Deck Building with AutoCAD

Last December I helped my friend Dave build his deck. We only got as far as the frame goes, but we both believe it was a lot for only 2 guys with no previous experience on building decks. The process went very smooth simply because we used AutoCAD.

Dave had a very nice AutoCAD plan of the deck and we measured every single piece of wood we had to cut. Knowing every piece's length, we then marked all the places where the boards would meet each other and we just nailed them one after another. It may seem easy for the savvy deck builder, but were newbies and we were handling 25' long planks with all the joints at 45 degree angles. To add to the confusion, Dave only knows how to measure things in Feet and Inches! It takes me a while to think in feet and inches.

Anyway, it was a very fun project, and a very good workout too. Here are the time lapse pictures.

I'll try to post step by step DWFs later.