Bling Posted July 13, 2024 Posted July 13, 2024 Yeah I pretty much did that too, not enough spare time as the learning curve isn't easy. I just use tinkercad and so far haven't needed more. 2 Quote
Bearded Baldy Posted July 13, 2024 Posted July 13, 2024 Will look into that one. I only really want to cad to play around with ideas. I normally bust out my old tech drawing gear whenever i need to build or design anything, moving to laptop based would be great so i can do shit at lunchbreaks. 1 Quote
rusty360 Posted July 13, 2024 Posted July 13, 2024 1 hour ago, Bearded Baldy said: Will look into that one. I only really want to cad to play around with ideas. I normally bust out my old tech drawing gear whenever i need to build or design anything, moving to laptop based would be great so i can do shit at lunchbreaks. Have you tried fusion360? 1 Quote
Bearded Baldy Posted July 14, 2024 Posted July 14, 2024 Nope. My decision of fuck that program extended to all programs until now. Talking to a customer the other day has sparked the interest back up though. Figured if he can suss cad out at 70ish, i should be able find something that works for me. 1 Quote
vk327 Posted July 14, 2024 Author Posted July 14, 2024 Fusion 360 is pretty easy to pickup, especially compared to autocad of old (i hadn't touched cad for nearly 10 years), has a few quirks but watch the basic how to videos on their website and you'll sus most of it, iv been able to sort it out well enough to get accurate 3d print prototypes sorted before I CNC machine them (downside for my wallet i now have a 3d printer) 5 Quote
rusty360 Posted July 14, 2024 Posted July 14, 2024 7 hours ago, Bearded Baldy said: Nope. My decision of fuck that program extended to all programs until now. Talking to a customer the other day has sparked the interest back up though. Figured if he can suss cad out at 70ish, i should be able find something that works for me. Fusion has some great step by step learning videos on you tube. Might help out! 1 Quote
Bearded Baldy Posted July 15, 2024 Posted July 15, 2024 Fusion is now all set up on the laptop, will start the learning tonight. Cheers guys. 7 Quote
Roman Posted July 15, 2024 Posted July 15, 2024 On 01/07/2024 at 18:39, Willdat? said: One of my favourite Fusion things is setting variables, so as you tweak a design it updates everything for you. Ie material of v1 was 3mm thick, everytime you're referencing that thickness in the design just call it 't', if in v27 you want to increase that to 6mm you can just change the value of 't' and your design is updated without having to tweak each dimension. Yeah this stuff is a double edged sword for sure. When I left school I worked as a draftsman for a structural steel company. We used Autocad with a plugin program called ProSteel. In 2003 or whatever it was pretty amazing stuff. You could just draw a wire line structure, then say which type of beam each piece is, and it would just draw them in place. Then any connections which were HERA designs were already loaded into the program, so you just had to pick which one and it would automagic everything. So, if you did something like extend one of the beams, everything else would juggle around to suit and it would be sweet. So something else that I found really handy, is that when you need to draw a non standard flange out the side of a beam. You can just tell it to put stiffener plates in, and then extend one of them out and add bolt holes. Too easy! Which is great until I found out that at seemingly random intervals, the entire model would validate itself. So that stiffener plate that you modified 3 weeks ago, and stretched it out? Well fuck you, now its a stiffener plate again. You can imagine how my week went, when the first time this "feature" was noticed was when a few hundred tonnes of steel turns up on site without any flanges... good times, good times 4 4 5 Quote
Bearded Baldy Posted July 22, 2024 Posted July 22, 2024 Fusion is 500 times easier than freecad! My laptop is the current problem, is 4 years old so likes to take its time. Coupled with average satellite internet just means i am going slowly. Definately recommend especially as it is free. 2 Quote
Bearded Baldy Posted January 7 Posted January 7 After not using it for a few months then needing to design something i fired fusion up on the weekend and tried to nut some things out. All the learning vids have yankee accents which grates my ears something fierce. So gave up on them and just started playing around a bit. Took a few hours but i turned this.... To this.... Then i decided i wanted the fairlead to be higher, got a bit cocky, which evolved into...... Sending the file to a local sheetmetal shop for a quote tomorrow. No doubt they will let let me know if i cocked it up. Otherwise, i highly recommend fusion non commercial for a pretty straightfoward CAD system that even i can learn. 6 Quote
