Drawing Up A Guitar On Autocad

[gtrplyr]

Alright so I just installed AutoCAD on my computer. I'm not any good with this at all but my dad does it for a living and I wanted to draw a full scale of the guitar I want to build. Is there a website that does this kind of thing? I dont know how to start

[ihocky2]

If your dad does it for a living, I would take to him first. If all you are looking for is how to draw one up full scale, that should be no problem for your dad.

[Metalhead28]

I used to use AutoCAD extensively, I use a different software now but I still have A-CAD, so I may be able to help you here and there if you can't figure something out.

Best thing to do would be to complete a few tutorials. There will be some in the manual or I'm sure you can find some online.

[gtrplyr]

Well first off I need to know demensions and stuff like that. I'm hoping to make a 3d model of the guitar I want.

[j. pierce]

I've been doing 2d mockups of my designs in Inkscape for a little while now. The first place I stop at is here:

http://www.fretfind.ekips.org/

I use the "Fretfind 2D" program online there - put in a handful of measurements, and outputs an SVG, PNG, PDF, or DXF file of your strings, fretboard edges and fret locations. This is the important stuff you should be designing your guitar around anyways (scale length and but and bridge spread and such) so having this to start with is always nice for me. I don't know how much would apply to 3d modeling, but I find it helpful.

[ToneMonkey]

I used to use AutoCAD everyday. My personal advice would be that if your trying to design it, then a pencil and paper is far superior. If your trying to draw it up for plans/templates then make sure that you have done it on paper first and take the dimensions. When I was doing this for a friend, I got him to draw round the guitar he wanted me to put on CAD. I then overlayed this on a grid that I printed out and took a dimension from each grid line. A bit of a drawn out process, but worked well for me.

Next (and probably final for a long time) axe I build, I will have all the templates laser cut from my autocad plans. I'vebeen thinking about what I need for months now

[Kammo1]

I've often wondered how this was done and one way is to scan an image of the guitar remembering to make sure it is a flat frontal view then importing it to Autocad and then using a trace element in the software and then removing the scanned image leaving the traced outline and then knowing a known measurement ie body width,length etc or what i would do is use the 2 3/16th neck pocket blow the whole image to this and the rest should be dimensioned exactly, hope this helps.

[ToneMonkey]

Also worth noting that if your using it to get templates cut, then often you can't use the "spline" command (big wavey line) and you have to use arc's.

[toneblind]

http://www.guitarbuild.com/modules/mydownloads/

http://www.projectguitar.com/ref/adv/dwg.htm

I'm a CAD professional too. The above links will give you something to look at, but the information is very basic.

As far as learning how to use AutoCAD. Back in the dark ages, (AutoCAD Release 11), I had to learn it well enough over a weekend to be able to draft retail store plans by the following Monday morning.

For me, I learned by drawing the stuff on my desk first. A coffee cup, an eraser, a calculator, a book...simple basic things that I could measure and recreate in 2d on CAD. Having a purpose for learning made it come easier. Do you have any manual drafting experience? It will help.

Added:

Also, import a bitmap of a guitar design into AutoCAD and put it on a locked, but visible layer. On a different layer, draw lines tracing the outline of the image on the bitmap. Don't worry about overall size, in CAD you can scale it up or down as needed later. After you have your outside perimeter drawn in straight line segments, you can snap in a bunch of 3 point circles, tangent to the perimeter, to create the smooth contours.

Edited February 13, 2009 by toneblind