21 Replies

Gimp works.

Sketchup runs reasonably well on my Fedora 20 Linux box under wine. A little roughness at startup, but once you are rolling it does fine

wow, The Gimp? I would not imagine using that to design a piece of furniture, maybe Inkscape, but Gimp, really? I am not being sarcastic when I ask “How specifically, are you using Gimp for design?” Is there an addin or something that makes drawing and measuring and such. I remember one a while back that added in easier ways to do rectangles and such.

I do realize that certain versions of Sketchup will run under certain versions of wine, under certain versions of Linux. But that is a completely different question. At some point, I may ask who has gotten it to run under wine and howto this and that. But for now, I am hoping that someone is using and liking something other than SketchUp.

I am currently looking at LibreCAD for 2d and either FreeCAD or Blender for 3D. I have also heard rumor that the Blender people are working on BlenderCAD but as of yet I have not heard a lot on it.

— Abs

Tbh, I use a pencil, two triangles, a T-square and an eraser. It’s worked for me for years and never needs an upgrade.

Wolf (& Rabbit!) That is certainly an alternative! It is a good one too. I have done many of those, some of which were done on the back of a napkin, and at least one was done on one of the 2×4′s making up the railing in my garage. :)

And, even though I like the occasional session with my hand planes, chisels and old diston handsaw… I still enjoy the table saw, thickness planer and router as well.

Last night I gave QCad a try. It seems pretty usable. I have, so far only done otho’s with it, but it does have an iso grid so in theory I could give that a try too.

I trained on a minicomputer back in ‘86, used autocad a lot later on pc’s. I worked 8 years doing topographies by hand, though, so when an idea pops into my head, i grab the pad of paper first…and almost always…last.

Good luck with your search.

Sounds great! I am sure I will work on getting back to hand doing some stuff again. Not sure if I still have my portable drafting board, but I know where my triangle is, and a T-Square can’t be too far away :)

QCad seems very usable so far. Next step is to see if I can do the actual 3D modeling in Blender. It feels like an exercise in discipline to learn the interface, but it can do sooo much besides furniture and cabinet design.

I think the learning curve on freeCad will be nearly as high as Blender, so I believe I will simply discount that one. I have a simple pet project (a drill press stand) and I am recreating that in each tool that I try so I have a comparison of difficulty as well as an apples to apples comparison.

It is likely a 10 minute project with pencil and paper (even without a triangle), unfortunately, it has taken more than that in each tool I have tried so far.

Heh…
That’s the rub for me. It seems to add complexity without value (for me) and I’ve worked quite hard, ironically, to simplify my life these last few years.

Still if I was doing this for a living you can bet I’d have autocad running. I think if I was a client a nice, clean, drawing would help me buy something. It adds a degree of professionalism.

Nice chat, thanks

Well, lots of things take time, especially when you are just implementing them. I assume, and this will be the golden test, if I am good enough at it, it will NOT take longer to do it with the program, than by hand.

I spent a fair amount of time trying to come up to speed in Blender last night. That will be a huge curve, and I have yet to decide whether there will be any ROI on that.

It’s a journey, right? Not a destination. :)
— Abs

Hey Abs,
Please do keep me informed on how you do. I would be quite interested to know if you find a good Linux native alternative. I’ve got Sketchup working ok, but if there’s something better in the Linux world, I’d like to give it a try.
Thanks

Also… it would be interesting to hear about experience people have had with selling projects and using cad. It’s a lot easier to adjust a cad drawing than to rework a hand drawn one. Just curious

Oh, and you don’t need portable if you build one of these…
https://m.youtube.com/#/playlist?list=PLKA_Ff0bn9D3v8IhEDFltLO9pq2LPhaZ8

well, I have to amend my earlier statement. I updated to a newer version of Fedora Linux, and hed to download sketchup again. The newest version will not launch the installer. :-( I guess I’ll have to try an alternative now

Hense my interest in something other than SketchUp.

