fabricated by a
welding shop? Specificaly projects made mostly with square tubing.

Their would need to be detailed information. This would include some odd
angles, very specific lengths and positions of both holes and attachments
welded to the subassemblies.

The 3 D perspective would be nice but not neccessary.

Comments? Suggestions?

Just give it a try and see how it works for you ... occasionally use SU to
send drawings to machine shops for beam/truss hangers that we need to have
fabricated for embedding into foundations.

Admittedly very simple fabrications, the one below was drawn on my laptop,
real time on site, while the Engineer watched, and the pdf export was sent
using my cell phone as a tethered modem ... a couple of years back what took
30 minutes would have taken a week, and cost a helluva lot more.

http://www.e-woodshop.net/files/SaddleHanger.pdf

Basically, for 2D shop drawings like this I haven't found anything that I
can't do quicker with SU than with my CAD programs, and, as you say, the
added and easy 3D ability is just a mouse move away and an added plus.

BTW, the machine shop didn't blink an eye ... then again, I'm always amazed
to find a machine shop that actually does business via e-mail and even knows
what a pdf file is.

YMMV ...

--
www.e-woodshop.net
Last update: 10/22/08
KarlC@ (the obvious)