Using plans

[Ben H]

Do you? I've always been the kind of guy to wing it. I never liked plans, they always seem to cramp my creative side. Just curious if anyone else feels the same, or am I weird ?

[Vic]

Do you? I've always been the kind of guy to wing it. I never liked plans, they always seem to cramp my creative side. Just curious if anyone else feels the same, or am I weird ?

It depends, but mostly I'm OCD when it comes to planning. Although, it has paid off in my shop. Some things like my dust hood for my SCMS I sketched out and then built a prototype, then the actual hood. I'm sure over the years I'll be wasting a lot of wood/man made materials doing prototypes.

[Timberwerks]

Do you? I've always been the kind of guy to wing it. I never liked plans, they always seem to cramp my creative side. Just curious if anyone else feels the same, or am I weird ?

I'm with you. I like to work from ideas that come to mind or from sketches I've made. More often than not it's just a mental vision I work from. Sometimes just seeing a certain flitch or random board will spark ideas.

[Lawrence Brown]

Do you? I've always been the kind of guy to wing it. I never liked plans, they always seem to cramp my creative side. Just curious if anyone else feels the same, or am I weird ?

Unless it's something extremely simple, I pretty much always model everything up in 3D. that lets me pull the whole thing apart, look at it from all angles, and find the little things that I may otherwise have overlooked. I hate getting halfway through a project and finding I cut a board too short because I forgot to allow for a tenon or something.

Another benefit with making a plan is that once I'm ready to start, I print out as many different views as I can, which allows me to take those papers into the shop and start making notes directly on them. Even when I do plan everything out, I still invariably end up making changes here and there, and marking directly on the plans keeps me from getting mixed up. The project I'm currently working on has over 300 pieces, so needless to say, organization is a must.

[TomP]

I like to follow plans to a point. As I am working on a project I might change it up a little. Sometimes my wife will come in and look at it and come up with some good variations. I guess thats what it is all about. Making it your own in a way

[PurpLev]

Once the project starts having more than just a few parts, I find it easiest to have a plan to follow, not so much follow to the mm, but use it as a general guideline to keep a reference to parts needed, where joinery is supposed to go, parts sizes and all, of course during the build things change, and you end up matching parts to others as opposed to sticking to the plan no matter what- but at least there's some general reference to follow.

Also - once you work with other people on a combined project, having a plan makes sure everyone is on the same track. not to mention if a client ever wants a reproduction of a piece - if you don't have a plan for it, you'll have to work 10x as hard.

[LordLQQK]

I usually make the plan, or find one, but find that adjustments are needed as I go, either by desire or by necessity. Sketchup makes these alterations very easy to manage.....if something needs to be smaller or bigger you adjust one component and see what other components need to be adjusted.

LQQK

[mikeneron]

I probably go a bit overboard with plans and do everything in Sketchup...even simple projects. I will upload them to my Google account so I have access to them from work or home. I also try and come back to them after the project is done as usually there are some things that I missed or something that needed to be tweaked a bit. It is probably why it takes me forever to get anything done

[thewoodwhisperer]

Personally, I'm not a fan of plans in general. I will use SketchUp to mock up parts of the project for the sake of proportions and working out joinery details. But beyond that, every second I put toward trying to perfect that special curve in SketchUp is a second I could have devoted to actually making the curve in my shop.

I think its just a matter of how our brains work. Some folks like to meticulously work out every detail ahead of time, and other will feel somewhat stifled by that tactic.

Early on though, a woodworking plan is a good thing. It helps you get a good grasp of proportions, joinery options, and proper sizing of the joints themselves.

[PaulMarcel]

I like looking at the exploded views of projects in FWW to see how they did the joinery in different places. Sometimes I'm surprised at the joinery choice (in a good way, like "why didn't I think of that?"). Otherwise, my 'plans' are whatever I draw up about a project with pretty rough measurements. Isn't the best, to be certain. If anything, I need more detail on my drawings when it gets to complex areas.

So far the closest set of plans I followed were the plans for Marc's assembly table, though I changed that a fair amount, too, because I needed it to fit in a specific area (which, btw, it has never been )

Stuff I'm working on now has a printout of a cabinet online and photos of the client's armoire as I'm to retrofit movable writing surfaces and shelves like the online printout into their actual armoire and even those shelves are different from the online printout. Guess the online photo is more of a "we want something kinda like this" than a specific plan.

Speaking of which, time to go brave the garage heat to cut those parts

[AMarshall]

I admit freely and frequently to being a planner. For some reason it just makes me feel better to know where I'm going as I build something, especially if I am heading into new territory. Lately I've been doing shop upgrades with a lot of weird dimensions and drawer sizes, etc. so the planning has helped. once you get out there though, you have to know when to ditch the plans. For instance, by the time I have a cabinet built it's time to measure for drawers right from the case.

I don't ever really use pre-made plans from another source either. I may combine elements from a few pieces into my design, but I usually start from scratch in SketchUp.

