Andrew V wrote:

It looks like I'll finally be building a shop/garage come spring.
(hurray... 2 yr w/o a shop) Anyway I'm looking for recommends on design
software. If anybody has firsthand exp. with a decent piece of software
lets hear about it. I need to layout a smithy and welding shop. The power
hammer and the plasma table all need to find a home that won't bother the
infloor radiant heat so I need to nail down my layout pretty well before I
place tubing. The site will lend itself to a "bank barn" style building and
I envision the metalwork's on the downside and the garage and wood
shop/studio space above. I will be consulting an architect on the structural
issues and my have him do the finial plans but I don't see any reason to pay
him to move tools around for me. I figure I can build a few shops on paper
find what works and have the architect fine tune the structure and do the
final drawings. I googled the group and found lots of shop tips and such but

What I did was to figure the rectangular footprints of all my machines
and write them down. Then I opened a graphics tool (I use FrameMaker) and
created a rectangle with the exact same aspect ratio as my shop, and figured
the scale. Then I created the little rectangles using the same scale factor,
and added text to each rectangle which described the machine, and then I
made the text and the little rectangle one graphics object ("merged" them).
Then I just moved them around to get a layout that made sense for me.

Why spend money on software? I bet you have a calculator and a drawing
program, right?

GWE