CAD program
Apr. 25th, 2013 06:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
catsittingstill I got Delta CAD for the Mac yesterday. It's a 2-D computer aided design program that Terry, the sound engineer who offered to advise me about my recording booth, said was a good one to do plans in, seeing as he was having trouble interpreting my pencil drawings.
I ran through the tutorial yesterday and it's actually quite a clever little program. You can tell it you want to draw lines, and there are different buttons for horizontal, and vertical lines (as well as a button for lines that go any which way you set.) This is nice because it makes it easy to draw lines that are perfectly parallel or perpendicular. Furthermore you can specify the length of any line you draw--you can even set a scale (1/2 inch = 1 foot to choose a nonrandom example) and then pick one end of the line and type in 5' 8 3/4" and it draws a line representing a 5' 8 3/4" line drawn at that scale.
If you draw a line 31 inches long and you meant it to be 32, you can pick Edit, pick the scale button and type 32/31 and have it redraw itself to be the right length.
You can have the house plan in one layer, the layout of the crawlspace in another (and then scootch the crawlspace layout around so that the place the water-in pipe went in through the wall in the crawlspace lines up with the place the water-in pipe comes out of the wall under the toilet and now you know about where everything is under the floor) and the recording booth in a third.
I have the house plan for the area entered, and also the crawlspace layout (water, sewer, vents, joists) entered and am in the process of drawing the booth. And the hours have been just melting away. It's fascinating. It was 40$ which was a bit daunting, but I think it may be worth it just for the entertainment value.
I ran through the tutorial yesterday and it's actually quite a clever little program. You can tell it you want to draw lines, and there are different buttons for horizontal, and vertical lines (as well as a button for lines that go any which way you set.) This is nice because it makes it easy to draw lines that are perfectly parallel or perpendicular. Furthermore you can specify the length of any line you draw--you can even set a scale (1/2 inch = 1 foot to choose a nonrandom example) and then pick one end of the line and type in 5' 8 3/4" and it draws a line representing a 5' 8 3/4" line drawn at that scale.
If you draw a line 31 inches long and you meant it to be 32, you can pick Edit, pick the scale button and type 32/31 and have it redraw itself to be the right length.
You can have the house plan in one layer, the layout of the crawlspace in another (and then scootch the crawlspace layout around so that the place the water-in pipe went in through the wall in the crawlspace lines up with the place the water-in pipe comes out of the wall under the toilet and now you know about where everything is under the floor) and the recording booth in a third.
I have the house plan for the area entered, and also the crawlspace layout (water, sewer, vents, joists) entered and am in the process of drawing the booth. And the hours have been just melting away. It's fascinating. It was 40$ which was a bit daunting, but I think it may be worth it just for the entertainment value.
