Official Luthiers Forum!

I design the ukes that I build. I do some decent drawings and precise and accurate templates. I do not produce anything that I could/would hand off to another builder as "plans".

Is there a relatively inexpensive way that this can be done? I've played with CAD and am interested, but it's not happening soon.

I need a set of soprano uke plans drawn for my class beginning in August.

hoosierukes38840.713912037

Typical guitar plans have 16hrs cad drawing time I would guess that a uke would be a third less so say 11-12 hours drawing time. maybe less PM me if really interested in having them done

Here is some industry standard info. The national average for cad drafting services is $47.50/per hour for non-design work meaning the drafter is coping your drawings into cad, and $175.00 for design work meaning they work the design as in determining the required dimensions and shapes of components to meet the specs. Now these are the rate a commercial Drafting firm or engineering firm will charge. It includes their overhead and profit margins. Most independent draftsmen in our area are charging $35.00/ per hour for non-design and $120.00 for design work. Now the sad truth about the industry in our area anyway. In our area a first thru fifth year cad drafter is getting paid a hourly rate at somewhere between $7.50-$10.00 per hour. This has very little to do with their skill. But rather the fact that our area is flooded with both new cad drafters straight out of Jr. College cad classes and a wealth very experienced cad drafters and designers. left over from the bust days of the Oil and Gas industry, just a couple years back.MichaelP38840.6478935185

Geoff, are you looking for a draftsman? Or are you looking for less expensive drawing software?

If it's the latter I can highly recommend CorelDraw. It's not expensive, it's easy to learn and you can achieve some fairly sophisticated results.

Any version from Corel 8.0 will do what you need.

Here's a headstock detail from one of my designs:

_________________
D..

Geoff,
I do all my drawings in Adobe Illustrator. They're perfect for everyting I
need and can be imported into most CAD programs, should you ever
want to. The files are very small, can be output at any Kinko's or
storefront printer with a big enough laser or inkjet printer. I'll do the set
of plans for you at no charge and send you the file and a printed copy. I'll
even toss in a set of plans for a cherry/adi concert uke I just finished that
has a killer sound.
Craig S.

your killing me just kidding That is a very nice offer Craig

And, a very nice uke!!!