Seeking design program with real world scaling

**Matthewexeter** · November 13th, 2012

Hello, I apologize for my noob style question.
I am seeking a design program that is not too difficult to pick up. That also has real world scaling, such as inches and centimeters etc.
I intend to use it for garden design, it does not matter if it was designed for that purpose.
I have no cad experience so something with plenty of tutorials, or that is not to complex to use would suffice.
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated, I do not like to use wine or pay for things as for now I am poor.
Thanks

**GreatDanton** · November 13th, 2012

Are you looking for 2D drawing program or 3D?

**coldraven** · November 13th, 2012

I have Sketchup running in a virtual install of Windows XP. It does real world dimensions, metric or imperial.
I think it used to run in wine but you say that you don't want it, it's a shame because Sketchup would be ideal for garden design.

**GreatDanton** · November 13th, 2012

You can run Google Sketchup in Wine and it's working 100%. I have tested it and everything works out of the box.

However if you are looking for 2D drawing program I would go with Draft Sight which is free and very similar to AutoCad.

Regards.

**Matthewexeter** · November 15th, 2012

Well I will look at sketchup, I have just installed wine for something else.
I am having some teething problems though, I may come back to this thread soon. Thankyou for your replies

**coldraven** · November 15th, 2012

Re: Sketchup
If you go to the 3D warehouse you can see many examples like this one:
http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehou...2a&prevstart=0
Click on the 3D button and you can rotate the image.

Try out the tutorials - start by downloading the model from here:
http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehou...74&prevstart=0

**Matthewexeter** · November 15th, 2012

I tried installing sketchup under wine.
It came up with an error saying I require at least windows service pack two, where would I find this, or is it wiser to open another newbie thread as its more wine specific?

**Hylas de Niall** · November 15th, 2012

Why not just use inkscape?

**ofnuts** · November 18th, 2012

When my only tool is Gimp, all my problems look like bitmap images...

So, I once did the floor map of an apartment in Gimp, with layers for all the furniture, and used the required print definition so that I could measure things directly on the picture (Gimp gave me cm which I converted to meters...).