What is SWOOD?
SWOOD is a CAD/CAM woodworking furniture design software that is integrated with SolidWorks. The program was created by the company EFICAD, with the intention of making it easier to design woodworking projects by providing specialized tools. It provides a fully customizable and workable 3D environment and parametric capabilities, where the job can be designed from start to finish.
It simplifies any carpentry job by streamlining panels and wood creation, creating production programs, documents and managing CNC machines, all within the SolidWorks woodworking interface. It can be used to develop bathrooms, furniture, kitchens, fitting out shops, equipment within vehicles and even yachts! The program is also divided into three sections, SWOOD Design, SWOOD CAM and SWOOD Nesting.
These fulfill different needs within the design to manufacture process of a woodworking project, for example the creation of a piece of furniture. SWOOD Design makes the designing and generation of the woodworking job much easier. It speeds up the design process with its many specialized tools. SWOOD CAM manages the CNC machines that are dedicated to woodworking and the technology that operates them. It allows the user to manufacture and machine parts, create specific programs to operate machines and generate reports from the project files. SWOOD Nesting is a bolt-on option to SWOOD CAM, and this allows you to optimize panel positioning on boards for CNC machines.
Why Choose SWOOD?
SWOOD is needed to deal with the inefficiencies in the woodworking and carpentry industry. The integration of SWOOD into SolidWorks is intended to increase efficiency at the design stage and then all of the way through to manufacture.
Even companies that are successful in their industry may have some inefficiencies within it’s workflow, a simple example of this is to use multiple software programs. SWOOD solves this problem by consolidating all of the software functionality into one program. Instead of designing the model in SketchUP, then 3D modeling it in AutoCAD and finally passing it onto the CNC team, the whole process is completed in one program.
To be fully trained in SWOOD Design, CAM and Nesting you must take a 4-day training course. If one is already familiar with SolidWorks, the interface in SWOOD is almost identical. It should also be noted that an active SolidWorks license is needed to run SWOOD.
Features
This allows thes design phase of these projects to be completed at a much faster pace and the overall timeline of the job becomes a lot shorter. To achieve this ease-of-use and speed, the software utilizes specialized features designed specifically to be used in SolidWorks for woodworking. These include but are not limited to:
- SWOODBox: Gives the user the chance to integrate their flare for design by allowing multiple designs to be created and edited in the workspace
- Parametric panel library
- Designing cabinets: Selecting cabinet frames and filling them with SWOODBoxes and connectors
- Material library: Decor and grain direction
- Customize CNC machine code
- Automatic worktable management
- Drag-and-drop library items
- Edge banding management
- Machining macros library
- Fully customizable production documents can be generated
- Optimized and automatic drilling
- Realistic rendering
Various Meanings of the Word Swood
What does Swood mean? Although the main focus of this article is to detail and explore the features and uses of the intuitive woodworking software that goes by the name of SWOOD, there are many other definitions to the word “Swood”. A few… interesting examples are as follows:
- It is used as a phrase in California that means, “cool” or “awesome”, as used by the popular YouTube “JonTron”. It is commonly used in conjunction with the Californian slang term “grommets”, which describes a surfer youth.
- Swood: A ghetto town filled with crackheads, wow.
- Some users on the internet seem to believe it simply means “soft wood”, which it does not!
- A common Californian phrase would be: “swood this, swood that”. The jury is still out on what this actually means, but one can imagine that it could have many applications.
- Swood.com is also a family-run car dealership in Batesville, Arkansas. Just in case you were wondering.
Have you used SWOOD before? If so, what specific woodworking project did you design? Are you now going to incorporate the word “swood” into your vocabulary? Let us know with a comment below!
