Design software

mothercoder · Jan 7, 2017

Has anyone used design software to design their build? I just came across Sports Mobile DYO Studio http://sportsmobiledyo.com/dyo/ which has some typical van floor plans and components you can drop into place. Most of the components are their own products but they do offer generic items that you can apparently resize based on what you are working with. I have not messed around with it yet but it looks like it has potential. Any other design software that I can check out? I would love something that is two dimensional so I can look at it from other angles. Even better, something that I can add personal color and design to. Guess my geeky techie side is coming out.

Surly Biker · Jan 7, 2017

A lot of people use GoogleSketchup. It's free, I never managed to get over the initial learning curve and get comfortable with it. You can view your design both 2D and 3D. I hang at the Sprinter and/or Transit forums and you can see lots of examples there.

There are many CAD programs available, but again they have a pretty steep learning curve.

There are some examples of layouts on this cite using a spreadsheet. Simply make a grid, and assign a length (e.g. 1") to each square. This is easy way for a 2D view.

Ballenxj · Jan 8, 2017

Surly Biker said:
There are many CAD programs available, but again they have a pretty steep learning curve.

Not to mention steeply priced as well.

BradKW · Jan 8, 2017

I would suggest Sketchup. I downloaded it for free and it took about 3 attempts before I was able to get results I wanted. First couple hours I spent struggling with the very basics, but there's a lot of youtube instructional videos out there. I found the program to be very helpful in being able to visualize my layout...

[img=300x400]http://i465.photobucket.com/albums/...rad_Bleakley/Box Layout_zpsvzhnmgrc.jpg[/img]

mothercoder · Jan 9, 2017

Sketchup looks interesting. I'm going to give that a try. Well, as soon as I have my van and know what dimensions I'm working with.

Joseph_Grey · Jan 11, 2017

Sketchup isn't bad but if you really want to do something nice, I would suggest Blender. There are a lot of youtube tutorials on how to run it. The thing though I really like about it is you can download files other people have done and work from those. I found and downloaded a 3D van file, then I was able to do some building inside of that. I ended up sort of scrapping that work because I need to plan for an extended van, not a standard. I am not quite ready to start the 3D plan of the extended yet.

--joe