Popular Woodworking 2003-06 № 134, страница 65

for the addition of two large and three small drawers. I began the transformation by drawing the basic components of the original sideboard. Once the drafting labor is behind you, the power of CAD really kicks in.

The drawings now are putty in your hands, waiting to be copied, arrayed, scaled, trimmed, rotated, mirrored, stretched, moved and aligned at will with mouse clicks and keyboard commands. QuickCAD handled all of these tasks with ease and precision. When everything looked right, QuickCAD let me save the drawing as a common JPEG file, as shown at left, that I e-mailed to my newest clients for approval.

Go Bravely Into the Third Dimension

Because I've been looking at architectural drawings my entire professional life, I forget that many people have difficulty when mentally attempting to join disassociated plans and elevations into a coherent whole. My daughter falls into that group.

Her response to my drawings was: "I guess it's fine Dad, but what the heck will it really look like?"

QuickCAD answers this dilemma by offering the option of drawing in three dimensions simultaneously on an isometric grid. Although it's not technically the correct term, most people refer to this type of drawing as a perspective (or a 3D drawing). I often use isometric drawings in my magazine illustrations. In my opinion, they can't be beat as a tool for conveying a design message without the distortion of a true perspective.

Electronic Tracing Paper and Paint-by-numbers

After Carah and Dan gave the thumbs up on the isometric, I learned that Carah and her grandmother had been out shopping for material for the bedroom drapes. Carah suggested that when she got home, we could incorporate the drapery colors into the dresser's paint scheme, and perhaps use the drapery material's designs for her stenciling patterns. I told her it wasn't necessary to wait for the homecoming. All she had to do was stop at the local library, scan a section of the material, and send me the file. I'd take care of the rest.

Original sideboard

Painted sideboard

This is a scanned image of a fabric swatch from which I extracted a palette of colors.

Painted dresser

QuickCAD offers the option of drawing in three dimensions simultaneously on an isometric grid, as you see here. I was also able to extract a palette of colors from a scanned image so I could see what the project would look like painted.

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