CAD

[David Bess]

I would love to learn CAD any advice on how to get started would help ;please keep in mind I am no computer genius( not that I am stupid just 60; wrong generation), there are so meany different CAD's out there , an easy to use one,I would like to try my hand at design and scaling up or down existing plans.

Thanks

[Martyn K]

I don't think that there is an 'easy' option, all worthwhile CAB systems have a certain complexity, that is what makes them so good, you just need to be patient and be prepared to spend time learning.

I use Siemens SolidEdge, a free 2D package that can also read and export DXF format (Autocad industry standard files). I found it easier to get to grips with than AutoCad, but that is purely a personal observation.

SolidEdge has a number of tutorials with it, if yoy go down this path - follow the tutorials, you will get up to speed much quicker.

Good luck

Martyn

[Andy Green]

I use Devcad. This has some great options if you want to redraw old plans, you can resize and use images to draw over.

As Martyn says - there is no easy route, except patients and a good book.

Andy

[StarLoc FiveStar Adhesives]

Try Draftsite , lots of people are using it as its very very similar to autocad, but free, and in some ways easier to use than autocad

Edited By StarLoc FiveStar Adhesives on 07/03/2012 22:26:29

[Mowerman]

Why not check with your local adult education people, they may be doing courses.

I have a copy of Turbocad (came free with one of the PC mags) This includes instructions but I have never got very far into it. I think a proper course with a teacher would be easier.

Good luck

[David Bess]

Yes Mowerman that is probably the best way to go ,I will look into it. I tried Draftsite but they assume some knowlage of useing a CAD , I will loook at Devad ,Thanks for all your input

[Danny Fenton]

I managed to do a specific model designing course over the tinterweb with Gary Hethcoat, who runs "Wings on the web"

He sells the session video and audio files if you are interested. It was all based on Turbocad.

There is a sample download, which I think was the entire first session, but it is 127Mb so don't download if you are on a slow link.

Gary's CAD Course

It certainly taught me enough to design a model in 2D at least.

Cheers

Danny

[David Bess]

Now that looks good Danny specific model course is exactly what I need .I will down load an see, Thanks

[Ian Jones]

I've got TurboCAD somewhere . Recently though, mainly through contact with Martyn K I've found myself with a number of CAD programs and having just had a quick glimpse at DraftSight that looks quite reasonable too.

On top of that Andy Green has suggested DevCad which has features just for us but is not free.

Oh where's it going to end .

There's plenty out there it seems now which one shall I learn first .

[Mike Etheridge 1]

I was trained to use 'Microstation' CAD which was favoured by Architects. However Auto-Cad stole the market by offering colleges free software provided they introduced courses to teach it. Microstaion was much easier to use than AutoCad but is less often used in offices today. Eventually Micorstation and Auto Cad got together and produced new versions so that you could open the same drawings with both systems. Both offer the facility to save drawings in various formats and as mention earlier the 'dxf format' can be opened by both systems. Typical of software companies they are always updating their software and charging companies a fortune for licencies.

In our office that used Microstation we were somewhat spoilt as the Microstation expert produced drawing outlines to scale so that if you wanted an A1 or A0 drawing for sake of argument then you just chose the appropriate outline. The Microstation scale you then applied to your drawings produced no problems. However on Autocad drawings I think you normally have to adopt a 1:1 ratio and then scale the drawing to whatever you want. At my last office I was not as an engineer allowed to do CAD drawings as they had strict rules on line thicknesses and what they could represent and there was no flexibility.

I would investigate some of the market cheaper options and also try the Microstation free download which will offer practice with the CAD tools but will not allow you to produce drawings.

Any drawing you do produce would have to be saved on a disk and taken or E-mailed to someone witha plotter. There is a printing shop near Avicraft in Bromley that have the facilities.

MJE

[David Bess]

Danny I downloaded the first free lesson and watched about 30min ( I should be working ) it looks very good ,I will watch the whole thing later ,looks like just what I am after ,what version of autocad did you use ,there are quite a few to chose from . Thanks for that Danny

[Danny Fenton]

Hi David, we all bought the latest cheap version which was around £20 However I quickly went for the full PRO package as it was something I wanted to do, I use it quite a bit for all sorts of things from scaling drawings to just designing small scale items.

You have to seriously think about whether you want to do this, the investment in time is very high. Not just for the courses but the figuring out why something doesn't do what it should, that can take days and indeed sometimes you need the ability to ask somebody. If you buy the sessions from Gary, you get access to the Google Group to post questions. We all are in that user group and can sometimes help. But remember we aren't using it very often so have to go through a learning process everytime you fire it up. I used to use offsets all the time but cannot make it work on anything but circles now

The basic software isn't very pricey but it isn't free. If you are serious then that shouldn't matter too much. The better packages all do similar things, and once you have grasped the concepts you can move on to something more powerful. Having said that Turbocad is pretty good, and has some nice features not found in more pricey solutions.

