The Framers Forum

Having a very visual brain I'm the first to admit I'm not good with numbers. I have a nasty habit of reading them and then my brain transposes them. So.. I then write them down or put them onto a piece of equipment (as the famous Morcombe and Wise scene says) with all the right numbers just not necessarily in the right order. This makes me check and recheck figures constantly very tiring and often makes me more confused.

I was wondering if anyone uses a software apart from those with a cmc cutter that allows you to play with shapes,layouts and spacing when planning a multiple aperture mount? My worst nightmare! I like to plan it and have no problem visually with a layout if I have the items to hand but converting that to measurements is different. I'd love to input shapes and then play around with their spacing to get the best result.
So the question is does anyone know of a software at a reasonalble price that would allow me to do this? Would it be the same kind that cmc machines use?

Why not cut the shapes out of paper and shuffle then about on a board? Once you have a pleasing arrangement
you can take measurements directly off it.

You can do it with software, but maybe that's overcooking the issue. Far quicker doing it non-virtual.

Thank you I could give that a go. I just wanted to be a bit more 21st century

Just draw each shape on it's own layer in Photoshop, then you can move it around, but by the time you have done all that, you might as well cut out the shapes in paper as prospero has already said

The advantage of photoshop / indesign / illustrator (as well as their less expensive cousins from https://affinity.serif.com/en-gb/photo/) is that you can drop pictures of the pictures in place. Once you're used to using them, it is way faster than shuffling cut paper, and you can keep a record of the layout for future orders.

You might want to take a look at Inkscape. It has all the features of Illustrator but being open source is free. You will be pleasantly surprised.

https://inkscape.org/