"Morris Dovey" wrote in message
...
|
| Sturgeon's Law is both universal and timeless.

I would tend to agree, but CAD provides another target for the blame.

| I've seen some (IMO) beautiful work designed on CAD systems;
| but the credit for that beauty doesn't go to the software -
| it goes to the designer in every case.

No argument whatsoever. It has been my experience -- and I have a fair
amount of it -- that good CAD cannot substitute for bad design. And it has
also been my experience that people who are good at CAD are also good at
pencil-and-paper design. The most adept CAD users I've seen are engineers
from the Apollo era, and they can pretty much design freehand if they need
to.

CAD is not a substitute for design skill.

Nevertheless it's true that CAD can limit a design. CAD gives you a set of
tools to work with, and heaven help you if there's no tool to do what you
want. I remember the olden days before NURBS and Bezier curves where if you
wanted anything besides straight lines and circular arcs out of your CAD
system you were just out of luck. Those of us constrained to use straight
lines and circular arcs produced unexciting designs.

CAD as a method of creating a drawing is putrid. I can produce much more
exciting designs in dimensioned freehand than on any CAD system, and I have
used CAD for years and even programmed high-end CAD systems for others to
use. CAD is a tool aimed at the *professional* designer. That's not to
make it sound snooty. It's to say that a professional designer (individual
or design group) has other concerns to worry about, chiefly about efficiency
and cutting down on design overhead for accommodating change. CAD speaks to
those needs, which aren't necessarily the same as the needs of the hobbyist
woodworker, or even the small-scale professional.

| What seems bland for one person may be even gaudy to another.

Right, but that's not necessarily what Mark is talking about. CAD
encourages "cookie cutter" design for two reasons: it allows easy cutting
and pasting to reuse elements of a design, and it gives you a limited set of
tools.

My sister, who is an architect, can drive down a street and point out which
houses were designed on AutoCAD, which were designed on some other CAD
package, and so forth. Why? Because they display the features to which
those systems lend themselves.

Is this bad? No, not really. There will always be a market for cookie
cutter designs because they're inexpensive, fast and easy to produce, and
are functionally refined to perfection over time. In the industrial world
that's a win. Sometimes that's a win for professional woodworkers. Usually
it's not for hobbyist woodworkers.

| I recall how ugly I thought the tiny Bose Accoustimass (sp?)
| speakers were (no wood!), even as I admired the sound they produced.

Sure, there's an aesthetic. Look at the other end of the spectrum: Frank
Lloyd Wright. His stuff looks great, but no one wants to sit in his chairs
or duck under his low ceilings.

Something can look good, or it can function well, or both. Often optimizing
for one tends to sacrifice the other. But CAD introduces a new dimension to
that problem -- can I design it using this particular tool? How much time
have I got to design it? How much do I have to learn about this tool before
it's useful to me?

I recommend to hobbyist woodworkers, and small-scale professionals (i.e.,
lone wolves with at most one or two assistants) that they use paper designs.
If your joy in woodworking is to produce a thing of beauty that springs from
your imagination unfettered, then fancy design tools won't help. One of my
more exciting clock projects started as a slab of turning stock that I
grabbed at random and slapped on the band saw table. I didn't draw
anything; I didn't even have a good idea what it was going to look like
until four cuts or so into the stock.

--Jay