Computer Program For Designing Guitars?

[Fezik]

i'm looking for an easy to work with and most importantly free program, that i could use to do body and headstock designs. drawing freehand isn't working out too well for me and don't even get me started on microsofts paint. so do you guys know of any good ones(not the line 6 one)?

[ACSpike]

Inkscape

[MzI]

this may not really help you, but the way i have been taught to design at architecture school, i usually do a quick free hand sketch small not to scale easier that way dont hafta be as precise and then move to the computer once i have my initial design down on paper, as for a computer program i generally use autocad 2004 or 2005 not free unless of course you know where to get it, i dont condone illegal program sharing tho haha

MzI

[spyykko]

i'm looking for an easy to work with and most importantly free program, that i could use to do body and headstock designs. drawing freehand isn't working out too well for me and don't even get me started on microsofts paint. so do you guys know of any good ones(not the line 6 one)?

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First question, do you want to do only 2 dimensional outline drawings or 3d models?

There are plenty of free or cheap 2D CAD softwares. Only problem is that they are normally designed for doing mechanical designing or contruction / architectual planning. Therefore softwares have a lot of tools for making straight lines and circles, but free form tools, which are quite necessary for guitar designing, are quite poor. I've heard some good comments about TurboCad (available at www.guitarbuild.com)

3D makes things a lot more complicated. I've never seen free 3D CAD software, at least not one which can be used for some real work. Even the commercial 3D cad modellers are quite limited (or way too difficult to use) when making difficult shapes, like a carved top guitar body.

I agree with MzI, in my work as a mechanical designer, and also when fooling around with guitar design in my spare time I always do sketches wit pen and paper first. Computer somehow kills your creativity and you end up doing designs which are easily made with your software, not the ones you really tried to make.