EQ7 Tutorial Tuesday- deck design

I wanted to show a quick thing I used EQ7 for-

a deck design!

Hubby and I have been planning to build a new deck in the back yard and of course hubby has done most of the work of doing the foundation, the sided, cross beam supports etc. Now it’s all about the top visible part of the deck!

We’ve gone back and forth about how to lay out the boards because the deck is 17ft long and a board is 16ft! (or you can get 12ft boards too)

So we first thought of a picture frame idea, so that the middle part will be less than 16ft and then only requires one length of a board.

Here’s where I used EQ (he used his CAD program with his CNC router)

First I started with a horizontal strip layout

I made the strip style plain and had the width be 1/2” and the length be 15

(a board is a bit over 5.5” but I’m just visually playing with the “look” of it

then I “cloned” that ad added a bunch of rows (24) our deck will be 17×14, so leaving off 2” is like leaving off a 2 feet in real life, so the center is  15×12”

Now adding borders

one look is to add two horizontal borders

but then the outer horizontal board (border) is 17” (feet) and we didn’t want that unless there’s a seam

If I change that to vertical the outer board would be 16ft and work

originally we wanted mitered corners

but then it would need a seam again and don’t know how well angled borders hold up!?

here’s the foundation so far

hubby has done a great job!!