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CAD recommendations
kwackers:
Excellent! Thanks and work it did too!
John Stevenson:
The command line instructions are very good in CAD programs, the ones that support them that is.
Once you start getting up to speed it's well worth printing out the command line structure for common moves.
Type in "L" [ no inverted commas] in the command line and it knows it has to draw a line, first question is start point ? Type in 0,0 and it will start at the drawing base point. Then it wants the next point.
As most drawings are dimensioned as a part and not from a common point we are used to so wide, so long as opposed to always measuring from an absolute point like 0,0. From an absolute point is called , well absolute and the so wide, so long method is called Relative.
So to carry on with our line if we type in 100,0 we get a line 100 units long none high so parallel, now if we need a vertical side 30mm high we type in 100,30
This side is Absolute to the start point and can be confusing if you have a sketch that doesn't give any idea of where every point is to the absolute start point, even harder is the absolute point isn't at 0,0
The choice is now to work in relative which adds entities on from the last point and doesn't care where the start point is.
On the command line we have alternative moves that are highlighted in blue, Undo is one as it's a likely next move, so press U then enter and the vertical line disappears, press U enter again and the horizontal line disappears.
Now type in @100,0 and we get the same horizontal move as before because it starting from the same point, however now type in @0,30 and we get the same vertical line 30 units long but starting from the last point.
@50,50 will get us a line 50 units along it's base and 50 units high, in other words a line at 45 degrees but we don't know how long that line is without using trig.
But if we type @50<45 it now draws a line 50 units long at 45 degrees.
Here endeth this lesson.
@ gets you relative moves from the last point.
< gets you angular moves.
U enter gets you an undo move.
John S.
sparky961:
I use Draftsight for all my 2D work, with is admittedly very little these days. I have few complaints about it, and with every new version they seem to keep fixing the small things that were annoying me.
I'm a devoted SolidWorks user since starting with it about 3 years ago. I started with AutoCAD for 3D and spent HOURS building very simple shapes. When I had to change something, I spend 10x the original number of hours doing so. Then I thought I was in heaven when Sketchup because mainstream, but it had many limitations that I struggled with and I haven't touched it since becoming proficient with SolidWorks.
In SolidWorks, being a parametric modeling program, as long as you design your model with a bit of foresight, you can make changes to features you drew very early on in the process and other features will "adjust" accordingly. In many other lesser 3D programs, you would have to make all of these adjustments manually or start to play around with faces and such.
Obviously cost is a factor. As some have already mentioned, it isn't difficult to come by a copy of it and it isn't like Dassault Systems is losing out on a sale. If you didn't "find" yourself a copy, it isn't like you'd actually purchase it for hobby use - most people not even if the price were a few hundred (CAD$). That said, if you get to the point where you're running a viable business using the software, you really should buy a legitimate copy and support further development. I figure the more people that use a software package, the more popular it becomes and this actually drives further sales of a product. Very few successful businesses would continuously use software they didn't pay for.
I'm fortunate to have access to this at work, but I wish there were an open source project (maybe there is?) that builds on much of the very good work that Dassault Systems has done with Solidworks. Given the time and absence of control freak project managers, I'd certainly be willing to contribute some coding effort.
-Sparky
Stumpy:
Iv just tyred the Draftsight system and i must say i found it very nice and very easy to use.
I found that the key commands are the same as AutoCad so a few hr's on youtube might give you a few tips i find watching some one on a videio easyer to pick things up over reading it.
One more thing that helps in cad for me is having a mouse with lots of buttons on if you set it up right you have enter,esc,shift and so on at the end of your finger tips may not sound like much but over 3hrs drawing you will soon see a big time saver and you poor arm will be thanking you for it.
And right clicking in the tool bar will bring up more tools to use yet again less key board work
kvom:
--- Quote ---when I came to dimension it, the dimensioning arrows are bigger than the cylinder!
--- End quote ---
You can change the size and position of dimensions text; select one or more dimensions and modify the text attributes.
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