Do you use Google SketchUp? See this.

[Evan]

I stumbled on this today. It may have been mentioned already but looks worthwhile since it is FREE.

http://sketchup.engineeringtoolbox.com/

[gellfex]

That's somewhat interesting. It is nice to see some support less intensely focused on architecture alone, but it's still pretty arch focused. I'll be more excited when they add fasteners, gears, linkages and couplers.

[Evan]

There are extra goodies here:

http://sketchup.google.com/bonuspacks.html

And, you can search the library:

http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/

[gellfex]

I've perused most of that stuff already. Like I said, mechanical components rather than architectural & structural engineering objects are almost nonexistent, and importing meshed dxf's from vendors like Stock Drive makes for slow, clunky, ugly drawings.

I wanted to play around with gears in Sketchyphysics so I drew them, but it's slow work. Unfortunately SP is still a little too buggy for serious mech design, but it has lots of potential to be a faster design tool than say, Solidworks.

[Timewarp]

I saw a post from a guy once that had drawn a Deckel Riser (PM?) in sketchup. It was freakin Awesome. Wish I had the gumption to finally learn CAD, because I certainly can't draw!

[Evan]

This may be of interest. I'm too busy right now with a new roof to do much checking but it looks promising.

http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehou...79c5d454a8c654

A quick check shows it contains 20,056 models of metric fasteners among other things.