How to Design Your Own Furniture With Computer Programs

Designing your own furniture is an enjoyable activity that you can do with computer aided design programs. While those new to furniture design may find it difficult to draw their initial pieces, they can find help in the following guidelines. First, get acquainted with your CAD program. Learn to navigate 3D space with the basic operations of panning, zooming and orbiting, which allow you to inspect your design; you'll find your designing experience more productive the better you can visualize a piece of furniture in 3D. Traditional sketching with pencil and paper is an excellent way of achieving this visualization.

Instructions

1

Sketch a design for your furniture on a plain piece of paper. Do not worry if your drawing skills are not well developed. Sketching will help you see new possibilities for your furniture. An effective approach to this step is to sketch a design from a catalog or existing piece of furniture.

2

Draw the separate blocks that comprise your design on another piece of paper. For example, if you're designing a chair, clearly outline blocks for the arms, the back and the seat. Use simple, box-like shapes when making these blocks.

3

Open your CAD program, select its left or right view and select its line-drawing tool. (For readability, the remaining instructions will assume you're using left view)

4

Draw the left face of each block in your sketch. Ensure the block's shape is closed, which means that its last edge connects to the first edge. This action will allow you to convert the block's 2D shape into a 3D object.

5

Run your program's extrusion tool on each block's shape that you drew in Step 4. This will convert each shape to a 3D object whose depth you will adjust in the next step.

6

Select your program's perspective view, then adjust the extrusion amount of each block until the block matches the size you specified in your sketch.

7

Position, using your program's translation or move tool, each completed block so that it fits with the other blocks, according to your sketch. For the chair example mentioned previously, align the rear face of the arm blocks with the front face of the chair's back block.

8

Open your program's material editor and use its tools to load or create the textures needed by each piece (e.g., arm, seat, back) in your design. For the chair example, load the wood texture from your program's material library. As material editors vary widely from program to program, consult your program's documentation for detailed instructions on loading or creating textures.

9

Complete your design by applying to each block the texture you made for the block in the previous step.