I’m starting to get more interested in building more complex things, but am unsure how to plan out my ideas. Is there a good source on drafting/planning designs? I honestly have no idea where to start.
If you are planning 3D designs, Fusion360 takes a bit of getting used to but is extremely powerful.
https://www.autodesk.com/products/fusion-360/
You can register for a free hobby license for the scaled down version, or a free educational license of the full version. It has good CAD capabilities and on the CAM side can generate g-code for 3D printing and CNC, or else allow you to export STL models direct to a slicer.
That sounds awesome. I’ve never used CAD software but I might as well start, and also I have access to a 3d printer, so I might as well learn something for that as well. I’ll give it a try!
CAD software is probably want you want to look at, I used FreeCAD for woodworking and floorplans some years ago, not sure how good it is for 3D printing/modeling since I regrettably haven’t gotten into either of them but I did get a lot of use out of it for 2D designs.
I’ve used sketchup in the past, and it works great, but for more recent projects I’ve moved over to blender.
I don’t go into crazy details for projects, so mainly I just need real world measurements and units, and the ability for my wife to be able to visualize the project as a whole. She usually designs everything and I just make it work.