[SvdSinner]

Quite often, as I rough out designs in my head, I sketch out the mechanicals to help me visualize my mechanism. Let's call this my white-boarding phase of design.

Currently, I just do it on scratch paper or a whiteboard, which is pretty lame and ludite, but allows me to rapidly sketch/erase/tweak/redraw/etc, to try different ideas. Plus, when it's done, I have essentially nothing, unless I scan the sketches in as images. (In my world, if a document isn't electronic, it doesn't exist. I've long since gotten rid of anyplace ) Additionally, if I need something reasonably accurate to make measurements, hand sketches are worthless.

As a programmer by trade, often times I make graphical models from scratch, but that is time consuming and I have to re-invent the wheel every time I do it.

All full-blown CAD software I've used is too cumbersome to sketch rapidly enough to work well in the early design stages.

Are there any programs that work well for Sketching out designs?

• Something easy to use
• quick to sketches with
• Limited ability to accurately lay things out (but no requirement that things HAVE to be accurate for parts of the sketch I don't care about)
• Able to save/load sketches
• Basic functionality like having some basic shapes, and tweak them after adding them.
• Ability to measure length and angles as desired.

[ChrisW]

Have you tried this

Trimble SketchUp

[txcncman]

AutoCad used to have snap to grid function.

[BAMCNC.COM]

Google Sketchup is very fast, or... Do you have a tablet? You can buy a stylus and draw on a tablet, I use a Galaxy Tab .