It's been difficult to find as much time to spend in our garden this year as we would have liked, but this week, @CO and I finally planted our tomatoes. The indeterminant variety that we planted calls for some sort of support system to help them grow as tall as they inevitably will. So, we built a "Mega Trellis" (or a mini pergola 😉)!
In the past, I would have turned to SOLIDWORKS Weldments to quickly model something like this, but this time around, I thought I'd try to make this using MakeByMe - a free, web-based design tool from Dassault Systemes that's purpose-built for designing furniture and structures like this trellis/pergola.
It was really easy to use, and follows a workflow that mimics what you'd do in the real world. You start by "shopping" for the material you need by browsing through a library of materials like you'd find a home center.
Then you add pieces to your project and cut them to size if necessary. When you drag pieces around the screen, they automatically snap to logical positions. This makes it really easy to quickly lay out your project.
At any point while designing, you can check out the Materials List, the Cut List, the Step-by-Step Instructions, or the list of Tools you'll need for the project.
Check out the trellis design I shared in HomeByMe:
...and check out the full video to see how the design and build came together.
