General 3D Sketches and Computer Software

The place to discuss developed drawing study other than what is covered in the mailings.
Baruch
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General 3D Sketches and Computer Software

Thu Jul 16, 2015 2:29 am

Hi,

I've just joined the group and have a couple of general questions. I haven't purchased the books yet, so the questions may be covered in the books. For the time being, I've noticed a few computer generated sketches. What program do you use to generate these?

As an Engineer, my education and profession gravitated me towards Autocad, but I haven't used it in over 20 years. I've spend the last 20 years as a Systems Engineer, writing system requirements, decomposing them, writing verification and validation requirements and methods. So I haven't done any modeling in a long time. In school I also used a very simple 2D program before Microsoft bought them, and which I still use--Visio. It's great for 2D sketches but lacks the capability of 3D modeling.

Are there any other modeling software packages, special paper to aid me in 3D modeling sketches, etc. that you can recommend? I would really appreciate the help.

Thanks, Baruch
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Chris Hall
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Re: General 3D Sketches and Computer Software

Thu Jul 16, 2015 8:08 am

Hello Baruch, and welcome to the CW forum!

I've been using a software for many years now called Sketchup, which used to be a Google product but is now owned by Trimble. I've illustrated the first 5 volumes of TAJCD with that software. Here's the link to their site:

http://www.sketchup.com/

If you are somewhat accustomed to Autocad, Sketchup (SU) will be a bit different as it does not work on the basis of commands. That said it is a lot less complicated than Autocad and fairly intuitive to learn - make sure you have a mouse with a scroll wheel. There are also a ton of videos on Youtube to help you learn any aspect.

There is a free version of SU, called Sketchup Make, and there is a paid version, called Sketchup Pro. The free version will be sufficient for most everything we do here. The Pro version is $500, and frankly does not offer features which make it entirely worthwhile to spend the cash, if you ask me.

SU is great for conceptual modeling, but not so great at curved surfaces or high accuracy work. I've switched to using Rhino 3D for that sort of work. It operates more like Autocad, but is a lot less expensive and has extensive support. Here's their site:

https://www.rhino3d.com/

So far, I'm liking Rhino a lot as I demo their new Mac vesion, and would recommend it, however there are tons of CAD program options out there.

~C
Baruch
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Re: General 3D Sketches and Computer Software

Thu Jul 16, 2015 3:03 pm

Thanks, Chris I appreciate your help very much. I haven't had much luck learning Sketch Up. A lot of it is counter intuitive to me. I'll check out Rhino. There's probably an evaluation copy so I can it out. Again, thanks for your help.
durbien
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Re: General 3D Sketches and Computer Software

Thu Jul 16, 2015 3:23 pm

The Pro version of SU is useful if you have to make dimensioned drawings of your model, or if you have to interface with other CAD platforms. But I wouldn't call it particularly good at the drafting part of CAD. If you've used AutoCAD the Rhino interface is very similar.
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Chris Hall
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Re: General 3D Sketches and Computer Software

Thu Jul 16, 2015 3:41 pm

durbien wrote:The Pro version of SU is useful if you have to make dimensioned drawings of your model, or if you have to interface with other CAD platforms. But I wouldn't call it particularly good at the drafting part of CAD. If you've used AutoCAD the Rhino interface is very similar.
Those are the reasons I decided to purchase the Pro version, however in reality it hasn't really changed much from my end. If I send SU files to a CAM place as 'AutoCad' Files, they are sorta readable but they often have to re-draw them for me. Not exactly seamless. And I've never found it inconvenient to take dimensions directly off my drawings and print out what I need, though of course I am only producing these sketches for my own use so I don't need to spell everything out as you would when communicating to another worker.

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