Yani in building mode... he *** at drawing and as accuracy goes he needs a computer. A pencil snapper that can't draw a straight line. Lucky for the tools, like a laser level.
A router "look at those oh so cute joins"
So I did a month of homework and found a few things that are interesting and curious.
https://www.mozaiksoftware.com/
Every wonder how these kitchen companies do the software? Do they draw it up on Autocad from home grown templates?
NUP the whole thing is a package from shop front to shop back.
"Exports to Paperless Shop" It is a parts list but I suspect it includes billing components.
https://kcdsoftware.com/doors-plus/
If doors and drawers are your company’s specialty, KCD Software’s Doors Plus is a stand-alone, template design software to communicate with your nested based CNC router.
Hundreds of templates are included in the software like doors, drawer fronts and dovetail drawer boxes. It’s also easy to create your own one-of-a-kind custom templates. Parametric tool paths can be assigned for your multiple tool operations. Create your own custom libraries for doors, drawers, wine racks, fluted pilasters, valances and more for traditional and CNC manufacturing.
Doors Plus includes over 300 ready-to-use custom component templates. The order-entry system makes it easy to enter your custom items and modify details on the fly. Doors Plus gives you more custom product capacity, flexibility and efficiency than ever before.
What's interesting is the narrow vertical market and the end to end nature of the software.
Sign manufacture has moved that direction about a decade ago. Hand held computer guided gear you just need an SVG file and a printer.
Computer aided routing tables have been used in sign companies for over 30 years. Our company started using them in the late 1980's. We recently bought a new 5' X 10' Multicam table. Full service custom sign companies still have to design lots of items from scratch and fabricate at least some of what they build in-house. I do not feed our routing tables clip art merely grabbed from some library of pre-fab sign designs. The only things I get to re-use are standardized signs for a company with multiple or many locations. I'll also re-use and modify items like electrical section detail drawings of things like channel letters when a city's sign code require those kinds of drawings to get an installation permit.
Some bottom feeder sign companies will hire anyone with a pulse to try to do design work. But to productive or actually good at the job sign design does require some real artistic talent and design sensibility, not to mention a grasp of geometry. A clip art library of pre-fab signs isn't going to bail out someone with no talent.
Wholesale companies who manufacture items like aluminum extrusion cabinets have their own semi-automated setups to mass produce parts. They'll have libraries of computer files they re-use like the templates Yani mentioned in his post.
As for hand-held devices, none are replacing full fledged PCs any time soon. I do own and use an iPad Pro (with an Apple Pencil), but it is a niche device to supplement design work. It's great for on-screen drawing tasks, but it falls short as a full-blown computer. Our routing tables, digital printers and channel letter return machine are all connected to regular desktop PCs. It may be technically possible to drive those things using a portable tablet or even a smart phone. However, that invites the user to leave the routing table unattended, which really isn't a good idea. S*** happens.
I'm a cost control guy, if i'm not getting a cost reduction for providing a perfect file the I don't care.
Unfortunately with proprietary software I 'm not spending $2,000 for copies of each copy of my vendors software. They can rebuild the file and I'll charge the client.
That isn't what I suggested at all!
I suggest Corel write a plugin for SketchUp. Very different things. They could do it under a developer name if they didn't want to do it as Corel, It would go in here...
https://extensions.sketchup.com/
You have to bypass the DXF, DMG and go directly from one format to another to get the highest level of features. Likely not much more than the current export filter with a bit of tweaking.
I don't call that a cost but a promotion opportunity.
"Here's a plug in for Draw files it is free. You can also get a 30 day trial of CorelDraw."
Putting a plug in in Draw is pretty useless because you then have to promote that. That's like promoting the lost and found box at a charity shop. It's got to be the other way around to grab some of the momentum from SketchUp.
Only Sketchup users who would receive CorelDRAW would need it. Who would those Sketchup users be?
Who would create CorelDRAW files that would need to be imported to Sketchup?
I get plenty of Sketchup renderings I output from Draw. So multiple noise reduction filters, upsampling and color correction are a must.
It's an entirely different world of expected reliability, cost and acceptance. The user base is accustomed to having powerful workstations with $3,000 to $5,000 worth of software installed.
Corel is just not in the sphere of acceptance. They could be if they took two years to fix bugs, made CFM and PDF importation viable in the architectural world.
I'm not holding my breath!
SketchUp has a growing user base. They are doing very well. It's the first choice for people using routers. It's got the plug ins for doing that work.
Using Draw with 3D something has a lot of advantages. Particularly, lines converted to shapes, to combined objects.
3D gets in the road of drawing.
Doing it as a plug-in for SketchUp, rather than a new filter in the next version of Draw has the potential to reach out to previous version users. Any reach is an opportunity to promote an upgrade.
I think you should look at what it really costs tombs able to use Sketchup.
I don't feel like I have a choice of "just avoid 3D" any longer. I'm building a home and workspace, while I have confidence in the architect, Tony, I don't want to pay for his time on stuff I can sort out.
Tony is our age, same *** clients with the same *** problems, just a different industry.
If I don't have the basics worked out with some degree of certainty then I'll be one of those clients that is forever making corrections to the design. I did a plan view in Draw but immediately I started using SU I chucked out half of it.
As long as you know what you're doing the software and your time is cheaper. Are you handling the permitting or the general contractor?