Looking for advice on making the layout for placement.

[Ratty]

Hi gang. I remember several conversations here about different programs you can use for making a computer map of your camp. On the Amtrakathon trip Jacque W. showed me hers with neat little tents, trucks and other useful icons. Alas, we were tired, (drunk), and she couldn't give me the name of her program. I welcome any suggestions. Thanks.

[Popeye]

Sketchup
And it's free Made by google, fairly easy and fun to use.
http://www.sketchup.com/download
templates at https://3dwarehouse.sketchup.com/search ... t=lc&hl=en
Tutorials at http://www.sketchup.com/learn

[Ratty]

Popeye, Thank you so much. I was just telling my husband that someone will come through for me. It's my first placement application and I want to make it easy for them. Now you've made it easy for me. Thanks.

[LowePro]

Sketchup is very fun and nice for layouts with 3D and built in models of cars, tents, even Domes.
I like OpenOffice Draw for a simple 2D layout with basic shapes and text, it's easier to make labels and a little more user friendly than Sketchup. It's also free.

[Popeye]

Ratty: You have helped many people by teaching us how to fabricate costumes. Glad I could return the favor.

[Elliot]

Sketchup, schmetzup. Graph paper on thumb-tack-board, foam-core-board cut-outs, crayons, pins, camera.

[LowePro]

Elliot, I love that method too,
one year we did both: we used Sketchup for our camp application but we had a printout and paper cutouts in the car. We got to the site (middle of dark dusty night), and things were of course not exactly as expected (different shape and orientation of our site, and neighbor's shower station was bordering where we had planned our kitchen). We used the cutouts to to make some on-the-fly modifications to the layout before we started pounding in stakes, it helped!

[Ratty]

Well guys. Thanks for the help. The downloads for Open office draw crashed my computer. My husband will eventually forgive me. He uninstalled it. I started on the graph paper method already. The learning curve was too steep on the Sketchup. Even the open office didn't seem worth the trouble to learn it. I only wish I had little cars and vans for my photo.

My dream job has always been to make dioramas for a living. This will be a 2D diorama. Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions. (A favorite book of mine.)

[Elliot]

asr9754.... Yup.

[Eric]

I only wish I had little cars and vans for my photo.

Taa-daa!
https://www.google.com/search?q=car+fro ... 15&bih=813

[Ratty]

Thanks Eric. Pictures are a much better idea. Captured from above those hot wheels wouldn't look as nice as this.

[Strata]

Google Draw is a free on the web drawing platform that's really easy to use. I do my own mini-camp layout in it annually so I'm not tossing stuff around at random when I set up, and can show any helpful peeps that materialize where to put things.

Example: https://docs.google.com/drawings/d/1WgS ... oiywI/edit

Each year I just use the handy "make a copy" feature and tweak what needs to be changed.

In Page Setup under the File menu, you can choose "Custom" and set an arbitrary size in inches, and it shows the graph squares for you for inch to foot planning. You can also insert images, so your pics will work there as well.

[Ratty]

Wow Strata!! That is an amazing feat of organization. My tent looks like a dust covered chicken coop. The shade structure is well organized because it's a common space. My camp mate's tent looks like a hotel suite. My van looks like the inside of a laundry basket. I thank you for showing me.

[Lip Bomb]

We love Sketchup. We use it for everything camp related.

[The Rat Lady]

I'm old school I use Paint.net. In the planning stages ,I use paper and repositionable double stick tape:)
it all works!
Don't forget your 12 ft wide fire road.

Rat Lady

[Ratty]

I seriously doubt I'll have a 12 foot wide 'fire road'. The entire space is 50 by 50 so I'm not required to have one. I planned to leave a driveway and work it out with the neighbors to make a communal fire road. (I see a lot of camps splitting the driveway between them.) I'm sure placement will explain the finer points if I get it all wrong. I have opened the communication already.

[trilobyte]

I'm moving this over to 'building camps & villages' since that's a better fit for general camp prep & organization threads (the year-specific boards are intended more for announcing and updating projects for that specific year).

No, you do not need to have a fire access road, unless your camp is large enough to need one. They are needed for larger camps and villages (think 200' or larger), since the hose on a fire truck can only reach approximately 200'. For the average camp that's more than enough to reach from a truck pulling up to a camp's address to any corner of the camp, but if the camp is big enough to have frontage on multiple streets the access road is needed in case the truck pulls up on the opposite side of where a fire is happening.

Placement recommends playing around with Sketchup, and it's pretty easy to use. Don't worry about not being a 3D wizard, simple cube and block shapes are all the detail that they are looking for. An even more basic way to go about it is to use a piece of graph paper and a pencil. Clearly mark your camp size, the structures, the name, and the frontage (all the info they ask you to include), then make sure that piece of graph paper is well lit and take a picture of it with your camera phone. As long as the image is clearly legible it should be okay (if your phone takes ginormous file size pictures, you can use a free site like imgur to resize).