Thanks for the complements, you are all very kind.
As far as making STL files for 3D printing ... I plan to do that but not until I finish a few other things like clean, strip, and paint the lathe castings, put the lathe back together, finish the bench I am building to mount it on, build a leveling system, mount and level the lathe, and get it running.
Also, I have not yet figured out how to handle the sharing of various file formats in a way that is not going to be a nightmare of data entry, change tracking, and upkeep for me. None of the vintage machinery forums to which I belong is set up for this kind of file management, including this one. What I'd like to find is a vault where I can just dump the latest files
as a group transfer (no data entry) on a site that is public-minded (open source, public domain, free to access, etc.), that can handle binary files easily, and isn't owned by a company that asserts rights on whatever is put there. I have looked at GrabCAD, GitHub, SourceForge, and a few other places I can't recall without finding anything that seems to fit the bill.
The issue is that the number of files to be managed has the potential to be huge. Here are the stats for the CAD model:
Total components in Atlas 618 Lathe - ASSY: 374
Parts: 349
Unique Part Documents: 233
Unique Parts: 232
Subassemblies: 25
Unique Subassemblies: 24
Unique Subassembly Documents: 24
Maximum Depth: 4
Number Of Top Level Components: 14
Resolved Components: 373
Resolved Documents: 256
Lightweight Components: 0
Suppressed Components: 1
Hidden Components: 0
Virtual Components: 0
Envelope Components: 0
Number Of Bodies: 394
Number Of Total Evaluated Mates: 30
Top Level Mates: 34
Flexible Subassembly Mates: 0
There are a number of file formats that folks are likely to want, such as STL, Parasolid (.x_t), IGES, STEP, and DXF. SolidWorks can save a file in all of these formats and 20 more. I don't even know what half of them are.
I uploaded 180 PDF drawings to Hobby-Machinist Downloads section and it was a little painful. Took me 20-30 hours. Very dull. Files must be uploaded one at a time. Searchable information is entered in 5 blank fields labeled Title, Tag Line, Type (this is actually the file being uploaded), Version Number, and Description. Because the system does not offer a preview to a person who might want to download the file, a graphic image of the part and a thumbnail of the drawing are created and pasted into the Description box. (Otherwise a person would have to download a file to find out what it really is., which is a pain) This process is repeated for each file that is uploaded to the site.. So it was a lot of work that was less than exciting for just 180 drawings. (Not that I am complaining, I was happy to do that. I just don't feel like doing it again.) If I saved 256 model files in 3 different 3D formats, that would be 768 files to upload and to enter data for each file one at a time. I am laughing to myself at the idea of doing that or even half of that. I can't think of anything that would motivate me to want to do that.
I am open to suggestions. I may end up doing DropBox or Google Drive or something like that. But not before the lathe is up and running. This is what it looks like at the moment ...
