Computer aided design software?

[darkling27]

Hey, I've been thinking of using computer software to draw my patterns on so that i can use them more than once. Has anyone got any recommendations?
It would be even more useful if this program has the option to send the pattern to a machine to cut it out. One day i may be able to afford one

 

[jigsue]

If you draw your patterns by hand and that works for you, why not just scan your patterns and save them to your computer.

A scanner is probably cheaper than many of the dedicated art packages.

For portraits and fretwork stuff and altering pics and existing patterns, I use Paint Shop Pr (Corel) and Photoshop (Adobe), but these were expensive, although I believe you can find early versions reasonably priced.

They also take time to learn, I have been using them for a lot of years, now for various graphic stuff, but still had to follow a tutorial and practice like mad in order to use them for pattern making. There are free tutorials, luckily, on some of the other scrollsaw forums.

Hope this helps

Sue

 

[Anonymous]

For simply drawiing patterns, I would say any vector drawing package will be fine.

The probelm with scanning in your hand-drawn images is that they will be bitmap rather than vector and so not easily edited.

I have used CorelDraw since 1991 (version 2 then, version 13 now) and it is fantastic for every kind of drawing and incredibly powerful. Also, there is a tool for converting scanned images into vector drawings.

If you are not sure of the difference between vector and bitmap (photo or scan etc.), the fundamental difference is:

Bitmap. Images represented by coloured pixels. I.e. each dot on the image (or screen) has a colour associated with it, and these together create an image. There is no concept of a circle or line etc., just coloured dots next to each other.

Vector. Each shape is geometric and defined by coordinates. e.g. a line has start and finish coordinates and joins these points together. A line (or other shape) is thus easily edited.

 

[alanjm]

I find coreldraw pretty handy and there is a web site scroller doing a series of video clips on how to use the basic functions on coreldraw at www.scrollsawworkshop.com
Rgds
Alanjm