The Shop > Software Tools
3D modeling software wanted.
clivel:
--- Quote from: raynerd on August 27, 2013, 08:26:08 PM ---For £70 you can`t complain at all getting 3d models like that - infact, you are tempting me to purchase as an early birthday present to myself :-)
--- End quote ---
You can get it even cheaper than that, they periodically offer discounts. I bought it for 30% off, just Google "Viacad coupon code" to find the discounts.
However I have never had much joy with the program. Others can and do do useful work with it (as per Phil's examples above), but the light has never come on for me. I find that the documentation is not at all helpful, and the tutorials supplied with the package are so trivial that they don't really aid one's understanding.
I periodically load the program up in a burst of enthusiasm, intent to come to terms with it I once more work through the tutorials, but always with the same result, I seem incapable of making any further progress, so just another wasted evening ending in frustration.
Another alternative would be FreeCAD http://www.freecadweb.org/ an open source parametric 3D modeller, which as its name implies is completely free.
Clive
DaveH:
Clive,
Have you tried FreeCAD yet ?
:beer:
DaveH
clivel:
Hi DaveH,
I haven't yet, but from watching a few of the video tutorials available at http://freecad-tutorial.blogspot.ca/ it looks very promising.
There are more tutorials available via the FreeCAD site, not all are video though, some are text which I actually find is often easier to work along with such as this description of creating an engine block http://www.freecadweb.org/wiki/index.php?title=Engine_Block_Tutorial
Clive
raynerd:
Does anyone on here use AutoCAD Autodesk Inventor ??
ChrisC:
Yes I've been using Inventor professional for my business for years. It is a great piece of software. It is ridiculously expensive, but I have found that once you get to grips with it (or any similar program such as Solidworks) it is much more productive than 2D CAD for the sort of work I use it for.
I think many people think that Inventor is simply a re-packaged version of Autocad. It isn't, it has pretty much nothing in common with Autocad (although they have been changing the Autocad tool bar to more closely reflect the Inventor toolbar), and being proficient with Autocad won't really help learning to use Inventor.
My son is a University student and uses the free educational version to create part drawings for his 3D printer.
Chris
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