Initial Workspace

I have started making preliminary CAD models of the Corner Entertainment Center.  I first created an assembly in Alibre Design, and then added a part called Workspace to the assembly.

In this workspace part, I drew the area of the room in which the entertainment center was going to sit.  Basically I drew a corner of a room.  Nothing dramatic here, just two walls and a floor.  I did this to help visualize the area in which the piece was going to live.

I then created a new part called TV.  Using dimensions given on the stores website, I drew the television as best as I could.  As long as the overall sizes are close it will serve its purpose.  I really just needed a visual representation so that I can get a sense of scale.

Components

I also made parts for the different components that needed to fit into the entertainment center itself.  These were basically just “boxes” drawn to scale.  Again, I found the dimensions for each component either on the website where the component was purchased, or the manufacturers website.  All of these components, including the TV, were placed into the assembly and moved “roughly” into position.  Of course, now they are just floating in the air in the corner of the room.

At this point, I really needed to start roughing in the entertainment center itself.  First I drew the top and angled the ends in order to see how this was going to fit into the corner.  I started out making the top the maximum length that would fit in this particular space.  I didn’t want to get too detailed in drawing the main carcass for the entertainment center quite yet, so I started out by just drawing a box and then just sketched in some details in order to visualize the end product.  Until I get the overall shape and size  to look right, I am not going to start drawing any individual parts.

Finished Workspace

Shown to the right is what I have come up with for a concept design.  What I have decided to do is to make the entertainment center “reversible”.  Because of the angled ends, I think it will look better up against a flat wall if the back becomes the front.  This will present some design challenges when I get down to the details, but for now that is the plan.

Also, I decided to do a few renderings of the entertainment center for a couple of reasons.  First, to help get a better sense of what the final product might look like, both front and back.  This will help me get a better sense of what it will look like if I turn it around and put it up against a wall.  Secondly, well, because it was just a lot of fun. 

Shown below are some of the different renderings that I did. Rendering 4 shows what the entertainment center will look like when it is turned around.

As with any of the images on the site, click on them to enlarge them for a better view.

Rendering 1

Rendering 2

Rendering 3

Rendering 4

After that, I will continue the Workshop design series as well.  I ran into a bit of a snag with that design;  I have to start the design completely over.  I no longer have access to that particular CAD system that I was designing it on, or even the CAD files for that matter.  That is a really long story that I am not going to get into here.  Once I get the design in Alibre back up to where I was before, then I will continue the article series.

Anyway, I just wanted to let everyone know what was going on.

Quilted Maple

I love the grain lines of a figured wood and, when finished properly, how they draw you in and almost mesmerize you.  Quilted maple is one of my favorite woods to see in a piece.  It forms a pattern and yet at the same time is completely random.  It is but one of the ways God shows his artistic hand in nature.   Its beauty can evoke a sense of awe and wonder.

The style of a piece can also induce an emotional response.  Sometimes, the response is favorable,  and sometimes not so favorable.  Everyone has their own interpretation of what good style is.  Some people admire the artistic curves of a contemporary piece, while others prefer the the straight lines of a mission or arts & crafts piece.

The workmanship of a piece can certainly add to or detract from the beauty of a piece.  Great workmanship is at the same time visible and invisible.  It is visible in the sense that you can tell that it took someone with great skill in order to create something as beautiful as this.  It is invisible in the sense that you can see very few, if any, flaws upon close inspection.

I often find myself paying careful attention to all three with style and wood grain being the first things that I look at.  Even if I do not care for the style or the wood selection, I will still check out the workmanship involved.  When it comes to looking at the workmanship, I try to discern whether it was made by a person or on an assembly line.  The way that the wood grain is running can be a sign of good workmanship.  I look for slight imperfections in dovetails or a piece of inlay that doesn’t quite fit perfectly.  I look for these things not to criticize, but to admire the hard work that went into it.

