Why we are building Maqet
“Doesn’t that exist already?”
When you tell someone you’re working on a new software product, that’s often the first question you’ll get. And in most cases, the answer is “Yes, but…” Maqet is no different. There are plenty of design tools out there that are used by woodworkers. But they all have their issues, and we think we can do better.
But first, let’s rewind. How did we get here?
My woodworking journey
I want to tell you how I got started as a woodworker. Not because I expect you to find my life especially interesting, but because it may help you see for whom we are building Maqet.
I’ve been a software developer from the day I got my first computer from my parents. (Actually, from the day I got my first graphical calculator, but that’s another story.) I still remember the rush from realizing that I could build basically anything that I could come up with. It was like a socially accepted version of playing with Legos (or in my case, K’nex).
Fast forward some 10 years. I’d been working as a developer for a while, and while I still enjoyed it, the instant gratification I got from building software had worn off somewhat. I was looking for something new to scratch that itch. I had been thinking about trying to build something with wood for a long time, but unlike building software, it seemed like you needed a lot of stuff to get started. So I kept putting it off.
Until finally, my girlfriend organized a woodworking workshop with friends for my birthday. I was hooked. It turned out you didn’t need that many tools after all, and I actually enjoyed finding ways to make big things on a small budget. Since then, I’ve replaced almost all my furniture with pieces that I designed and built myself. I’ve even considered becoming a woodworker fulltime, but decided against it for several reasons (for now).
When I got a new K’nex set as a kid, I usually spent the first few hours making something from the booklet, and the next months inventing models of my own. I never liked executing a building plan that someone else made. Same story with furniture: from the first piece that I built I wanted to design it myself. I started out with some pen-and-paper sketches, but they didn’t give me enough confidence to start building. I wasn’t sure that what I was drawing made sense technically in three dimensions, and I couldn’t get a good feel for what the finished piece would look like. So I started looking around for software that could help me.
The landscape of woodworking design software today
Initially I wanted something that would be easy to learn without a background in CAD software, and I wanted it to be affordable. Like most people in my situation, I quickly ended up using SketchUp. SketchUp gets some bad rap from people who are using “real” CAD software, but I think a lot of that is undeserved. Just like in the workshop, your tool has to match the job you’re trying to do, and SketchUp is better at some jobs than others.
Where SketchUp shines is the ideation phase: I don’t know of any other tool where you can try out different layouts and design details more quickly. (Some people can do this all on paper, but that’s not me.) Going from your first draft to a fully detailed design that’s ready to build is doable, but a bit more cumbersome. Especially for larger projects there is a lot of repetitive and error-prone clicking and dragging around. And if you need to change a dimension somewhere, you’re in for 10 minutes of resizing every single board and hoping you didn’t miss one.
Parametric CAD
That’s a problem parametric CAD software tries to solve. You fully specify your design in parameters and relationships, and when you change a parameter like the thickness of your boards or the height of your cabinet, the whole design recalculates and remains valid. This can be a huge timesaver when you are often building similar designs like kitchen cabinets. But in my experience, when you are building something different every time, the investment just isn’t worth it. Also, the power of these tools comes with a steep learning curve, and I see tons of people never making the switch even if they could benefit from it.
Another step that can be tricky with many of the existing solutions is the handover to the workshop. Getting a list of parts sorted by material, optimizing the cuts on a sheet of plywood, sending files to a CNC,… These are operations that most software was not designed to do, and as a result you have to rely on add-ons or external tools. You can find ways to make it work, but it adds friction to the process.
How Maqet is different
Our goal is to make 3D design software that is both intuitive and powerful, and handles every step from brainstorming to handover. You’ll be able to get started in minutes with minimal guidance, and you won’t have to look through old forum posts for some add-on that does what you want, because Maqet will already do it just the way you like. And that’s only possible because we are building it from the ground up with only woodworking in mind.
We still have a long way to go before we can accomplish that goal. But step by step, we believe we can make designing woodworking projects so much easier, faster and enjoyable than it is today. In a future post, we’ll go into more detail about how we’re going to do that.