0.

I was thinking about what I said about collaboration and I thought of you and Mark and the grinder you were working on. If you both knew CAD you could email drawing files, or in some cases use the cloud to work on the drawings. No waiting! I'm not saying you both should learn it just for that, but it's another practical example.
 
"The Cloud" is basically internet based storage and computing. Instead of storing data locally on your hard drive or processing locally you upload your data to a server or run a program on that server and then download the data or result. As internet speeds increase it makes more sense to use the internet for storage and computing power. Some have predicted that eventually no one will actually own software. It will all operate in the cloud. You will only see the result. Sounds great until Skynet gets your data...
Robert
 
Billy G.,

I have to say I applaud your quest in learning the CAD thingy. Like you, I have extensive paper and pencil drafting skills, and I still prefer them. I thought about learning one of these new fangled programs a while back. I down loaded a program and tried to learn it but I couldn't even understand the help directions. I could not do anything with it and was so lost, I gave up on it. I figured I had the wrong program for a beginner, so I tried another one. My God .... It was even worse. I suddenly realized I was a dinosaur in a space age world and I crawled back in my cave and hugged my pencil box and paper. I sincerely hope you have better success. I think I need to go back to school if I want to learn to draw prints on / or with my computer.
 
Bill Gruby said:
OK, bear wth me on this. I have read and reread all the posts but am still in the dark as to why there is no standardization between programs. I wattched the beginner series for Fusion 360, interesting but -----.

I will keep going with this thread, maybe something will click. I still like pencil and paper better.

"Bill"
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Bill:
If you only watch the one you tube of Lars that I posted, you gave up to quickly sport. I took a quick local class on Fusion and like you I was lost. Terrible teacher, I had to go back and watch certain vidoes two times and create screen captures of important points. After the first class, I complained about what the teacher did not explain so that we could do the first assignment. I kept watching more and more videos because solid modeling in parametrics is not geometry 2d drawing CAD or paper pencil.

Going back to you first post. Absolute ZERO is the point where the X,Y, and Z point starts. Every thing is either plus or minus from that point,
DBQ49er
 
mark_f said:
I gave up on it. I figured I had the wrong program for a beginner, so I tried another one. My God .... It was even worse.
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One thing to remember is that there are a lot of options out there, and a lot of them STINK! For instance, I've tried to learn TurboCad several times, and I just can't hack it. Terrible stuff IMHO.

Everyone (including me) recommends the youtube videos by Lars, but there are certain ones to focus on first, that you only discover after you learn a little the hard way. I wonder if it would help if I and/or others tried to compile a list to help people get started. I'd even be willing to try to teach. I'm still learning, so I've made the mistakes, and teaching makes you learn quicker anyway. :)
 
The last post here was Monday. Please do not wait for me on this as I am digesting all the info so far. Feel free to discuss this without me. I will catch up.

"Billy G"
 
Not waiting for you Bill, at least I am not. Had surgery on Wednesday, so my list of priorities has changed a bit.
 
dbq49 said:
I kept watching more and more videos because solid modeling in parametrics is not geometry 2d drawing CAD or paper pencil.
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This was one of the harder parts for me to get used to. I'm even having trouble figuring out how to word this! In 3D you are not drawing out a part completely with all view points and dimensions. When you're finished modeling, you'll create drawings from the model and then notate dimensions, many of which are not written by you anywhere in the sketches!

As a simple example, you can draw a metal plate by sketching a square and dimensioning its sides, and using constraints to say that it's always a square and not any other 4-sided figure. You then extrude that to make the flat sketch into a plate with a thickness that you define during the extrude, but is not written down anywhere. It's not even visible to you unless you were to go back and edit that extrusion. But when you generate your build drawing, and you tell it to add the dimensions, that thickness value will be there for you to use.

The 3D model is part of the design process, not the manufacturing process.
 
Billy, I had a drafting class in college and blue print reading classes at work, but the majority of work I did in my job involved 2D blue print reading. I wanted a program that I could use to do some simple drawings in 2D and slowly learn 3D. After trying a few I started using Freecad. They have some good tutorials and a very active user community. Their forum is one of the few I belong to, mostly so I could post questions.
From poking around on the web I see that Fusion 360 might be a little easier to use, but Freecad is open source - you don't need to register and the community won't try to sell you any thing.
The important thing is to pick a program that has what you ultimately want to do and put in the time to learn how to use it. Freecad is like Fusion in that you can create 2D drawings (they call them sketches), then extrude or "pad" mto make a solid. Yesterday I modeled a spindle cap for my mini mill with a hole in the side to mount a hall effects sensor (for RPM). I then exported the model and loaded it into my son's 3D printer. I attached a pic so you could see what the cap looks like. It's pretty handy to have an idea and make a solid part in a very short time.
 
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