Total new-comer to CAD. Which programme to choose.

[Jasonb]

You could get the basic licence for Atom3D for £199 + VAT from Mintronics. This will not get you an update which is due soon but if you wait until after your trial in January then you will likely get the latest version. The small amount of support may not be worth the extra £70 + VAT

 

[justisla]

You could get the basic licence for Atom3D for £199 + VAT from Mintronics. This will not get you an update which is due soon but if you wait until after your trial in January then you will likely get the latest version. The small amount of support may not be worth the extra £70 + VAT

Thanks for the tip. They did not tell me it included the support fee. I assume that Alibra is what you use. Did you find that you needed support in the early stages that you could not get off the internet?

 

[Jasonb]

I have used Alibre for quite a few years. When I started for just hobby use I paid a one off fee for Alibre PE which was the striped down "Personal Edition" with no support and used that for several years. PE would be equivelent to Atom 3D these days which has does not have a few of the features of the Pro and Expert offerings. As I use it quite a lot now including for work I have upgraded to Pro and pay a yearly maintenance which is really just any updates.

There was a lot less help in those days but I managed OK, now there are a lot more users and help can be had from Alibre's forum or other Model engineering forums such as this and ME as well as Youtube.

 

[Richard Carlstedt]

Richard, your comment :
Ho ho. So your instructors all know you and at opening day in Sept. they all say "Here comes that Carlstedt character. Don't look".
Is more truth than you realize ! Ho Ho !

I use to be fairly proficient in AutoCad ( 95 and 2000) but stopped 20 years ago then tried to learn
it again in 2020 .. very hard and as you said, and "paper Space" drove me nuts. back to SW !
Rich

 

[ajoeiam]

I have read many, many times that Blender is a VERY steep learning curve. Based on my little bit of experimenting with it, I think that is correct. But it is super impressive what it can do!

Hmmmmmmmmm - - - you mean that the learning curve is steeper than it is for FreeCAD?

Dunno if that's in fact possible. (LOL)

 

[awake]

Hmmmmmmmmm - - - you mean that the learning curve is steeper than it is for FreeCAD?

Dunno if that's in fact possible. (LOL)

Yes, that is my understanding, and my impression from just a bit of messing around with Blender. Of course, no doubt there is someone for whom Blender "just clicks" who thinks it is easy!

 

[Zeb]

Blender is by far the most difficult to master and force into the CAD realm.
It also always surprises me. Just now, I downloaded the sketchfab addon, typed in "stuart turner", and an animated model dropped right into my workspace.
(you can click the image for a choppy gif)


People are beginning to scan engines at museums. Models can be cleaned up for reference or exported as a dumb solid to CAD for retopology.

....or I could be pouring metal and making chips. Let's hope 2023 brings lots of model shows we can visit in person.

 

[Richard Hed]

Thanks for the reply. I have looked at some tutorials & I reckon i could work with that. I have not tried the 30 day free trial yet as I do not want it over Xmas as there will be 2 weeks where I will not get much time to use it. So I will take that up in january & then have a detailed experiment without too much interuption
What does concern me is your comment about price. That seems wholely inaccurate.
I have just had a quote from the Uk distributor & it is £269 + VAT so I am looking at £ 323 That is nearly $400. Four times what you have suggested
Can anyone tell me if there is a cheaper source. Am I paying through the nose where I should not be? Help please!!!!

I can't speak to what the charge is in Britain. I would THIMPFK that Alibre would sell it to you direct and not thru a middle man. Other than that, I would never have suspected that some middle man would rip you off like that. Sorry.

 

[Bentwings]

If Microsoft goes away I may be looking around too.
I just found that If I join EAA I might be able to get solid works at some reduced rate. Oven if stripped of some features it’s still a pretty good program .

 

[minasian.john]

If Microsoft goes away I may be looking around too.
I just found that If I join EAA I might be able to get solid works at some reduced rate. Oven if stripped of some features it’s still a pretty good program . If unable to do that, try Fusion 360

The better way in my opinion is to join the local college (evening classes) and take SolidWorks course ,where you can learn how to use it and be able to purchase a student version of the program for $100.00.
John

 

[TSutrina]

Free cad has substantial quality of YouTube videos there has been a continues stream of them for all the releases for a decade. For the basics old videos are relevant. Big change was made at version 17 so use videos 17 and above. I have a lot of files in 12 to 16. So I have 16 version still.

