Any woodworkers use SU Pro?

jeff hammond

i'm a woodworker with supro and like eric, i don't use dynamic components..

if you were doing 'custom' cabinets or something like that, i could see them being very good. (by custom i mean: building cabinets to fit in various spaces but your building them all exactly the same.. the only thing custom being the actual LxWxH.)

if you're doing real custom woodworking, they're not going to be much help imo.

Dave R

I also use SU Pro (from V3) and as Eric and Jeff have said, Dynamic Components aren't all that useful to me. I can see how they could be useful for someone doing kitchen layouts or something.

Resizing a component as a Dynamic Component involves scaling. If you have a bed rail or a skirting board on a table that is joined to the legs with mortise and tenon joints, making that component longer via scaling results in the tenons being lengthened. Imagine adding length (front to back) to a dynammic drawer with dovetailed joints at the corners, the drawer back would be shift back and the sides would be scaled. This would make the sockets deeper and change the dovetail angle. Try scaling a raised panel in one direction and look at what happens to the raising.

There are ways around that sort of stuff but so far I haven't found the extra work required to do those things to be worthwhile. Those ways involve drawing the component in sections so the ends can be moved instead of scaled . Only the center gets scaled then. Unfortunately, if you run a cutlist, instead of a single length for a drawer side, the list shows the side as three individual parts. Dealing with that gets to be more work, yet.

Now, that said, I do find it useful having Pro. For me Layout is a worthwhile addition to the program. If you are only making plans for yourself, it might not be a big deal. I have been making plans for others to follow and Layout makes all that so much easier.

Jim

@dave r said:

Resizing a component as a Dynamic Component involves scaling. If you have a bed rail or a skirting board on a table that is joined to the legs with mortise and tenon joints, making that component longer via scaling results in the tenons being lengthened. Imagine adding length (front to back) to a dynammic drawer with dovetailed joints at the corners, the drawer back would be shift back and the sides would be scaled. This would make the sockets deeper and change the dovetail angle. Try scaling a raised panel in one direction and look at what happens to the raising.

Fredo's FreScale 2 has a Stretch Tool that is made for this, Dave. You can stretch free geometry (Groups & Compos, too) from the center (by default). Or you can move the stretch plane off to one side or another.

Sorry to get off-topic, but FreeScale 2 is going to be you're best friend in this case.

Dave R

Jim,

You're right. Absolutely right. I was just playing with the bend and taper functions as you were writing. I can see a lot of use for that plugin.

Jean-Franco

Hi,
I'm a hobbyist wordworker and I've started with SU5.
I use only free versions. Means SU6 as main tool. SU7 is installed on my machine only to read an then convert SU7 files to SU6.
I've never seen a big use of DC's. Too limitated as Dave explained.
LO, yes, may be ...
But I'm used to do such documents in Word without any problems at least for my needs.
And now with Fredo6's FreeScale 2.0 really I've all what was missing for my purpose.
I did some trails this morning and really it's awesome !
Give it a try and you will forget SU7

Charles Brown

Hazza,

Being a woodworker, I use sketchup with quite a bit of success. I, however, haven't bit the bullet yet to purchase the pro version. Tools such as layout look like they would help with documents immensely, but I just can't spare the cash. My boss isn't ready to pony up the dough yet, either. Hopefully someday. Someday, soon!

That being said, I definitely do not feel limited with the free version. The only plugin I use is CutList. I'm sure there are little things I'm missing out on, but I have been using the free version with success.

Hazza

I see the answers to my question falling into 2 category's:

I don't have SU Pro and don't think I need it.
I do have SU Pro but the effort to setup dynamic components is not worth it.

It was a question I asked out of curiosity. I wasn't planning to buying Pro and I don't think I need to create Dynamic components, I just wanted to know if anyone was using DC's in woodworking models.

nuclearmoose

I would like to know from the SU Pro users what advantages there are to having Pro versus the free version. I'm a beginner/early intermediate SU user who has been contemplating a purchase of Pro.

Thanks for your feedback and advice.

Dave R

Craig, as far as drawing goes, there's really no advantage to having the Pro version. the one exception might be if you have use for and want to make your own Dynamic Components. I haven't found them to be useful for the sort of woodworking projects I draw but you might. The benefit of the pro version comes in when you want to get your models out. You kind of need to consider what you'll do with the models you draw. For many of the woodworking-related pieces I draw I create plan documents for others to build from. LayOut makes that job much easier. It also makes it easier for me to create presentation documents for some of my clients who are cabinetmakers and need to communicate with their clients. There are some other things related to exporting and even importing files from SketchUp but I expect those won't be a big deal to most woodworkers.

Bert

I do agree with Dave. I have seen some of his work and he makes great use of LO

I have the pro, not for DC, because it is not that easy to create Dynamic components, but for Layout.

When I get to the shop I like to have a document that shows detailed assembly and all the parts and their dimensions.
Layout is well suited to making a good document presentation

Just for you to see what I mean here is a pdf document created with LO

Coupole

nuclearmoose

Dave R., and Bert.
Thank you for your input. I plan on using SU for much more than woodworking, and a presentation product is important, so it looks like SU Pro is the way for me to go.

Bert, your PDF looks great! Thanks for sharing.