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Alstone · Moderator & Site Supporter

I’ve been into design engineering for many years now and use AutoCad for most of my design work, This produces working drawings from which you can manufacture what ever you design.

I recently did some software programming for a multi axis workstation belonging to a local engineering factory, the guy who owned the place had bought the complete AutoCAD Inventor Suite to do is own design but found it to difficult to get his head around. So when haggling about what he owed me for the software work, he suggested I have the AutoCAD Inventor Suite instead of cash as he had no need of it, not being to keen at first as not knowing the value of the software I reluctantly accepted it. Wow! did I get a surprise the total package price was $6,300.00 / £2,800.00 and he only owed me £200.00.

Anyway after playing around with it for a week I thought I would do a post on here for any one who is interested in buying there own software suite. Smile

For designing parts for something like an airgun you can use the Inventor suit which is a solid modelling program, you just create each part and assemble them together, and the beauty is that it creates the working drawing from the solid model.

Al

oddtodd · Silver Status Member

Dang Al, that is slick! I wish I had some more autocad experience. I do have a bit of autocad experience, but not enough to do something like that. I would really like to be able to play with that with a milling machine. Twisted Evil

broommaster2000 · Moderator

We got a couple of machines at my "old" school running that stuff. It's amazing what you can do with it, and you can just upload your plans to a CNC-machine too.

Big fat WANT. Mr. Green

Alstone · Moderator & Site Supporter

I think Christmas came early this year. I won't hold my breath for a CNC machine. Laughing

Al

tjwarren · New Member

I've never used them, but I've heard good things about http://www.shapeways.com/. Basically you upload a 3d model and they generate it and ship it to you. Prices vary based on the material you use (plastic, glass, stainless steel, etc.) and the size of the object.

Like I said, I've never used them, but they seem to have a pretty good following.

Alstone · Moderator & Site Supporter

That’s a new one on me tj, but a good idea for a the odd drawing as I should think it would be expensive for regular use?

BTW Welcome to AirGunHome.

Al

rsterne · Moderator

I am always in awe of the beautiful drawings and 3D modelling from the new CAD software.... let alone the ability to send it to a CNC machine to actually make the part.... Shocked

Unfortunately, I find the learning curve too steep and have yet to find a program I can understand enough to actually use.... Embarassed

Bob

Alstone · Moderator & Site Supporter

JustMatt · Member

Real good modeling there. That was with Inventor? I personally have experience with Solidworks, but any parametric drawing system is awesome. I wanted to do exactly what you did with my 1337 and try to go from there to do some custom experimentation. Did you model that just by taking measurements from what you had?

If anyone here is interested in a free 2d drafting option, the company that makes Solidworks recently put out DraftSight. If you have experience with AutoCad, you will feel right at home. It even uses the .dwg file format.

Alstone · Moderator & Site Supporter

Hi Matt I have had a play with SolidWorks and Inventor is similar in operation. As for the modelling I did in in the 3D solid modelling program and by passed the AutoCad part.

You start with a grid on which you draw a silhouette of one side of the breach to the correct measurements, this is then extruded out to the width of the breach, so that you finish up with a 3D square bar, you then place holes, chamfers, slots etc, until you have a replica of the original in 3d form. You do this for each part of the gun, them you open the assembly window and put the parts together, the beauty of this method is that the software will make a full set of working drawings from the 3D model.

I have had a look at the Draftsight cad software and it looks pretty good and according to the site it’s free, you just need to activate it every so often over the internet.

Al

JustMatt · Member

Oh yeah, I am very familiar with solid modeling. Learned 3d modeling in AutoCAD over 10 years ago and picked up SolidWorks shortly after that. The methods you used to make your models came out very nice looking.

This is a render of one of the products manufactured at the company I used to work for.

While not shown in this particular image, every single part (down to the individual tubes and fasteners) was a solid model and had its machine drawing/purchased part drawing made from the model. I really enjoy 3d drafting since it turns into an amazing R&D tool when you use the analysis tools to apply flow and stress modeling.

(Don't work for or have any affiliation with SolidWorks, just plugged them since I have the most experience with them and DraftSight is free)

Alstone · Moderator & Site Supporter