K
Kermit
Guest
I like it so far.
Help Support Home Model Engine Machinist Forum:
I like it so far.
peterhoward42
New Member
- Joined
- Jun 13, 2009
- Messages
- 1
- Reaction score
- 0
Hello - I'm Peter Howard - the author of TigerCad - and I've just come across this forum.
Some responses...
Patterning - yes you can do patterning. There's a copy and paste idiom. But when you paste you can specify a linear or angular pattern with multiple copies. Also you can see what you have copied while you are thinking about it, and you get a preview of the paste operation as you enter parameters like number of copies. Also you can scale, rotate and reflect the stuff you have copied before you paste it.
Just 2D - Yes it is completely aimed at the 2D process of drawing 2D geometry - with a fairly traditional (old fashioned?) user interface metaphor - based strongly on drawing board traditions, but bringing in help with that unobtrusively from the computer. (Like noticing that you are drawing a line that is more or less radial to an arc - and helping you to get it accurate with little effort).
3D packages - Designing in 3D in my opinion is a completely different thought process and approach to traditional 2D engineering drawings. 3D is infinitely superior for visualising ideas. I personally rate SolidWorks very highly for this. It is the tool of choice for a very large number of professional mechanical designers. Very efficient, and a quite amazingly modest learning curve. The big downside is price. Although you can qualify for a token price if you are a full-time engineering student in college. (Or can successfully masquerade as such).
Export file formats like DXF - The serious export feature is to DXF - because everything can read it, not only other CAD system, but including plenty of CNC / CAM systems. I had to be pragmatic and only export the geometry itself - ie the lines and arcs. To output dimensions in the rich formats required by DXF would have been too much development work. So it has to be viewed as accurate geometry output, rather than CAD conversion. Nb. TigerCad can produce non-trivial curves like ellipse and curve fits, but it works by working out the maths for a series of very short straight lines to approximate the curves, and these are what end up in the drawing. Consequently they come out in DXF as a large number of short lines too. However, very few CNC machines can cope with anything other than straight paths or purely circular interpolation either - they convert themselves.
If anyone would like to ask me any other questions - I'd be happy to oblige.
Some responses...
Patterning - yes you can do patterning. There's a copy and paste idiom. But when you paste you can specify a linear or angular pattern with multiple copies. Also you can see what you have copied while you are thinking about it, and you get a preview of the paste operation as you enter parameters like number of copies. Also you can scale, rotate and reflect the stuff you have copied before you paste it.
Just 2D - Yes it is completely aimed at the 2D process of drawing 2D geometry - with a fairly traditional (old fashioned?) user interface metaphor - based strongly on drawing board traditions, but bringing in help with that unobtrusively from the computer. (Like noticing that you are drawing a line that is more or less radial to an arc - and helping you to get it accurate with little effort).
3D packages - Designing in 3D in my opinion is a completely different thought process and approach to traditional 2D engineering drawings. 3D is infinitely superior for visualising ideas. I personally rate SolidWorks very highly for this. It is the tool of choice for a very large number of professional mechanical designers. Very efficient, and a quite amazingly modest learning curve. The big downside is price. Although you can qualify for a token price if you are a full-time engineering student in college. (Or can successfully masquerade as such).
Export file formats like DXF - The serious export feature is to DXF - because everything can read it, not only other CAD system, but including plenty of CNC / CAM systems. I had to be pragmatic and only export the geometry itself - ie the lines and arcs. To output dimensions in the rich formats required by DXF would have been too much development work. So it has to be viewed as accurate geometry output, rather than CAD conversion. Nb. TigerCad can produce non-trivial curves like ellipse and curve fits, but it works by working out the maths for a series of very short straight lines to approximate the curves, and these are what end up in the drawing. Consequently they come out in DXF as a large number of short lines too. However, very few CNC machines can cope with anything other than straight paths or purely circular interpolation either - they convert themselves.
If anyone would like to ask me any other questions - I'd be happy to oblige.
