Our Plans for Design Intuition®
What Can I Do with Design Intuition®, Now and Later?
Our mission
Our mission is to explore ways to reduce to some "reasonable minimum," the overhead time involved in going from idea to completed design and project cost estimate, through affordable software that is of high quality and joy-of-use (even for the computer or woodworking novice), with an unusually small learning curve and high-quality, highly responsive technical support.
This reduction in time translates into significant money saved, so our incidental goal is to save you a lot of money, time, aggravation and tedium.
Can this "reasonable minimum" be quantified? Maybe. I think it's possible to reduce the work involved from six hours per small project down to something like half an hour, perhaps less.
How do you do high quality at an affordable price? Customer input, careful thinking and planning, hard work all guided by the enjoyment of design.
What can Design Intuition® do now?
Version 1.5 of Design Intuition® is aimed primarily at cabinetmaking. It can take on some furniture and remodeling design projects.
Because it isn't able to orient pieces at angles nor represent shapes other than blocks and cylinders, it's not yet a full-on remodeling and furniture-making design program. However, ...
We're not done, yet
Into our next version, we will add free rotation, improved printer support, improved Repeaters, improved user interface for measurement units and metric support. Free rotation will allow you to tackle roofing, 45 degree cabinet fronts, angled legs. It doesn't complete the feature set I have in mind for remodeling projects, but it gets a lot closer. This version will also include some speed enhancements, allowing you to tackle projects with more complexity.
After that, we will add shapes with arbitrary cross sections. Crown molding is something I get asked about a lot, and falls into this category. Cathedral windows (windows which have an arched top) are another example of what will be possible. Ship lap, tongue and groove, ogee, triangular tables, polygons -- these are the kinds of things that you are requesting. I plan to support all of them in one fashion or another.
CAVEAT: I may not be able to provide the ability to perform arbitrary cross sections to more than one dimension at a time. For example, table legs tapered on all four sides -- such tapering may limited to only two sides. I promise you that I'll do my best, though.
Our plans beyond this are still fuzzy
We do intend to add what I'd like to call The Joinery Toolkit. I think it is unwise at this point to mention many details. Not because I'm afraid another CAD company may steal my idea. Rather because I take seriously any committments I make, here on this website. I can say that my goal is to dramatically improve how joinery is incorporated into designs. For example, miters, mortises and tenons, dovetails, dadoes.
Other features I'm not quite ready to promise, but do hope to tackle, include wood turning, materials database, exploded views.
Anything more up your sleeve?
One must, of course, be careful when making detailed promises about developments that are several years away. I do want to tackle such things as file exporting and importing, textures, cost estimating, CNC machine control, load bearing computations, real construction operations (eg, door and window placement, including headers, cripples, jack studs, sill plates, etc.), and other significant problems in the woodworking domain. I intend that GizmoLab be strongly customer-driven, so I'm leaving a lot of room for comments and suggestions that haven't yet been written and sent to me.
Some of this may make it into version two.
Why should I consider buying a version that doesn't yet exist?
Purchasing now helps us by helping to fund a startup company and gives us your vote of confidence. It helps you too: By the time subsequent versions are out, their "early bird" pricing will no longer be available -- their prices will be higher. Upgrade prices will be higher, too. So, purchasing early does two good things: (a) saves you money and (b) it gives me extra revenue and a vote of confidence.
What will your upgrade prices be?
I'm not ready to specify it. I intend to keep the upgrade cost (from one version to the next) under $100, probably well under. I've always been a bit disturbed and put off by the large upgrade costs of some of the more well-established professional-grade software packages. You, too, no doubt.
Why does it take so long?
Each new version of Design Intuition takes about one-and-a-half to two years to develop. Within that time frame, I make free updates available as a way to introduce new features. Each update takes between one and eight months to complete.
Adding features is easier than adding features that are also intuitive and enjoyable. I'm taking a lot of extra time to create a product that even people who don't particularly like computers can use. I realize that waiting for a desired feature is not much fun. I do hope that the results will be worth waiting for.
Regarding Your Lifetime License, How Long Is This Lifetime?
The "lifetime" in the lifetime license refers to the lifetime of Design Intuition. I can see this easily being fifteen or twenty years, but I don't limit it to that. Frankly, I don't know. However, for everyone who purchases a lifetime license, I make the following promise: Every feature added to Design Intuition (and any future incarnation) will be a free upgrade.
Will you keep your promise?
Yes, with a mild proviso. My promise is that I will deliver everything described on this page or come very close. It's a lot of work, and I'm loving it, but it's a lot of work. I'm giving myself a bit of wiggle room to allow these goals to be influenced by customer feedback. I want to be honest up front that I'll be making decisions as I go and keep everyone posted. I'll be updating this page from time to time, perhaps regularly.
A thought about privacy and creativity: Publishing development plans is something even open source projects tend to avoid. The reasons have to do with privacy. People need privacy in order to create freely. Creating freely is a good and wonderful thing. Many geniuses have preferred it. And you've heard the adage about too many cooks. Privacy is so important to human beings that we devoted to it an entire amendment of the constitution (global readers, please excuse my nationalism). So, I'm going out on a limb a bit with this web page. For the sake of honesty and trust, I'm giving up some of that precious privacy. Frankly, it feels deeply unsettling -- my time is now committed, to every purchasing licensee. It feels good, though, because commitment's an amazing and very creative thing. In a way, this web page is an experiment with commitment, attempting to answer the question: Can a company thrive because or despite that it semi-publicly reveals its plans? So far, Design intuition is being well received, for which I am deeply grateful. Working on it is a good and creative thing.
Dream it up...
