CAD Packages?

[James Stewart]

To be honest I immediately thought of Autodesk Inventor which I used regularly in University. It was a fantastic tool to use and was great for creating objects on a 3D printer and technical drawings. However, I never had to pay for it so I can only suggest the Student version could get you by. But even then I think it is a very expensive bit of kit.

[James Stewart]

I will check that package out thanks, I will need one for the Miles Master project at somepoint. Could you maybe post a link to the QCad website please, cheers Arun. If you do feel its not the best you can always check out this link below.

http://digitalsteam.autodesk.com/free-software

[robbieskipton]

My personal preference for cad packages is solid works, as I can design both in 2d and 3d in one package.
The version I run also has stress analogy and wind testing! But be warned its $7995 ( yes I did mean dollars)

Why not try turbocad? It's not a bad program at all.
The creators of Devfuz also do a cad package which I tested and works well.

Failing that autocad is great and a lot of people use it, I did have inventor for a while and designed the 60% yak54 in it, but found I needed a minimum of 6gb ram to get anything decent out of it! Plus I always found I could force mates without even knowing it, so things I designed, in the real world would not go together!

There are a few other cad packages out there! But you Main Stream ones are
Auto desk autocad
Auto desk inventor
Solidworks
Turbocad
Cobalt.

Becareful what you look at buying and make sure to try a free trial before committing!

[James Stewart]

Ye Inventor was amazing at university and helped by the fact is can save models in a useable form for 3d printers. Invaluable for making quick wind tunnel testing models in my honours project. But you definately need a hell of alot of RAM. But if you can afford Inventor i'm pretty sure you can fford a cracking PC lol. Robbie if you look up your preferences on mating and - I think it is also under 2D drawing settings - theres a section on forcing joins which you can fiddle about with. Or are you meaning when it comes to the assembly of parts that you are having problems.

[robbieskipton]

it was in both assemblies and parts...mainly when you have multipul nodes in a drawing ( Or Spline eg.. an aerofoil!

I also found that when you were converting entities ( Thats solid-works language, forgot what it is in inventor.... basically use another face for referring geometry, if something went wrong, it would destroy the part!

Since i learnt solidworks ( The day after i got my NVQ Level 3 in inventor lol) i have never looked back, and have used solid works since... i can design much faster in solid-works than inventor!.. i guess its personal preference.

My FIrst cad package was turbo cad when i was 13 ( Downloaded it when it was free back then! ), and it served me well for foamies. i still occasionally still use it, as it has some brilliant features in, which acad, inventor & solidworks dont have.. .. Eg the ability to stretch an aerofoil in length without changing the thickness , but it maintains the shape perfectly as sees it as a shape not a poly line

[James Stewart]

Well thats sounding pretty good as I am hoping i'll be getting it for Christmas as it was on the list =D . (Giving a girl instructions on where in Maplins the Turbocad box is was hilarious)
If I have any problems with it would it be ok if I pm you as you have had experience with it? Hopefully early January i'll be able to get stuck into it and start doing some serious modelling.

[robbieskipton]

Please feel free to ask away,

[James Stewart]

Cheers lads, ill look into that book. =D

[James Stewart]

Merry Christmas everyone, been a cracking couple of days with family. I'm posting in here as I recieved TurboCAD 20 Deluxe so I am very chuffed at that =D . Had a few issues installing (Thanks Microsoft UAC) grrrr but alls well now. Going to read up on tutorials and see how we get on but so far so impressed haha. Have a good new year lads =)