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Hi everyone. I'm not very pc friendly so using cad to design guitars is far too long and painstaking for me not to mention I think my old desktop would melt if I tried to load autocad or similar. my iPad however can do all that jazz so...

I was wondering if any of you use an app that is suitable for actually designing and drawing guitars? If it's viable I'd learn to use it and would be great for the train and stuff. Anyone do this?

This is what you want, bro.

http://liutaiomottola.com/formulae/gthang.htm

You'll have to use your PC, I beleive. It's perfect for guitar designing though. It's not without its limitations, but translates well to a printed drawing that can be used to make molds, etc.

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sweat the small stuff.

I agree with what Heath said above. G-Thang is pretty handy for trying out different proportions on the guitar. I also found a pic program called Big Print that allows you to accurately print the Gthang file onto several sheets of paper for transferring the shape to molds...

For playing around these programs are free and pretty easy to use.

Again, PC based, but this Jon Sevy program is easy to use and won't take much space even on an old desk top. Needs Java.

http://edge.cs.drexel.edu/GICL/people/sevy/luthierie/software/software.html

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Trevor Gore, Luthier. Australian hand made acoustic guitars, classical guitars; custom guitar design and build; guitar design instruction.

http://www.goreguitars.com.au

Not the most intuitive -- but G-Thing is pretty cool. I am sure it will run on a low speed PC

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Ken Cierp

http://www.kennethmichaelguitars.com/

Thanks guys.

Wow. I spent so much time working on an original design. This would have been a god send! I'm trying to see if I can make it run on my Mac using CrossOver.

you might try Delta cad, its an easy to use cad program and inexpensive

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MK5acoustics.com

+1 for G-Thang. It's easy to use and fun to play with. I made the design for the guitars I'm currently building using it. You can export the design as a DFX file which can be recognized by CAD-type programs. I imported the DFX file of my design into Google's Sketchup program (free) which allowed me to save the file as a pdf at full scale. That was great because I took the file on a flash drive to an architctural printing shop and got the plan printed at 1:1 scale on a single sheet. I think it cost about $12.00 for four copies.

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Once in a while you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right - Robert Hunter

G-Thang is nice, My current bodies were designed using it. It has some quirks which make it take a little while to get the hang of. Once you figure it out, you can really dial in the shape you want. It is not a program for comprehensive plans though. It is great for designing the shape and even the string paths and fretboard layout but you won't be able to use it to design other parts. It would really be nice if it had a feature to manipulate bracing schemes without drawing, erasing and redrawing once you have printed out your outline.

J De Rocher, I tried to export to google sketchups but couln't figure out how to make it work. I really wanted to be able to save as a .pdf. Did I miss something obvious?

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Bryan Bear PMoMC

Take care of your feet, and your feet will take care of you.

Here is my drawing app. It uses the latest OS, v.1956.04.08
Requires minimal computing ability.

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My memory is so good, sometimes I remember things that never happened.

It's been a while since I last did that so I took a shot at it just now. I opened sketchup and selected IMPORT from under the FILE menu. That opened a window showing the DXF files I made in G-Thang. I selected one and it opened in sketchup. It places the 2-D drawing on the x-y plane of a 3-D space viewed from off axis. To view the plan from straight overhead, I went to the CAMERA menu, down to STANDARD VIEWS, and selected TOP. That rotates the space so that the x-y plane is in the plane of the computer monitor. To convert it to pdf, I went to FILE, EXPORT, 2D GRAPHIC which allows you to save it as a pdf. The cool thing is that the pdf that is generated preserves all the dimensions you specified when you made the design in G-Thang so it prints at the correct final dimensions on a big printer. I hope this helps.

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Once in a while you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right - Robert Hunter

James, did you have any luck getting G Thang to work on your Mac?

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sweat the small stuff.

Yeah, I used to have one like that too and it crashed all the time. Then one day my wife bought me a pencil sharpener!

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Jim Watts
http://jameswattsguitars.com

I still use an acoustic drawing board too. It makes it a lot easier to produce full sized drawings. Concepts are done on a sketch pad.

I'm on a computer with CAD all day at work. Last thing I would want to do at home is more CAD.

That said, iDesign looks kind of interesting, but I don't own an iPad and have no direct experience.

Thanks Jay! It has been a while since I tried this too. I rember I was unable to either import the .dfx file or maybe see it to import. I'm wondering if I had a different version of sketchups. I don't have that computer anymore so i'll have to download it again and try your instructions.

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Bryan Bear PMoMC

Take care of your feet, and your feet will take care of you.