Survey Results!!! Furniture Design Software Feature Ideas…
We have completed our user survey for Version 3.0 features to be added to SketchList 3D furniture design software. The rankings of users have been blended with the input of the programmers to come up with this attack plan. The features in rough order of work are as follows:
If you are interested in the survey itself – the link is at the end of this post.
We have completed our user survey for Version 3 features to be added to SketchList 3D. The rankings of users have been blended with the input of the programmers to come up with this attack plan.
The features in rough order of work are as follows:
| Performance improvement. |
| Allowing Relative Locations Between Assemblies. |
| Rotate a board. |
| Rotate Drawers and Doors. |
| Rotate and entire assembly. |
| Stretch and Shrink assemblies. |
| Automatically change standard objects to given size. |
| Merge Two Assemblies into one. |
| Clone and Mirror an Assembly. |
| Show in which projects a material is used. |
| Change all materials in an assembly. |
| Dimensioning – include angles and hole diameters. |
| Improve Slanting functionality – move to assembly level. |
| Print and / or Export all spreadsheets. |
This list is the best guess estimate of what will be in Version 3.0. The expectation is that the release will be completed by the end of 2012.
One exciting idea we are following is that of incremental release. The idea is to make a feature such as “rotate assembly” available as soon as it is ready (including testing by QA) rather than wait until the all of the Version 3 work is finished. This way users will benefit by having valuable features sooner.
As you might have guessed by the amount and scope of features being added, Version 3 will be a paid for upgrade – although the exact amounts are still not determined. As I mentioned several times the special price offer for SketchList 3D ends on May 1st. At the new (higher) price you will have the option to choose to run either Version 2.1 or the incremental development of Version 3.0. The trade-off is that V2.1 may be more stable but certainly V3.0 will have more capabilities. You cannot use both since there will be changes in the basic database structures in V3.0 Of course V2.1 projects will be upgradable to V3.0.
One item left off the list of features is support for CNC or DWG files. We had a few users request these but on followup no one was interested in providing test assistance. Since I have no CAD programs or CNC machines (I wish I had a CNC machine in my shop!) I am hard pressed to develop the feature without test support from users.
Thank you for your input to this process. If there is a feature we missed or you have some comment, as always, send me an email.
David Rozewski
My woodworking love started in 6th grade in school shop class. I have a BS in Industrial Technology and an MBA. At my first job, I computerized a production accounting system – the results were positive, and I loved the challenges. I left the corporate world to begin woodworking full time and one of my first decisions was to use CAD for my designs. I found that CAD did not meet all my needs. I wrote a specification of what I wanted and turned it into a prototype. SketchList 3D incorporated in 2007. We completed programming and launched. Today thousands of woodworkers use SketchList 3D.
