Planning template design software

hi im looking for software to design my own templates for fan grills and side panels to print and cut any help would be great.

 

Any cad program would do. Also, most photo editors like Photoshop and Paint Shop Pro can handle it.

 

Not that it should matter but how are you going to get them cut? If your going to take them someplace to get them machined why not ask what software that company has that way you don't spend weeks designing it in Photoshop, only to have to redo it in AutoCAD because the company can't convert it.

 

He mentioned printing, so I'm assuming he would just glue the template and cut away with a dremel.

 

I really should read posts fully before replying

 

Sketchup in 2d mode would be good as well, probably. It's free! (I'm still learning, but it would be very easy to do an accurately measured layout, I think.)

I've seen a lot of people using coreldraw for their templates.

 

cheers guys thanks for the advise.

 

what about scale?

How do you make sure that the printout is to scale?

 

Mesure it?
Im shure if you mesure a few of the dimensions and they are what you put in it will be fine.

 

Sketchup has some cool tools for that, that allow you to accurately laydown measurements in various units (mm or inchs, etc) Also, there is a scale adjustment feature as well.

http://sketchup.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=36227

 

will definitely look into this.
the problem I see, is that the 2D image scope is not clear, as well as the zoom.

will have to see how sketchup handles this.

TKS