[jHop]

It depends. Sometimes, I'm faced with a mental block. I see what I want in my head, but I cannot seem to get the translation down to my hands. Other times, it's because I will rely on the advice of other people who know more or better. (My lathe table/ secondary workbench falls into this category.) But that doesn't mean I don't have qualms modifying the plans, if necessary. (My lathe table, for example, calls for pegboard panels on all three leg/panel assemblies. Since I cut the grooves with the wrong face against the fence on both sets of runners, I "kitbashed" the design, and have set up plumbing for dust collection and wiring for an integral switch.

I have another project that I never bothered with plans; I visualized it in my head and just started cutting 1x2's until I ran out. It took a bit to figure out where to put the screws, but I'm fairly comfortable with it. I'm just working on the wobble (one leg is not the same as the others...) and the finish now. Since it's intended to be an outdoor planter bench, I'm just sanding down to final grit and trying to figure which would be the best finish to use...

I have been looking at a variety of plans for a variety of bedroom furniture, because we have several needs at the moment. But mostly, it's for the general idea / options, and I plan on modifying the plan, and probably relying heavily on relative dimensioning for the final product. Assuming I can ever get a vehicle capable of hauling the planned wood purchase...

[woodcanuck]

Purchased plans:

- I've used them a lot, especially early on in my woodworking journey....the more I use them the less I like them. I used to justify using them as a way to fastforward through the pain points that you will encounter when you design on the fly. What I've learned is that people don't write up instructions in a way that makes sense to everyone. I've often had to show the instructions to others and ask them what it means to them, because it made no sense to me.

- More recently I've found that a set of plans gives me the basics and I take lots of liberties in what I actually build. I substitute different designs or techniques as I go, which makes it feel more creative to me.

My own plans:

- It depends what I'm building. For anything that has a strong creative element, I do no plans and just see how it goes. This is very much the case with any turning that I do.

- For built-in work, I do very little here as well, I basically take the fixed dimensions I'm dealing with and work from there.

- For pretty much everything else I will at least do a scale drawing. I try to do a cut-list before picking up lumber and make sure I've got enough left-overs to make changes. Since I've never tried doing a full scale mock-up, I tend to step back from things from time to time and see if it's working or not. If it is not working, I'll make adjustments on the fly. A 7' tall cabinet looks very different to a 7" tall drawing of a 7' tall cabinet.

CAD/Sketchup:

- I work in IT, so I find the motivation to learn new software a challenge...I have to do it at work, why do it at home?

- Long ago, I used AutoCAD (yes, back when it was v1) on the PC and I can see the value in it.

- I've played a little with SketchUp and the constant barrage of 'SketchUp is awesome' is pushing me this way...I even signed up for the SketchUp workshops at WIA...maybe that will get me over the learning hump and start using it.

[cosmocyb]

When it comes to toys, I like plans. They have already figured out the proportions for me and that makes for easier changes as I like to upgrade the reality of the toy as I go. I guess you could say that I use them for my starting point. I like to draw my plans out to the actual toy size of what I am building, then I cut out my templates for use with my router table. Once the templates are made, I basically have a pattern for life. I write the dimensions for each piece on the pattern.

[KRAM121881]

As many have said, and I would agree plans have there time and place. I always will start with nothing less than a sketch, and when I say sketch it is just that, a sketch no rulers or other drawing tools needed. If the project is very complex and it is for someone, I may draw up a sketch with a little more detail like rough dementions but almost never will I draw plans down to every detial. I have done that once or twice when truly they were needed.

[AMarshall]

I even signed up for the SketchUp workshops at WIA...maybe that will get me over the learning hump and start using it.

Ian, stop by the SketchUp walk-in clinic at WIA and I'll be working there for much of the weekend. Glad to help you out any way I can.

[woodcanuck]

Ian, stop by the SketchUp walk-in clinic at WIA and I'll be working there for much of the weekend. Glad to help you out any way I can.

Thanks Aaron, I'll be there!

[Larry Marshall]

I think the answer to your question really boils down to what plans you're talking about and how you use them. Personally, I find using other people's plans more trouble than its worth and never do it. There are always personal changes I want to make which starts a cascade of deviations from the plan until the plan is just making your brain hurt.

By contrast, I love drawing up my own ideas in SketchUp, pushing and pulling, stretching and compressing. I like working out how the joinery will come together. I like being able to see how things will (won't?) fit. But then, I'll use some of the basic dimensions but actually build the piece using relative parts dimensioning so I rarely will actually print my own plan. So, do I like plans? Sure, but within a very specific context.

Cheers --- Larry

[iSawitFirst]

I like to do conceptual sketches to get started. Sometimes the design evolves as I go once I see things in 3D. I'm not a fan of sketchup because I feel it stifles the creative process.

[cowchaser]

Being new to this, I see myself more as a plan kind of person. I don't really understand things unless I can see it actually being done. I would probably learn more woodworking watching someone for 12 hours then sitting and trying to figure it out on my own. I don't have much of a creative side so I am not sure where I will start. I do have an idea for a mudroom project for mywife, but I just can't seem to figure out what kind of joinery or anything on it so the picture of it sits in my little graph book waiting one day to become a reality.