CAD Questions

Garage Dog

Garage Dog

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Back in my carpenter days I didn't hardly ever need any drawings to throw something together, however now beginning my journey into machine on my mini lathe I think it would be very helpful to be able to draw something up before beginning a project.

I did a search here and found lots of good info but not being a techie I'm not sure which CAD programs I should be pursuing. It appears that Fusion 360 and similar programs are for designing parts and 3D printing them which I have no interest in, at least right now. I just want to draw parts with dimensions that I can make. Is Fusion 360 overkill for my needs? Are there any other programs you would recommend?
Thanks!
 
I use Fusion 360 for everything I do and it is very good at making drawings of parts. It has a steep learning curve, but once you learn the basics, it can do pretty much anything a home machinist would want. One thing to keep in mind, with Fusion, you are creating a model of your part, and then creating drawings from that model. The advantage of that is, you can make a design of multiple parts and make sure they fit together. If all you want to do is make 2D drawings, than there are other programs that might be easier to use.
 
I use paper, straight-edge, circle templates and pencil more often than CAD. I started learning CAD of various forms back in the late 70's. But, for a lot of my projects I just don't need it and paper sketches are faster and plenty adequate. I go to CAD for really complex parts, parts I know I'll be repeating a lot or for input to my CNC mill.

I think you are talking about 2D CAD, not 3D CAD. For 2D CAD, the big kid on the block is Autocad or Autocad LT. You could do worse than to rent Autocad LT for a month or so. Else, maybe Draftsight, an Autocad clone. I think you can use it for free for a short time. All of those cost money. There are some free ones out there too but I don't have much experience with those so maybe someone could jump in with info about those. I did try sketch-up once but didn't like it. Some people swear by it.

As far as 3D CAD, I think that unless you are needing to visualize things to check how it will fit together or doing CNC, I think it can be overkill for most jobs. It can be fun to use though, after the learning curve... Just my opinion.
 
Fusion 360 is more than just for designing for 3D printing. It offers an advantage over 2D drawings in that you can visualize your project as it will actually happen. It allows you to see and correct potential gotchas before you invest a lot of time and materials in actual machining.

Fusion has become more and more restrictive since its introduction and promised "free full featured CAD forever". I downloaded it when it was first offered but haven't used it. I have been using SolidWorks for twenty years; first professionally and then when I retired, I bought a seat for my personal use.It has a steep upfront cost, as do most of the 3D CAD software. As I understand it, FreeCAD is an exception and a number of forum members use it and like it. @WobblyHand , for one.

3D CAD programs have a fairly steep learning curve and it will take some time to become proficient at one. SolidWorks for one has the ability to draw 2D drawings rather than creating a 3D model and deriving a model from that. It does use parametric modeling which means that you can sketch out a rough representation of a part and add dimensions and other constraints to create a finished part as opposed to drawing the part to exact specification from the get-go.

I personally try to avoid subscription software. I prefer to pay once and own it rather than be subject to the changing whims of some corporate entity. Much of the software that starts as free, ostensibly to build user loyalty, ends up costing an arm and a leg. SolidWorks used to provide their 2D drafting software, Draftsight, free to all and now it is by paid subscription. As mentioned above Fusion is another.
 
One thing about SolidWorks, make sure you buy toward the end of the year the to get the last service pack. Depending on the reseller, they still might make you pay the maintenance fee.

If you buy a seat at the beginning of the year, you can't install the subsequent service packs unless you are paying the maintenance fee, which I think runs around $1500 per year.
That is what I dislike about Dassaults' buisness model, making you pay for service packs that fix bugs in the current year release. A-holes!

Solidworks use to come with a free 2D cad program called DWGeditor, which is similar to AutoCAD Lite.
Now you have to purchase Draftsight which runs around $300 per year. Middle finger to Dassault!

Draftsight is also very similar to Autocad lite. The commands are almost the same. There is a lot of info on AutoCAD on the net.
I kept Draftsight 2019 for personal use as it has no annual fee. It was the last year you could buy a perpetual license. Maybe a reseller could sell a 2019 seat.

