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RWW 134 Planning Your Project Saw Cuts

5 comments
12 years ago
Videos

Knowing how many board feet to buy is one thing. Knowing what sizes of lumber to get and establishing a best and worst case scenario before you hit the lumber yard is best. There are a lot of tools out there that make cut lists and any of them will work too, but I walk through a simple exercise in SketchUp that will help you plan out what kinds of boards to get when you go to the lumber yard, then aid you further in the shop to get a good color and grain match.

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Dean

Shannon, I’m surprised that no one has replied yet. Thanks for the excellent discussion on planning our lumber purchases using SketchUp.

    Shannon

    Dean, it is possible that this tactic is old hat to many which I suppose is the case. I find it really helpful on small projects where I could possibly get the whole project from one board with proper management.

Kevin Anderson

Shannon there is a plug in for Scketchup called Cut list 4.1 this plug in does every thing you talk about in one step and gives you an itemized list and cut diagram in one step. Based on the components that you have in your model. See blog at loberjocks

http://lumberjocks.com/daltxguy/blog/5143

    Shannon

    I have used that in the past Kevin and I do not like automating this step. Placing my parts in the boards is a major part of obtaining the color and grain match (or mismatch) to realize my vision for the project. I find when I take the time to do this “manually” I am several steps further in my understanding of the build when I actually start to cut. It may be me, but I stopped using the plug in when I felt too removed from this step.