Show off your CAD renderings

[Smokedaddy]

... more telescope stuff ...

[Dan Dubeau]

I use rhino a lot at work for 3d surfacing. create surfaces in rhino, export them into mechanical desktop for design, or edgecam for machining.

[BillTodd]

OSCA Desmo



and Fart horn



Atkinson animation:

[Weston Bye]

This week I had to make a presentation to a customer concerning changes I would like to make to a device to satisfy our price and performance parameters but still fit within the space in the customer's assembly. They had not as yet released CAD models of the assembly, so the best I could do was print out several copies of a JPEG image the customer provided from their models. A little judicious application of scissors and tape, and I had rearranged the elements of the current component to resemble my proposed new configuration.

The snip & stick presentation turned out to be the most valuable part of the whole meeting.

[Smokedaddy]

Love the animation Bill ... haven't got into that. What program did you use? Fart horn. <sweet>

-SD:

[thedieter]

This is a CAD drawing that I made when I was contemplating making a barstock version of the Morton M-5 engine with my own improvements included. I use TurboCad V10.2

Best regards, Jack

[japcas]

I'd like to know how much ram you guys have on the computers running these 3d cad programs? I only have 2 gigs of ram and doubt my current desktop could keep up with these demanding programs.

[Michael Moore]

I've got 4G with XP Home and a quad-core CPU. More RAM on your video card should help too.

I've been trying to practice modeling from some BSA factory blueprints and I'm finding it tough sledding with castings such as crankcases and cylinder heads. Locating bearings and motor mounts is easy enough, it is wrapping the "organic" castings around them that gets things really slowed down (and started over and over and over).

It doesn't help that the blueprints have a gazillion dimensions on them, and they'll show a couple versions of the same view but give a hole center on one view and the diameter of the hole on a different view. I spend a lot of time playing "find the hidden dimension."

I'm envious of the skill some of you have. I can usually get enough done of a simple part, especially one that is a straight forward milling/lathe job. But it doesn't always happen very quickly.

I've got both Alibre and Rhino and I tend to prefer to use Alibre for the parametric modeling feature. But Rhino does some things easier.

cheers,
Michael

[BillTodd]

I'd like to know how much ram you guys have on the computers running these 3d cad programs? I only have 2 gigs of ram and doubt my current desktop could keep up with these demanding programs.

It's not so hard...

Athlon 2800XP (yes, the old single core one!) 1.5GB ram, a Quadro4 graphics card and two 10k rpm WD raptors in a RAID 0 (they make all the difference). running Win2k.

(One day I'll build a faster PC)

Bill

[Evan]

AMD Dual core black box (unlocked clock) Athlon 64 running at 3.2 ghz and 4 gigs ram. Nvidia GTS 250 with 1 gig DDR3 ram.

I frequently run out of ram and could easily use much more, 16 gigs would be nice. That will have to wait a while.

[DICKEYBIRD]

Man, talk about bringing a pocket knife to a gunfight! I do my CAD stuff on a smokin' hot PIII 800 with 400 meg ram and W2000. Works well with TurboCAD v9.2.

Here's my 1st successful 3D rendering. I need to redo the metal properties for better contrast.

[willmac]

Michael -

A bit off topic, but where did you get your BSA factory drawings from? I would be most interested in any source for drawings like this.

[Michael Moore]

I'll drop you a PM.

No I won't, your PM box is over capacity.

cheers,
Michael

[willmac]

Michael - thanks.

[Ausserdog]

Mine's a Mac running SolidWorks in XP via Boot Camp. System specs are 2.8GHz Core 2 Duo with 4 GB of RAM.

My old laptop ran SW ok. It was an HP with I think a 1.2GHz processor and 2 GB of RAM. It wasn't blindingly quick, but got the job done. That's actually the machine I did the Bentley engine on. Toward the end, with over 800 components in the assembly it did run a little slow.

Wasn't sure when I bought the Mac if it would handle SW. But it actually does very well, sometimes better than my PC at work.... The really nice thing about SW is they specifically allow users to install a legit copy on their machine at home. They figure you can't be two places at once, so the one license will cover both seats. Downside is the cost is pretty high compared to a lot of other programs.

Getting measurements is pretty easy. While in the part or assembly you can query the faces / parts and get a measurement. When you make a drawing it will get dimensioned just like any other CAD program.

One of the cool features of the 3D programs is you can get accurate weights, surface areas, center of gravity, etc. for each part or an assembly. I love working in it and hate having to fall back to our old 2D program (Anvil 1K) since we have so much legacy stuff at work. Some of it dates to the 1950's. Fortunately the stuff from the 30's was obsoleted a long time ago!