So, how does all of this help me design a beautiful woodworking project?  What I try to do is to learn something from the woodworking pieces that I see.  I ask myself questions like; “Does the grain of the wood add to or detract from the design?”  “Is the style of the piece pleasing and is it right for the setting that it is in?”  “How would I have gone about making this piece so that my workmanship would be both visible and invisible?”  All of these things will directly and indirectly affect how I design and build a project.

End Table

Rendered End Table

Wood grain will be in the back of my mind while designing something.  Once I have a CAD model of my piece, I will sometimes do some photo renderings to get an idea of how different grains or woods will look.   Renderings allow me to experiment with the look of a project in a very short amount of time and help me to select the best woods for it.

Style, of course, will directly affect a design that I am working on.  When deciding on the style of a piece there are several things to consider.  The style always has to be pleasing to not only my eye, but also the clients eye.  It also needs to look right in the setting that it will be in.  A contemporary styled chair would look out of place in a setting where all of the rest of the furniture is mission styled.

“How” I am going to build something will also affect my design to some extent.  I certainly would not want to design something that was impossible for me to build.  Knowing my own capabilities and “potential” capabilities helps prevent this.  By “potential” capabilities, I mean that I might sometimes have to make a new jig or template in order to accomplish something.

As you can see, there are several things to think about when you start designing a piece that you want to be eye catching.

The first step will be to list all of the design requirements, and the first requirement is going to be about the space in which the piece will be  sitting.  The piece will be sitting in a corner of a room, rather than directly up against the wall, hence the name “Corner Entertainment Center”.  The unique design challenge here is that eventually it will be placed up against a wall and not in the corner.

What this means is that this cannot be a “built in” cabinet, it will need to be a movable piece of furniture.  My initial thought is to make a credenza style entertainment center.  The problem is that a credenza doesn’t really look good in a corner of a room.  However, if I were to angle the ends of the credenza it would be a better fit in the corner.

But, what would this look like up against a wall?  This might look a bit odd because now the ends would angle inwards toward the wall.  I am not sure if this would be aesthetically acceptable or not.  I will have to do some sketches and some mock up CAD work and see what it looks like.

The next requirement is that there will be a 55″ HDTV sitting on top of the entertainment center.  The TV is about 52″ wide so the top of the entertainment center has to be at least that long.  The diagonal measurement across the corner is 81″, so the length can be between 52″ and 81″.

The next requirement is going to relate to storage capacity.  It needs to be  able to house several components such as a DVD player, Stereo, DVR, and a Wii gaming system.  It also needs storage for DVD’s, CD’s, Wii games and controllers.

So, here is the list of requirements that I have so far for the corner entertainment center.

• Movable piece of furniture (not built in)
• It needs to look good in a corner as well as up against a flat wall
• The length needs to be between 52″ and 81″
• Lots of storage capacity

Now, off to the drawing board! Or should I say the computer.  Hmmm.  I am already there.  I guess I better get to work.

Alibre Design

To fully answer why I chose Alibre Design I should probably give you some of my background with CAD/CAM systems.  I started out about 20 years ago designing plastic injection molds and programming CNC machines to cut these same molds.  The CAD systems that I have used over the years have always been considered very high end systems.

I currently used Unigraphics NX at my day job.  A single “bare bones” installation of NX will cost somewhere around $5,000.  On top of that, we add in assembly functionality, drafting functionality, and a mold design add-on.  This all adds up to about $20,000 for a single installation.  These systems that I have been using professionally are very high end, very powerful, and quite easy to use.

When I decided to look for a CAD system to use for Maple Grove Woodworks projects, I realized that I was quite spoiled when it came to the CAD features that I was looking for.  I really wanted to find a system that had similar features, the same ease of use, but not the cost of a high end system.  Well, I knew that I was going to have to sacrifice on some of these things, but I was bound and determined to find the system that gave me the closest thing to what I really wanted for the least amount of money.

