CAD Software
I began using CAD software and things like 3D Studio back before there ever was a 3D Studio Max product (early '90s). Back then AutoDesk had a pretty tight hold on the CAD market and it doesn't look like things have changed.I have played with a number of simpler programs - AutoCAD is a bear to learn and for an occasional user it's a bear to work with in my opinion. There's a lot of power there and that's the problem. If you simply need to resize photo's you don't go out and learn photoshop. Likewise, I didn't want to put out the big bucks and attack the learning curve once again with AutoCAD simply to put together plans for a simple bed frame.
I've seen a lot of "Home Design" applications out there at places like Staple's, Fry's, and Best Buy - even a few that probably would have handled this particular need of mine. I don't know much about that software though, and rather than take a trip to Fry's, spend $40, and end up disappointed, I used my trusty friend Google and poked around at places like sourceforge and fresh meat looking for a free and hopefully relatively simple solution.
There is open source CAD
There are a number of open source CAD projects. Unfortunately for me, most of the projects as of January 2008 are immature. I can't say that I'd recommend any of them because I wasn't able to get any of them working on my machine (and I have a pretty standard, pretty beefed up computer).I might have spent more time finding something I could recommend and maybe shared my experience with getting one of those solutions to work, but as I was searching I found mention of a long-forgotten google project called SketchUp. SketchUp isn't like most google projects in that there is a paid version of SketchUp available and the paid version isn't cheap (~$450 US).
My experience with SketchUp
It took me about a day to get real familiar with the SketchUp interface. It took that long partially because I've been distracted with work and partially because it took me getting irritated doing things the hard way before I ran through the docs and tutorials to find short cuts for some things that I was trying to do.
SketchUp isn't CAD. It is a 3D drafting environment, though, with enough accuracy to use as a basis for design for simple things like furniture and some people do use it for more complex work.
All in all, my experience has been pretty smooth. The toolset is small and fairly intuitive. Working in 3D space was something I took to pretty easily even though it had been years since playing around with other software. A day to get going might seem pretty long for most software, but compared, say, with my 3D Studio Max experimentation, I'd have to say Google really hit the nail on the head with this one. The application is simple enough to play around with quickly, and powerful enough to be a very useful piece of software.
I do have a list of wishes for future enhancements, and if this was open source, I might just hack one or two of them out, but Google's shortsightedness in the licensing of this particular application makes that whole discussion moot.
What visitors have to say about Open Source CAD