 

[Bentwings]

College is a good idea I actually did this early on . The home use was pretty good . And I took advantage of it .

If Microsoft goes away the cad may become stand alone with its own operating system .
I’m not into this at all . Probably just going to have to wait and see what shakes out .

 

[Gordon]

Just a little bit off topic but with folks talking about taking community college cad classes several times I did something similar about60 years ago. The community college ran an apprenticeship program and had a large machine shop with mostly WW II machines and a lot of raw material donated by various businesses. The class was very reasonably priced and I took the class several times just to have access to the machines and the free material. The instructor knew what I was doing and just let me do my thing and let me use the shop without sitting in the lecture.

 

[Richard Hed]

Just a little bit off topic but with folks talking about taking community college cad classes several times I did something similar about60 years ago. The community college ran an apprenticeship program and had a large machine shop with mostly WW II machines and a lot of raw material donated by various businesses. The class was very reasonably priced and I took the class several times just to have access to the machines and the free material. The instructor knew what I was doing and just let me do my thing and let me use the shop without sitting in the lecture.

That's exactl;y what i;t's about. After all, community college means for the community. There are two sections to that community according to the people who started them: to train peoople in needed professions, and to give older people access to tools they may not bve able to afford--that is, people who want to further their hobbies. I thimpfks this is ia good thing.

 

[Jasonb]

Seems strange that quite a few hear don't want to pay yearly subscription fees for their CAD yet are happy to pay yearly college fees. Particularly if you stop paying the college fees you then face the problem of how to get what is likely to be an expensive professional CAD package as you will no longer be a student and may end up having to relearn something else that is less expensive.

 

[Richard Hed]

Seems strange that quite a few hear don't want to pay yearly subscription fees for their CAD yet are happy to pay yearly college fees. Particularly if you stop paying the college fees you then face the problem of how to get what is likely to be an expensive professional CAD package as you will no longer be a student and may end up having to relearn something else that is less expensive.

In the great Soviet of Washington, the college fee is 5$ per credit for anyone over 60. Quite reasonable

 

[Gordon]

Seems strange that quite a few hear don't want to pay yearly subscription fees for their CAD yet are happy to pay yearly college fees. Particularly if you stop paying the college fees you then face the problem of how to get what is likely to be an expensive professional CAD package as you will no longer be a student and may end up having to relearn something else that is less expensive.

It is not so much the yearly fee as the fact that if you drop the fee program you no longer have access to your work. Also most of the yearly fee programs operate in the cloud and that means that you are giving some outside organization access to your computer. With all of the data hacks we keep hearing about it does not seem like a good idea to let someone have access to your personal information. That was one of the reasons why I decided to try Alebre. I may miss out on the latest bells and whistles but I can keep using it in its present form for the foreseeable future and the work I have done stays in my computer.

 

[Bentwings]

Once agin I’ll say get 2d out of mind most 3 d cad will be able to creat the best 2 d drawings possible you could project any views necessary most also have automatic dimensioning . Occasionally you might have to delete double dim. Al can output to any format needed at worst you may edit the drawing title page but once done you never need to do it again

3D means additive and subtractive modeling just as you might create in the machine shop you can view progress from any position including from the inside . You can create a note page for any special notes you need little geometry other than relations of how features interact you can even make models that can’t really be made other than by printing the only real reason to make drawings is if you are having something made that can’t be cnc by the shop you don’t bring the 3D sketches that’s why you create a not page defining materials call it bill of materials in 2d . You don’t even realy need calculator cad will go out to at least 14 decimal places or more You can use any numeric system often simotaianeous ly metric to English you can even use light years or angstroms any system can instantly converted you need no tri angles scales compasses dividers tee square drafting machine . Not even a big table I use my laptop computer in a laptop hard table only big enough to hold the computer and space to operate mouse . I use my TV FOR SCREEN AS I don’t SEE WELL resolution is not as good but it doesn’t matter you can check for integrity with a click . With solid works I can also do structural analysis so Roarks book is on the shelf now too I still use Machinery manual to look things up But the cad tool box provides al thread sizes and appropriate counter sink counter bores and you can edit this for specials if needed if you label correctly you can generate a complete bill of materials including fasteners you can easily get volumes surface areas center of gravity and interferences you can define what is interference you can get finished weight too. So 3 d is very useful and worth the time learning if you are into shading you can use about any color you want you can change material and everything related will up date