One of most important features that I wanted was for the CAD software to be both a three dimensional(3D) and two dimensional(2D) system.  What I found was that many of the low cost CAD programs out there were only 2D.  I know that some people like to draw in 2D and use software like DeltaCad or CadStd and that is perfectly fine for them.  It is just not the way I like to do things.

My own design process usually starts out with a 2D sketch on a piece of paper. At that point I will try and draw it three dimensionally in order to get the joinery figured out.  Sometimes, I will prototype something at this point in order to clarify the scale or refine a shape.  Once I have everything drawn 3 dimensionally, I will then make a set of working drawings to take out to the shop, although, lately I have just been taking my laptop out to the shop and using the 3D model to take measurements.

The 2D systems just were not going to work for me.  I would rather get the old drafting table out with a T-square and triangles.  (Remember, I’m spoiled).

I then decided to then look into Google Sketchup.  It certainly meets my cost criteria for a new CAD system and there are a lot of woodworkers using it.  It is also a 3D system.  I proceeded to design a few projects with it, and Sketchup is … well … fine.  I know it works for a lot of others out there, but I found it very cumbersome.  (Again, I’m spoiled)  I was able to design pretty much anything I wanted to, but the “ease of use” criteria was just not there.

This is certainly a matter of preference because I know that there are a lot of woodworkers who do very well with Sketchup, such as, Bob Lang at Popular Woodworking.com, or Tim Killen and Dave Richards over at Fine Woodworking.com.  These guys have really mastered Sketchup and have taken it to new levels.

Coffee Table

One of the features that I was really looking for that the higher end systems have that none of the lower end ones have, including Sketchup, was parametric feature design capabilities.  What this means is that everything that I draw has a history of every operation that I used in creating a particular part.  In other words, if I create a 1/4″ fillet on a piece and then later on decide that the fillet should be 1/2″, all I have to do is edit the fillet feature and change the dimension.

It also means that if I design a Mission Style Coffee Table and then realize that I would like a matching End Table, I could simply change the length dimension of the table top and the corresponding length dimensions of the cross members would automatically change as well.  As an added bonus, all of my drawings would update with the new dimensions too.  (I am planning on making a video of this at some point to better explain this).

I decided to keep looking for the perfect software for me.  I finally came across Alibre Design.  Alibre has 3 versions of the CAD design

End Table

software.  The low end version is called Alibre Design Personal Edition (PE).  At the time of this posting the PE version retails for $99.  This falls in the range of my cost criteria.  It is also both a 2D and a 3D system.  All of the Alibre Design products are also parametric, so it also meets my criteria of having some high end features.  The coffee table and the end table shown are from the same design and by just adjusting the length dimension I now have 2 designs.

I decided to download a trial version and test it out.  I really liked how it worked.  Its approach to designing things very much mimicked the higher end systems that I was used to.  This meant that it met the “ease of use” criteria.  I have since purchased Alibre Design and have designed several projects in it now and I am completely hooked.

So, that was the long winded explanation of why I chose Alibre Design as my CAD system for Maple Grove Woodworks.  And, like I said earlier, I am planning on make a couple of videos of how Alibre Design works and I will post them here when they are complete.

Besides all of the visual changes, you’ll notice an open space in the upper right hand corner of the home page labeled “Featured Video”.  I am planning on some videos soon for the site and the most recent will be featured in this location.  Some of the videos will be “how to” woodworking videos filmed in the shop, and others will be design oriented.  The design videos will be Computer Aided Design (CAD) oriented, and will hopefully be helpful to some people.

Another noticeable difference is that the blog has been taken off of the home page.  Don’t worry, it’s still here.  It now has its own page on the site and can be accessed through the menu at the top of the page.  I wanted the site to be “more” than a blog, although I am still contemplating what the “more” will really be.  I just thought that it made sense, at this point, to move it off of the home page to make room for the “more”.

