Show off your CAD renderings

[Evan]

Here is a free plugin to import DXF to SketchUp v8.

http://forums.sketchucation.com/view...f=323&p=274199

You will probably have to sign up to the forum to download it. The forum has a ton of excellent plugins available for free.

Another excellent resource is here.

http://rhin.crai.archi.fr/RubyLibraryDepot/index.php

They have hundreds of free plugins including many import and export filters for a variety of file types.

[Evan]

I have had the urge to do some art glass work so I did some fiddling with SketchUp and Pov-Ray. This is the sort of thing where POV-Ray kicks ass because it is a full powered ray tracing program and can model optical systems accurately. This is just a concept for a wine glass.

[Black Forest]

That wine glass reminds me of some glasses I bought once. They were square at the top also. It required a special technique to drink out of or you would be wearing the liquid. You had to drink from a corner. I threw them away.

[loose nut]

be careful not to cut your lip on that picture.

[Rustybolt]

Nothing wrong with free software. I will pointedly ask how many of the numerous online tutorials have you watched?

3D CAD has a steep learning curve mainly because the many little tricks that make it easy to use are not at all obvious. Tutorials are very valuable in getting you over the hump.

I sketched up some gears as an example. The total time to arrive at the finished model ready for rendering was less than 10 minutes. These images show the steps along the way in sequence:

I used a free involute gear plugin to make the gear. Time: ten seconds.

Then I pulled it into a three dimensional object with the push/pull tool and copied it in plan view to mesh them together.



I drew a circle centred in each one and pulled it to make a shaft.

Then drew a rectangle and pulled it for a mounting plate.



I stood it up with the rotate tool and drew a line across the bottom to separate a piece to pull out for the base. I then added some colours and textures from the material pallette. Total time maybe 7 minutes.



The final step is rendering. This took me quite a while because I used a new free plugin for SketchUp called Shader Light. I haven't actually used it before so it took some playing around to find a good looking setting(s). Including my learning curve for the renderer total time was about an hour.

Thanks for showing me this stuff, Evan.
I've been using it at work to make some 3D exploded drawings of some simple box structures, and pulley arangements, etc.
It's a good tool for showing peiople who can't concieve of a finished part from a 2D drawing. There are many of them where I work.

[Evan]

Here is another important couple of hints to using SketchUp.

When you make a small part or assembly such as the gear above then right click and make it a group. This will prevent it from accidentally interacting with other parts and being distorted or otherwise disturbed. If you need to work on it some more then right click and "Edit group". That prevents your editing from affecting any other parts.

There is another very important feature of the push/pull tool that isn't at all obvious. When you push or pull something you can move the cursor off the object as long as you are still pressing the left mouse button. What this means is that you can position the cursor on another surface somewhere that you want to match the height. As soon as you place the tool cursor on that surface the inference engine will automatically lock in the height of the part you are pulling to be precisely the same height. When you do this then any parts that interact with the part you just pulled will be automatically computed as Constructive Solid Geometry interactions unless they are grouped.

Also, when you push or pull when you let go of the part you can enter an offset in the input value window and the part will assume that offset. The value is always relative to the last position of the surface.

[Teenage_Machinist]

I am taking a class on Solidworks at my school. Unfortunately, it's just so blisteringly expensive, out of my reach. The finite element analysis program is really something - wish I had it when designing my camlock tailstock.

[Mensch-Machine]

Any Sketchup users know how to get parts to look like polished brass?

[RB211]

I am taking a class on Solidworks at my school. Unfortunately, it's just so blisteringly expensive, out of my reach. The finite element analysis program is really something - wish I had it when designing my camlock tailstock.

The best always is expensive...

[MuellerNick]

I have drawn this many snows ago. Now, I only do have PDFs (in gray) that I converted.







next post ...

[MuellerNick]

The original can be seen here: incredibly small picture It is standing in Passau (Germany).

That Diesel Engine was built 1907 and it is said, that Mr. Diesel himself adjusted it.



Nick

[MuellerNick]

Found the original pictures.
Just two of them:





Those masking strip tapes with the black dots on them were for photogrammetry. More than 1600 dots, something about 200 pictures from all perspectives imaginable.

I reconstructed the plans, MAN lost them during a fire.


Nick