CAD means Computer Aided Design, or sometimes Drafting.

Composite Joinery provide this CAD process as part of our service when we undertake to design your project for you. Our designs are of course based on your particular application, and material choice and the cost of the design is included.

The design drawings below are representative of a project that has just been started, the design and manufacturing process can be followed by the updates that will appear on this site. ‘Sun Gate’

There are two main types of CAD, 2D and 3D.  We use 3D CAD to design and visually construct your project. Either one is used to draft a design. The purpose of this process is to determine the best methods of how to make the individual components that when assembled create a finished project. Simultaneously this process communicates the way something is made. Drawings are 2D (like a pencil and paper picture), but with 3D CAD we construct a 3D model of an object that you can look at from any angle. With either type, some advantages, as compared to pencil & paper, are:

  • accuracy, computer lines are true, circles, elipses and all shapes are accurate with exact dimensions
  • dimensions can be easily changed to imperial or metric
  • clarity, the image can be ‘zoomed’, detail enhanced, viewed from any side or rotated about any axis
  • the process is clean and easily adaptable
  • the virtual object, your project, can be rendered in any style of material choice or colour
  • the background to the project can be adjusted to suit your internal decor
  • achieve a visual representation of suitablity of the project without the expense of construction

For 3D especially, the CAD model  serves as a prototype, since you create virtual 3D objects within  the software. Components of the project can be assembled at all stages of the design to determine their functionality and aesthetics, should the result not be quite as expected then it is relatively simple to re-model the offending component. Once the design is completed 2D drawings are created, from which the project is constructed.

DIY

You may wish to construct the project yourself. This is quite possible since we can provide you with the detailed 2D drawings to work from, these drawings are scaled and A3 (larger sizes are available at additional cost) In these cases you will be charged a nominal fee for the design process which will be based on the complexity of your project. Alternativley you may find a project that suits your requirements in our catalogue (to be published to this site).