Speaking from Experience: Designing with EnRoute

WELCOME!

It is hard to believe that it was almost ten years ago I witnessed a CNC router in action for the very first time. I was fascinated and simply had to have one! Although I had been in the creative end of the three dimensional sign business for most of my life I didn't really know what I would do with one of these machines - but I just knew it could do fantastic stuff.

Along with the CNC router I discovered the wonderful material called Precision Board and the glues, primers and other companion products they offer. Since then we have gone through many tons of the material using it in most signs and projects we tackle. This journal will chronicle our many adventures both past, present and future. I'll talk from the perspective of someone who pushes these products to the creative limit on a daily basis. I'll be adding to the stories two or three times each week. -dan

Saturday, May 7, 2016

Designing with EnRoute

Almost any time I need to design something in scale EnRoute is my program of choice. The program can handle large scales without difficulty. I've designed entire theme parks using it. Currently we are in the preliminary stages of designing a new project. It will have many facets but the theme is an enchanted garden. To create the illusion of shrinking our guests to the size of fairies we'll build everything six times normal scale. One of the features will be a wheelbarrow. I designed the components of the wheelbarrow to scale using EnRoute. The figure and ground profilewas drawn with the new freehand drawing tool in the new version 6 of the software.

I then imported the drawing into PhotoShop where I manipulated the images to create a rough perspective view of the feature.

I then drew a new concept drawing using this as reference.