Cab Design Software

[chrisindfw]

I am looking for a good drafting program I can use to plan things out for my cab. I am looking to document things extensively.

I would like a program that I don't have to take a class to learn what everything does. A program that doesnt have too many bells and whistles.

Any ideas?

[Dartful Dodger]

I'm not sure if they still make it, it's been a while since I was in school.  But the tools I used back then sounds like it can do all that and more.  I think it was called a number 2 pencil and a ruler.  A compass helps too, but you might need to take a class for that.

[grafixmonkey]

Amen to that.  That's what I used to lay out my panel.

(ok ok, so I used Maya to make a rotatable, shaded and colored 3D model of my plan before I started.  But I still used a pencil and compass on the wood!   )

Drafting is by nature difficult.  You won't find a program that makes it "easy", they just automate it, and make you learn where the menu commands are.  Think of it as a great excuse to learn to use Autocad.  I took no graphics classes in college, and I'm entering 3D graphics as a profession just because I took everything as an opportunity to push my knowlege of the graphics software I had.  (pencil sketch a lipid bilayer?  Ha ha, I'll model it in 3D!!!)

Just use photoshop, coreldraw, or whatever graphics package you like.  Draw a diagram of a button, duplicate it and place the duplicates.  Draw a diagram of a trackball, a joystick, a spinner, a flight yoke, some cupholders, your hands, some beers to go in the cupholders, the gorgeous women that will be sitting on your panel while you play, some beers for the gorgeous women (can't leave them out, or they'll leave), and the coffee you'll need to finish your wiring, and place them too.  If you do it in a vector package like Corel, it will often let you work in units of inches or centimeters and put everything to scale.

For the rest of the cuts for a from-scratch cab, you can think through your cuts so that you maximize your margin of error.  Like, if you're planning a place for a plexiglass insert to go, plan it so the edges don't have to be exactly right for it to look good.  Put your marquee in a routed slot or a bracket that overlaps the edges, and your plexiglass could have 92 and 88 degree corners and still fit nicely.  Cut new pieces once the pieces those cuts depend on are already assembled, so you can plan the new cuts based on the actual outcome of the previous ones.  That way, you don't have to remember difficult things, like making a piece of wood that sits on top of an angled slope longer than the horizontal depth of the pieces it sits on.

[TalkingOctopus]

There are many programs that can be used to draft - some that are not intended to be used for drafting (MS Word).  I would recommend using whatever you feel most comfortable with.  I used photoshop to design my control panel.

[SirPoonga]

I'm still listening to see if someone found that turbocad that comes with a magazine.

[Tailgunner]

Rhinoceros is my favorite, it's a NURBS 3D modeler with a CAD like interface.

www.rhino3d.com