In article ,
" wrote:

On Fri, 13 Aug 2010 23:58:17 -0400, Jeff Thies wrote:

On 8/13/2010 7:13 PM, RicodJour wrote:
On Aug 13, 5:53 pm, Jeff wrote:
I was drawing on graph paper and thought, why aren't I doing this on
the laptop?

Recommendations? Perhaps a little CAD program is all I need. My
friend who is making building plans is using Photoshop because he
couldn't find what he liked and wanted layers. Sounds like too much
trouble!

SketchUp - it's free, from Google, easy to learn, surprisingly
powerful. Free plugins make it sit up and bark.

Thanks to all.

I'm starting with SketchUp and working my way through the other
suggestions. As a programmer, I like that (with SketchUp) I can write a
little code and season it to taste. Not that I would, but I could! Free
ain't bad either.

I had a lot of trouble learning enough Sketchup to use, until I realized that
it wasn't a CAD program. It's a 3-D modeling program. It's a whole
different
paradigm and takes requires one to think quite differently about the problem.

I spent quite a bit of time on Sketchup as well, and found it too
primitive to be of much use. Then I introduced a friend to it, and
within a month he was creating architectural plans for his house
remodel, and machines with several dozens of parts, in incredible detail
and accuracy, using all sorts of SketchUp features that I had no idea
existed. He soaked it up like a damn sponge. By that time I had
abandoned it in favor of SolidWorks.