Feel free to look around at what I have so far.  I am always open to constructive comments if you have ideas about how something could be improved.

The only thing that I have been able to do in the workshop recently is start a couple of more projects that I have not yet finished.  Both projects are basically just shelves, but the one involves some coat hooks as well.  I will post a couple of pictures of them once they are done.  They are nothing fancy, but they are the only thing that I have to show for myself lately.

I have about two more weeks of non-woodworking business in my life, and then of course there  is Christmas in there as well, so it might be a few more weeks before I actually get into the shop.  In the meantime, though, I have begun (in my spare time) a new design for an entertainment center.  I will try and share that design process here on the Maple Grove Woodwork’s blog.

That does remind me of one other thing that I have done that is woodworking related.  I purchased some new CAD software of my own.  I know a lot of woodworkers have been using Google Sketchup (mainly because of the free price), but I decided to go a different route.  I will share a little more about that in an upcoming post.

For now, though, I apologize again for my lack of web presence lately.  I am going to try and commit to making one post a week from now on.  How’s that for a non-committal committal.  

I even did a little woodworking.  Just a little.  I made a couple more clamp racks and attached them to the wall.  Many of my clamps have been laying on bench tops or just clamped to the sides of a bench, so the additional racks will really help in staying organized.  I did not get back to the mission style lamps that I wanted to work on, but hopefully I will soon.

I live in Michigan, and the winters tend to make the shop (currently my garage) a bit colder than I would like.  I have a portable kerosene heater, but the garage is not insulated, and most of the heat goes up through the rafters and out the ridge vent.  On a really cold day I can only get the temperature up to about 45 degrees (Fahrenheit).

This is not to say that I don’t work in the wintertime, because I do, it is just that I don’t get out there as often, and it is for shorter time periods.  This situation will be rectified once I start building my new workshop….someday.

This winter has been extra crazy.  My time in the shop has been very limited, and every time I have been out there it has been for just a “quick a minute” project.  There have been a lot of these types of projects and to save time I have been very lax in cleaning up after myself.  This has gotten to the point where I can’t find any of my tools, my bench and worktables are literally covered with tools and lumber cutoffs.  I ran out there to grab a tape measure the other day, and it took me 10 minutes to find it.  It was very frustrating.

This weekend the weather is going to warm up a bit, above freezing anyway, and I think I am going to go do my spring cleaning a little early this year.  Once everything is cleaned up I might actually do some real woodworking.  I have a couple of projects that are about 1/2 complete that I would like to finish up.

As I was writing this, I recalled that I blogged about this very thing back in November.  Could this just be a bad habit I have gotten into?  I hope not.  If it is, I am resolving to break it.  No more leaving my shop in disarray. There, now that I have blogged it, it won’t happen again….Right?… 

Why use a template?  Templates are especially handy when you need to create multiple items repeatedly.  I will admit that I get a little template crazy.  I sometimes create a template just to create another template.  For instance, recently I decided to make some racks for my pipe clamps so I could hang them up neatly on the wall.  It wasn’t really necessary that all of the U shaped slots on the rack be identical, but I am a bit of a stickler for such things.

I first made a template for a single slot.  I then used this template to create another template with multiple slots.  I accomplished this by using double stick tape to attach the single slot to longer workpiece of the final template.  I then routed the slot by following the single slot template with a flush trim bit mounted in my router table.  Once this was done, I then moved the single slot template the desired distance and reattached it.  I then routed out the second slot on the final template.

I repeated this process until my final template had the right number of slots.  In this case, I only had to put a little effort into making one slot, which translated into several identical slots.  This was a real time saver on something that could have become very mundane.

I did something similar on my Marquetry Mirror project.  I wanted to make sure that the mirror frame was completely symmetrical.  I started by making a template for half of the mirror frame.  I then used this template to create the other half of the frame.  By book-matching the templates together, I had a perfectly symmetrical mirror frame template.