What do you think of using this for non-industrial use?

ellie_naill

Ok, maybe you will think I am nuts, but I started on Cad systems back in the mid 80's, HP ME10 to be exact, as a printed circuit  and electro-mechanical designer. I also used to use it for quilt designs way back then.  Now days I am an old quilter and sewer who does a lot of designing and teaching. I have never found an affordable CAD system I have liked for this purpose. Do you think it will work? The things I would like to do is designs with dimensions, imported pictures and fabric scans. Kind of like a cross between technical and publication for classes. Now I am using Word.. and it is really labor intensive to get what I want.
Side bar, I live in the sticks.. my internet is a Verizon Jet Pack.. limited data plans.. will this eat up my 15G data plan too fast?

adamohern

My initial reaction was that a Mechanical CAD system like Onshape would probably not be ideal for designing weave patterns. But when I got to the sentence about using Word to do it... yikes. Yes, Onshape (or just about anything) would be better than that!

So yes, you could use Onshape for that. Is it the best tool available? Probably not at the moment. But whenever FeatureScript becomes available I imagine someone could create some tools that would suit that purpose nicely.

traveler_hauptman

@ellie_naill You might take a look at inkscape. You will be able to manipulate pics and scans, draw geometry and size it accurately. You can draw complex shapes and should be able to output formats for laser cutting if you are experimenting with that in your quilt designs. There's a little bit of a learning curve but well worth the speed at which you will be able to work vs Word.

adamohern

That would be a much better solution than a Mechanical CAD system like Onshape. Inkscape is like a free Adobe Illustrator, so if you have access to Illustrator, that would work as well.