I think the 2020 subscription version of Draftsight is the first year to offer the power trim function. Very handy.
I use Draftsight for electrical drawings.

For home use, if I didn't have access to Solidworks, I would look into FreeCAD.

www.freecad.org

FreeCAD: Your own 3D parametric modeler

FreeCAD, the open source 3D parametric modeler
www.freecad.org www.freecad.org

Hope this helps.
 
If you can't afford to buy a seat of CAD, look into FreeCAD, or maybe Fusion360. FreeCAD has always been free and open sourced.

Fusion360 is a good product, but it's days as fully free might be limited in the future. Fewer of the capabilities are free than in the past. Autodesk has an interesting history of starting with free offerings that get more and more limited over time. I have heard of instances where the product has been effectively locked in the past, until the poor licensee pays up. Whether or not that is strictly true, I can't tell, but there have been a lot of stories like this - I saw stories like that in the AutoCAD forums.

Autodesk is the company that created the EULA which says you don't actually own your software, but the company gives you the license to use it (and possibly take it back, or prevent you from selling it). Their software is pretty darned good though, but their lawyers are even better. You can thank them for all the horrid software licenses these days, they were the originators. But if you are a professional, licensing can make sense. I don't know how good it is, but licensing (and paying) elevates the licensee in the support tree.

FreeCAD, like all 3d CAD's takes a while to learn the paradigm. Once you "get it", then it's not too bad to do some productive stuff. Like anything, it takes seat time to get proficient. After a while, it's pretty easy to knock out some designs. Not many people use this feature, but I recently took advantage of it - FreeCAD is cross-platform, meaning it runs on Windows, MacOS, and Linux. I had no problem reinstalling the program and just copying my files over from one computer to the other computer over the network. I was able to continue my designs without interruption. There's loads of videos to get you started, that's how I learned the tool. At this point there are at least a couple dozen videos, going from the most basic to some really sophisticated stuff.

I have also found that their forum provides reasonable support, provided you ask a well formed question. I've received a whole lot of support for some things, even within hours having a software fix to try out. They have some pretty dedicated volunteers there. Let's just say the volunteer help is far superior to the level 1 support I suffered through for some Google and ISP issues. At least the volunteers know their product inside and out. Some of the volunteers are the actual developers, not some clown reading from a script. The developers tell you the straight skinny, which is nice to hear these days.

FreeCAD has an FEM (FEA) tool included, so if you were so inclined you could do finite element analysis on your design. I dabbled with it and found it quite illuminating looking at some of the issues related to high pressure design. I'm smart enough to realize that you need to be an expert to interpret the results correctly, but even so, I learned an awful lot doing the analysis. All of the FreeCAD tools are free, so there's no financial commitment to dabble. So, if FreeCAD doesn't work out for you, you can move on to something better suited, without your wallet taking a beating.
 
Thanks everyone for your replies!

I didn't realize how expensive some of these programs are. I do not want to invest in a program and find out it's not for me.

Just looked briefly at FreeCAD and it looked interesting with some good tutorials on Y/T as well. I'll check out LebreCAD too.
 
WobblyHand said:
Autodesk is the company that created the EULA which says you don't actually own your software, but the company gives you the license to use it (and possibly take it back, or prevent you from selling it). Their software is pretty darned good though, but their lawyers are even better. You can thank them for all the horrid software licenses these days, they were the originators. But if you are a professional, licensing can make sense. I don't know how good it is, but licensing (and paying) elevates the licensee in the support tree.
Click to expand...
I can't sell my seat of SolidWorks to a third party even though I "own" it. With the 2007 and earlier versions, you could install your seat on as many computers as you wished. Later versions have to be activated in order to use. Before the 2012 version, you could have a seat installed simultaneously on two different computers which allowed you to have a seat at work and another seat at home. I had a seat on my work laptop and a seat on my desktop at home which was convenient. They then changed the structure so you could have multiple seats but in order to use a second seat, you had to deactivate the first seat, thus ensuring that only one seat per license was in use.
 
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