best cad program for furniture design?

That’s exactly how I do it too- a single assembly sketch drives everything. A bit of a pain to setup right the first time, but after that you can reuse the same basic models over and over again.

Yes, a parametric modeler like SolidWorks or Pro/ENGINEER (both would work well) is going to run you $5K for a copy. Thats the breaks. If you are going to get serious about furniture, you’re going to need at least one modeler that won’t fight back if you want to publish dimensioned drawings and talk in terms of manufacturing tolerances.

Rhino is only $900 or so, but it isn’t geared towards engineering or production. Nice for making swoopy shapes, though.

Before you decide what you want to invest your time or money in you are going to benefit greatly from a few inexpensive community college classes, everyone is right on about that. But those will probably tell you more about what you want to invest in in the future, than they will prepare you to be genuinely productive.

You can download a 30 day trial copy of most of these… even Pro/E now has a trial download. The learning curve for some of them is pretty high, though. I’d want to have someone looking over my shoulder if i were to attempt to learn Pro/E. SolidWorks has some decent tutorials with it.

Consider Alias Studio, Maya, Catia and Inventor, too.

Some of the programs that aren’t all hardcore about engineering and dimensioning, are still good for establishing your design, and if you’re facile with both programs, you might model a shape with Maya or Rhino, and use that shape’s geometry to build from in SolidWorks or Pro/E. A hardcore parametric modeler user will scoff at that and say he’d have to rebuild it all in Pro/E or SolidWorks, but so what.

Get a book or two for each program you attempt, and get started! These have a fairly high learning curve, so its just important that you get started and keep building on what you know.

We use Solidworks for modeling, and recently got sold on a seat of Autodesk Showcase for renderings (not cheap at all, but similar to Bunkspeed I think). Very nice results I might add.

While i enjoy SW’s usability, all manufacturers we work with are PRO-E based, so file exchange is an issue.

the big five Furniture manufacturers use Pro/E.

KI
Herman Miller
Knoll
Allsteel
Steelcase

Thats just the engineers though.

Designers use Alias and Rhino

Since the engineers will rebuild the geometry parametrically I would suggest not using a parametric modeler unless it’s Pro/ENGINEER. The smaller manufactures will use Solidworks tho.

Your question (posed to get a discussion going) though was whats the best. I would say that the best tool would be the one that gets you in as a designer at a manufactures. I think all the firms can handle import geometry. A parametric tool is nice for making changes… you don’t have to remodel geometry. Instead you parametrically modify too get prove the form you want.

I think designers should use the Wildfire software but that can be intimidating. For the ergonomic forms, there are some amazing surface modeling tools in WF4.0 and it is sad that ID’ers don’t embrace that functionality. But they probably never saw it run like a designer should use it.

well for me i still uses autocad…

design engine-

i think the primary reason designers aren’t using Pro-E is I’ve yet to hear of a design school teaching it.

that would be a problem… Purdue uses it but not many can teach it except in the Engineering department. I am slated to go down in October to do a 12 hour workshop. Anyone want to join me? They pay for the transport and some dinner afterwards. Other than that i don’t get paid but its fun.

What?


No one answered his question.

Rhino is a surface modeller, in specific quite a good nurbs modeller, this is used to build surfaces for objects without haivng any real idea of how it works.

Solidworks is a solidmodeller, you actually are having to cut, extrude and shape a solid material and is easier to directly make drawings of this as it actually has some dimention information which youve inputted into it, whereas Alias only uses pixels as a reference for length, which is scalable.


my reccomendation, is learn as many as possible. different companies have different software and you may not have your preferred flavour of modelling software there.

When i interned in france for ford, they just used ideas, and frankly that sucked more than a hooker.

I have been in the furniture industry a little over 3 years and have used nothing but SolidWorks. It does everything you need it to, how you want it to, and easily. I have tried Pro/E, and its very archaic (a la AutoCAD).

that.

i primarily use solidwork, but i use rhino when i need to poop something out.

i still know how to use 3D VIZ/Max, AutoCad and a few others very well.

They all work essestially the same to varying degrees. they’re only tools anyways.

i’m looking into this myself…

i can run cad all day and can do some modelling in it… but what if i want to do some hottness renderings…

how does cad compare to solid works in term of drawing/making objects…

i can sketch all day but if i want to get serious i need to be able to provide shops with dwg’s… even though i have done exhibit engineering so whats the real difference


a bit confused but want to do it right and not waste time on programs that wont get me anywhere

b

well got a friend that he uses intericad in designing furniture . does anyone can confirm this.

for seating, i pike to sketch out ideas, render them in photoshop on a wacom monitor tablet.

for fast form studies in furniture, i use rhino.

for serious stuff i do it in solidworks.

i do photorealistic rendering in 3d viz (export solidworks to rhino as a step, explode the step in rhino, save as a rhino file, import resulting rhino model into Viz.)

have you ever considered the option of using Concept unlimited, or Shark FX as its now known as.

Its a very powerful modeller, easy to use, clean easy UI.

I have used it in a furniture design studio, originally using Rhino, but my boss quickly said, Start using Concepts. End of…

my school’s furniture department teaches Rhino and Auto Cad.

I’ve seen other schools that use Turbo Cad on a mac platform. Has anyone else used Turbo and can you elaborate on it’s usefulness, ease-of-use or lack thereof? For the straight up 2d/3d cad program (not mechanical design version), it’s price is VERY attractive.

Turbocad seems like one of those programs that once you finish school you will have a hard time finding a studio that actually uses it. For the Mac your probably best off with VectorWorks.

I would probably recomend Rhino (also coming out on the Mac soon) as it is the most versatile. I have done rapid prototyping in it with absolutly no problem (saved as an .iges). Anytime a client has asked for a DXF I just save it as one directly from rhino and they can’t even tell the difference (except for maybe the font and the arrows on the measurments).

The best thing about Rhino is that I can make a precise 2d drwaing of my object from the 3d file without having to redraw the entire thing. I find autocad to be an overpriced piece of software for what I do. Maybe its good for architecture , but I don’t do architecture. §I designed a few stands for the design fair here in Milan, Italy in Rhino and had absolutly no problems.


Stefan Krivokapic
co-founder of Fraktal
http://www.fraktal.it

is vectorworks good for mechanical design as well? like if you want to design drawer-rollers or cabinet hinges & other moving hardware?

yeah agreed, autocad is clunky and way overpriced. I just don’t see the benefit of using it when there’s a whole smorgasbord of inexpensive alternatives.

rhino on the mac… can’t beat that… while it’s pretty nifty, form z has nothing on rhino… certainly not in the licensing department either.

If you have experience in AutoCAD, you can use utilities from http://www.furnituresoft-software.com. They created especially for adapt AutoCAD to furniture design.

if your into getting a job at a major manufacture like HON, or Herman Miller you might give your attention to Pro/ENGINEER. or if your just a Hobie-ist then autocad can waist yourtime efficiently.

A lot of the furniture design institutions will contract a more famous designer in Italy and they deliver Rhino models but the manufacturer will almost always re model (hopefully with integrity) the model using Pro/ENGINEER. so they can teak the draft and what have you…

Pro/ENGINEER is a nightmare for the inexperienced but for the well trained industrial designer… Pro/ENGINEER is a powerful communication tool.

Solidworks for shop drawings and Rhino + Vray for presentations.