The two things I am leaning towards:

1. Combiation of QCad and LibreCAD.
QCad allows Orthos and Isos. This has not been added to LibreCAD yet. However, QCad restricts some of its features to only the registered version or the first 15 minutes of use. Kind of annoying. Also, there aren’t really much tools for working with Iso’s. For example, if you are in the iso grid and draw a rectangle, it is still drawn ortho. A true iso mode would be useful in a 2D app. I assume DoubleCAD has it, but that is just a guess.

2. Blender
I like this application, both technically and conceptually. It is full featured solid and FOSS. It handles 3D natively, making ortho vs iso kind of irrelevant. There are plenty of tutorials out there and I was able to handle a relatively simple design without too much effort. It is supported on many platforms and in my case specifically GNU/Linux.

Just some thoughts

— Abs

Also, I looked at FreeCAD. The learning curve on this one seems to be nearly as bad as Blender. Seemed to me that for the effort to learn the payback would be better with Blender.

— Abs

Yes, I messed with FreeCAD today. It felt klunky and much less intuitive. I’m taking a look at maybe setting up VirtualBox, running windows in the virtual machine, and installing Sketchup on the virtual machine. It’s like reaching around your back to pick your nose, but it might work.

i use a drafting table , it’s an old one but very accurate

I have no problem doing it all by hand. I also have no problem working with a handsaw and hand planes etc. But like every other thing, power tools have their advantages. This is why I want to get an electronic version working.

As for setting up a VM for this purpose, it just seems like too much effort for the minimal payoff. And, who’s to say that they next time they update their free (beer not speach) proprietary application it will still work even in the VM?

Blender is free (beer and speach) which means a lot to me. It also means that as long as the community uses it it will be around, and even when they all stop it will still be around.

It will be interesting to see what comes of LibreCAD (free speach and beer) vs QCad (free beer in a crippled sort of way, and paid verion too). True iso mode would be really nice, and if they could put all the keyboard shortcuts into LibreCAD like they are in QCad that would be nice too. Jury is still out.

Sketchup is platform agnostic. It runs on PCs, MACs and Linux. I’ve used it on all three platforms and for all intents and purposes, it’s virtually identical. Having said all that, it drives me nuts when I’m totally focused on a design and get sidetracked trying to figure out how to make the software do something. So, even with years of experience using a computer as a design aid, my best work happens when I put a clean sheet of paper on the drawing board, sharpen my pencil, put on some Mozart, and get lost in my own head!

I disagree Larry, on Sketchup’s agnosticism, at least as far as Linux goes. As long as they are not producing a native version there is something inbetween the program and the OS getting in the way. That is the best case, in reality it will not even run on some GNU/Linux versions even with wine. So that relagates you to running a virtual machine with windows installed into it just to run the software.

I am with you on the manual methods, there are plenty of times when just being alone inside your head is best. And like a version of software that will not run native on GNU/Linux, any software can get in the way of the creative process when you have to think about it too much.

Of course, that all comes with experience. I can remember trying to draw iso’s with two triangles and somehow just getting it barely wrong enough to make me toss paper after paper rather than just getting my drawing done. I can now probably do it without much thought because I have the experience. With whichever software I settle into, I will hope to achieve that level of understanding that allows me to accomplish my task without too much thought as to the technique.

But like anything else, each has its place. There are the times when I want to hear nothing but the rhythmic sound of a freshly sharpened saw slicing though a board, or the soft song of a well tuned hand plane stripping the thinnest shaving on a long edge of a board. Other times, I just want to put in the ear plugs and push a few hundred board feet through the thickness planer, or cut all the peices on the table saw. One is not always a satisfying substitute for the other. But being neither true Neandertal nor Normite I find pleasure and satisfaction in each techniqie and tool.

I can’t recall which version of Linux I ran Sketchup on. In my professional life I worked at Bell Labs writing software to make our nation’s 9-1-1 system function. I guarantee there is not a single life-critical or mission-critical application in the telephone network, the military, the banking system, or anywhere else, is running on Windows. As a “Bellhead,” since we invented Unix and designed it for high availability and high reliability, we wrote everything on the Unix OS, making our apps independent of the hardware they ran on – essentially portable. That’s why I love my MAC – bullet-proof Unix under the pretty MACOS GUI. Linux is a great choice for the same reason. But this is a woodworking forum, not a computer forum, so I’d better shut up!