"Bill" wrote in message
...

Are most woodworkers artists or engineers, or neither, or both?
For the sake of narrowing the field, feel free to assume the population of
this forum.

More than ever, I keep getting inclinations that I should be drawing and
drafting.
I think I can draw better than people who can't. ; ) My dad was a civil
engineer
who made copious plans for "everything". His buddy was a civil engineer
who
made projects (mostly "rustic stuff") by the seat of this pants!

I may try SketchUp (motivated by the recent "How To Design Furniture"
publication
by Taunton Press). I didn't think the 4-page introduction to the software
was detailed enough--but it was nice to learn about the (free) software.
I may give it a
try it in a few minutes...just to see whether it may be worthwhile for me.
I can
hardly wait gulp! ; )


I am neither, my method of building is to work out a design
mentally and when I think I have all the major points worked
out in my head, I start cutting and assembling. The details
just seem to work their self out as I go along.

I usually pick one or two functions of the piece at hand and
work out the sizing and proportions from there, this works
great for free standing furniture.

I tend to lean toward the utilitarian side and the designs aren't
overly complex to begin with.

My method of working has it downside of course, it will fail
miserably with kitchen cabinets, DAMHIKT.
There are places where planning and drawing it out is
essential to success.

Even on small run production items I will build one to the point of
dry assembly, knock it down and then make my patterns and
jigs. I dislike repetitive work, after about ten of something it
quits being fun and becomes labor and I avoid this kind of
work unless I'm trying to make a few quick $.

I have a love hate relationship with sketchup(damn does anyone know
how to turn off the snap to midpoint), but the hate part is
lessening the more I learn about SU, Goodluck.

basilisk