Gary Seiffer's Page

Hey Gary, thank you! I am CAD trained by trade, and I highly recommend Sketch Up. It's free. It's intuitive, and it is a 3D modeling program from the start. Each object you create is solid as soon as the lines connect and you can manipulate it as needed. There are quite a few tutorials online for it, and they should get you started with the process of getting comfortable with how it works. Beyond that, you will likely learn as you go. It has some quirks, every program I have used does...I find it so much faster than CAD (much, much) and not so tedious.
I am considering offering a brief online class for using that program for furniture design. I haven't decided for certain that I will, but if it's something you might be interested in, let me know and it may push me to get started on it.