I guess the question is does it exist? If not why not. I use it for other building projects and it's easy to drag and drop features in.
I'm thinking it would be great so that you could build in sketch up and be able to preview the finished rod.
it you don't like a split grip, change it to a full grip. change seats etc.
While I'm no expert in the area I wonder if anyone has thought about developing an idea like this.

I like the idea! Where would one get the necessary images?

I have been trying for ages to get the script to work on my website so a customer can design a rod by selecting the components and then it generates an image of the rod, a parts list for me and a quote for the customer. Its a great concept in theory and can be done as you can pick the options on some motor vehicle sites and it works. but be prepared to put in some killer hours as there is a lot of scripting to make it work properly, I should have it completed by the end of may as I finally gave up and hired a website builder to design it for me the trick is to get all the images and combination of images as every single change requires a different end shot image, I'm getting there I'll post up a link when its finished hopefully it will work really well sales wise.

Cheers

Mark Newcombe
Old Bar NSW
Australia
markscustomfishing.com
American Tackle Pro-Staff

First post here for me, wish to thank all for the great info, started making a few rods this winter. I'm in the sign business and it seemed a natural for me to first design the rods I am making on the computer, all you need is a vector based graphics program like Corel (likely can pick up an early version cheap) and a little practice, you could design certain elements that you will be using frequenly.

Mike, like i said I'm no Pro some of this but would a program like Corel allow you to drop in photos. say you had a picture of a grip and a few different reel seats. could you take one of those files and drop it in and then drop in the next to combine them?

You could but it would require a little more advanced skill to isolate your bitmap without a background, easier way to do it is design an object that represents the part ie the grips with the same color and shape.

In the Handle Reference we published about a year ago I suspended various parts on a steel mandrel and photographed them from the same angle, same lighting with camera on a tripod against a white background. I opened each photo in Photoshop and dropped the background leaving only a floating part. I stacked the parts as layers in photoshop and could combine any parts I wanted into a single photo of how the handle would look when finished. I was able to create 80+ handles with only about 30 photos. Lots of work, but very nice to have a visual reference before starting the build. By the way, the Handle Reference Book is free, drop a request to info@anglersresource, subject line "Handle Book" and include your mailing address in the body of the email...we'll even pay shipping. At least you'll know how all Anglers Resource/Fuji handle parts fit together.