 

[TSutrina]

Once agin I’ll say get 2d out of mind most 3 d cad will be able to creat the best 2 d drawings possible you could project any views necessary most also have automatic dimensioning . Occasionally you might have to delete double dim. Al can output to any format needed at worst you may edit the drawing title page but once done you never need to do it again

3D means additive and subtractive modeling just as you might create in the machine shop you can view progress from any position including from the inside . You can create a note page for any special notes you need little geometry other than relations of how features interact you can even make models that can’t really be made other than by printing the only real reason to make drawings is if you are having something made that can’t be cnc by the shop you don’t bring the 3D sketches that’s why you create a not page defining materials call it bill of materials in 2d . You don’t even realy need calculator cad will go out to at least 14 decimal places or more You can use any numeric system often simotaianeous ly metric to English you can even use light years or angstroms any system can instantly converted you need no tri angles scales compasses dividers tee square drafting machine . Not even a big table I use my laptop computer in a laptop hard table only big enough to hold the computer and space to operate mouse . I use my TV FOR SCREEN AS I don’t SEE WELL resolution is not as good but it doesn’t matter you can check for integrity with a click . With solid works I can also do structural analysis so Roarks book is on the shelf now too I still use Machinery manual to look things up But the cad tool box provides al thread sizes and appropriate counter sink counter bores and you can edit this for specials if needed if you label correctly you can generate a complete bill of materials including fasteners you can easily get volumes surface areas center of gravity and interferences you can define what is interference you can get finished weight too. So 3 d is very useful and worth the time learning if you are into shading you can use about any color you want you can change material and everything related will up date

Solid Works is a great program, however; is isn't cheap and you add cost for every significant additional major capacity like analysis and CNC. The 2D capacity is good, been a long time since I had a seat on SW. You get something for your money.
But I do not make a penny from using a cad software. That is why I chose freeCAD. Yep not as good in any area but for the price a real real advantage. Is it harder to create models if you need drafts and other of the very fine features. Using surfaces to create solids has never been great. I haven't tried to build something complex enough that surfaces is the only way. I know it is always improving but can not place it in a comparison to commercial cad. In general every program will have thing it can not do or does poorly so you will need to learn work arounds. They are much slower in fixing on free software. But freeCAD has a big enough base that everything I found is fixed since a lot of programmers to work to improve the software. Also these programmers add major capacity and add on small features.
After using about a half dozen cad programs of which half are commercial like solid works I would say basically the process is the same. So the learning difficulty is similar. There are two system when adding or cutting bodies. One retains a history and you many have to go back and fix things. Also the list can be very long and difficult to deal with. The second is to throw all the history away each time you save. This is sometimes an advantage but equally it can be a disadvantage. I have no winner. Since you can find a spot on the list and throw away what comes after. Hacking at the model that need a lot of changes is difficult and time consuming. I saved models as I went along to have a better start point when history was lost.
The final issue is the size of the market. I think Solid Works has the largest share overall and the larges of the purchased software. FreeCad has the larges open source free cad and is larger then many of the purchased software. Neither are going away. Next is training. I am not sure about Solid Works but I do know that they do have staff support and likely a good video library and others locally use it. FreeCAD has a huge youtube library that will cover everything under the sun. Sufficient time has passed since the big step change that even this library is now large. So if you can learn from youtube then your going to make it. I am not sure how you find a local expert.

 

[petertha]

Solid Works is a great program, however; is isn't cheap and you add cost for every significant additional major capacity like analysis and CNC.

Have you looked into SW for makers? They are even offering a promo from $99 to $69/year. There are probably some limitations but I'm still trying to hear from a hobbyist type who ideally has prior SW familiarity reference & has taken the leap.