rusty360 Posted January 7 Posted January 7 13 minutes ago, Bearded Baldy said: After not using it for a few months then needing to design something i fired fusion up on the weekend and tried to nut some things out. All the learning vids have yankee accents which grates my ears something fierce. So gave up on them and just started playing around a bit. Took a few hours but i turned this.... To this.... Then i decided i wanted the fairlead to be higher, got a bit cocky, which evolved into...... Sending the file to a local sheetmetal shop for a quote tomorrow. No doubt they will let let me know if i cocked it up. Otherwise, i highly recommend fusion non commercial for a pretty straightfoward CAD system that even i can learn. Great work! Just a couple of things I learnt the hard way. But you may have already done. Always send a good dimensions on a drawing of critical folded sizes, I just do this in fusion - use the finished part to make the drawing and I put some 3d shaded models in that drawing to help show fold directions. I'm picking you have made that as a flat pattern and exported as a dxf? 3 Quote
Bearded Baldy Posted January 7 Posted January 7 Yes...... Sketched, into sheet metal, flange, bend, then hit convert to flat pattern and export as dxf. Does it automatically put all the dimensions on there? Otherwise i am very very lost. Quote
rusty360 Posted January 7 Posted January 7 1 hour ago, Bearded Baldy said: Yes...... Sketched, into sheet metal, flange, bend, then hit convert to flat pattern and export as dxf. Does it automatically put all the dimensions on there? Otherwise i am very very lost. Awesome. No it doesn't but they are very easy to add. The folders normally just like to know were the important sizes are ie flange outside to flange outside. 1 Quote
Bearded Baldy Posted January 7 Posted January 7 Well shit. Guess i have one more annoying video to watch as i couldn't figure out how to add them in. Too late for the brain to work properly. Quote
440bbm Posted January 7 Posted January 7 when you are flat patterning, you need to ensure that the material bend radius are correct for the material thicknesses and the vees.. otherwise the tab lengths are going to be either too long or too short if they put the bend in the right place, or, the bend will be in the wrong place depending how you dimension it / how clever the folder operators are. its a bit of a cunt. also, flat patterns dont typically want to be dimensioned everywhere as they will need to delete them out of the file for the machine to plot the cut path. you only want 1 dimesion on it, thats usually an external size so they can ensure the scale is correct. it pays to also insert the correct scale ratio if its not drawn 1:1 so they can easily scale it correctly their end instead of working it out. when you supply a flat pattern, ensure you supply a correctly dimensioned finished drawing with it. so they can see the final detail and typically easy ( er ) to fix any of your fuckups lol ive downloaded fusion but not got a chance to try it yet. 3 1 Quote
ThePog Posted January 7 Posted January 7 A good k value to use if in doubt is 0.38 But a drawing with desired fold lengths goes a long way. Serious sheetmetal places will just take the solid model and work out all the bend stuff in house. 2 1 Quote
rusty360 Posted January 7 Posted January 7 I've checked a fair few of the factory bend factors on fusion 360 against the recommended specs for OSCS and they were all pretty good. I've never had a scale problem when exporting the flat pattern dxf on fusion yet. How I've had some dramas with a normal dxf for some reason, be a setting somewhere. Quote
Corbie Posted January 7 Posted January 7 Haven't had much of a play with sheet metal stuff but fusion has a pretty cool drawing tool which will auto produce drawings with dimensions for a part. Export it as a pdf and send along with the dxf. Not sure If it's avaliable with the free version though. /Ling? 1 Quote
rusty360 Posted January 7 Posted January 7 This farker took some working out. Compound angles and shit. 6 1 Quote
rusty360 Posted January 7 Posted January 7 5 minutes ago, Corbie said: Haven't had much of a play with sheet metal stuff but fusion has a pretty cool drawing tool which will auto produce drawings with dimensions for a part. Export it as a pdf and send along with the dxf. Not sure If it's avaliable with the free version though. /Ling? Will need to have a looky at this! Quote
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