Probably the most important thing I can suggest is learn on the package that you KNOW you can get help.

Cheers

Danny

[Erfolg]

David

A down loaded lesson is a start, not necessarily the easiest though. The main problem is that there is no one to ask, easily.

CAD lessons are possibly the best.

The other issue is industry standards. When I worked the market leader by a country mile was Autocad, for 2D systems. By far the biggest sector of the market.

3D tends to be specialist. Often used in conjunction with assigning additional attributes, such as mass, heat transfer coefficients etc., to allow many other evaluations to take place. In general not applicable to our modelling.

Sticking with 2D. There is generally "World Coordinates" everything located relative to a fixed point. Often used for Plant and equipment type drawings.

The other, possibly more usual for us is "Relative co-ordinates". That is relating the next line etc relative to some line or point, feature et., on your drawing.

The other useful idea, is that lines are often positioned by using the "off-set", duplicate tools.

Other useful ideas are the snap tools, snap end of line, mid point and many more.

Although I can use some CAD systems, I have never considered the method of drawing appropriate to my modelling,. I am never going to have a laser cut kit made from extracted elements from a CAD drawing. I find a rubber is the easiest way of altering a design. Nor do I need the autdimensioning or accuracy that is a feature of CAD.

CAD works well commercially, in that variations of a drawing is pretty easy, changes and printing of a modified design is quicker than starting from scratch, plus a record of who did what and when can be traced. CAD drawings are not produced quicker than pencil and paper, for the first issue from my experience. It is the changes and bolt on software packages where the savings can be made. I have had many promises in the past of what CAD can be delivered, experience suggests for simple drawings, such as a model, little if anything is gained.

But for personal gratification, go for it. Just as Computers in the early days, in principle you could do anything with one, only now many, many years later, can we really enjoy without thought, the capability of computers. It was or is the same with CAD, you need to do a lot of work.

For me it is Lining paper, a blunt pencil,plastic rule, rubber. Although I do have Turbocad (although I cannot find it) on the machine somewhere.

[Danny Fenton]

I would agree in the most part, but when you do make the leap to CAD you can open up a world of modelling that I defy you to do on paper easily.

This is mine and Ton's Apache

Cheers

Danny

[David Bess]

Erflog thank you for that post ,I understand what you are saying ,it's not that easy and will take time , the lessons are live ,every one can ask questions of the instructor ,and from what I have watched it will give me a good start, though I agree with you about paper and pencil , I am a cabinet maker and often get a photo from a customer and they say this is what I want ,so I have to scale it and draw it all out on a plan with a cut list and I can't see any reason to use a CAD for that(a rubber is quicker) , I just want to try my hand and see what it's all about and I think it may be useful; new skills keep the brain sharp

[Danny Fenton]

Hi David, the lessons were live, I think if you listen to session 2 you will here a Brit asking daft questions that's me.

These are recordings of a live session. So you cannot interact. If you have questions you will have to post them on the Google Group.

Sorry if I misled. I do think they were very clear however. For the price you get to watch hours of tuition solely about model aircraft design.

Cheers

Danny

[Erfolg]

Danny

I think with respect to drawing with a pencil, you can do anything that a 2D Cad system can do.

With an experienced CAD operator, some complex designs can be achieved with some ease, that is if you are both skilled and knowledgeable as a CAD operator. All of which takes time and much use.

Your drawing looks like a "wire frame" 3D system. or is it a pseudo 3D, 2D package? A package of this type will require David to work with x,y, z co-ordinates, further complicating the learning process. Even if the packages are much more friendly than I remember them.

I was just thinking, much of engineering drawings are essentially straight lines, constant radius curves. Many aircraft have complex curves, using "Bezier functions" to produce the complex reversed, changing radius forms, achieved with handles etc., to pull the line to a satisfactory shape.. It can be much easier to draw a line with a piece of flexible balsa, some pins etc. Also you know, balsa will actually take up the shape drawn.

Nothing against CAD by the way. Particularly if you like the intellectual challenge. I am not sure that it should be anything other than a trivial part of modelling, model aero planes.

[Danny Fenton]

Erfolg, I couldn't agree more with your last statement, while I was getting engrossed in CAD nothing tangible got built in the workshop. Same thing happened when I got my lathe. We have to remember what we want to achieve, and my end game is to build models, not become a CAD specialist or even a machinist. This was why I was warning David about the investment in time, you get sucked in

The package used for the Apache was Turbocad for the 2D then Rhino for the 3D. I had to go to 3D because the curves needed checking/correcting. Anyway you will have read all this in the mag

Cheers

Danny

[David Bess]

Danny I did understand the lesson I was watching was a taped rerun but I assumed there were still live for new student's or has the course stopped , like you I totally agree with Erflog about what can be done with pencil , paper and a bit of imagination and ingenuity , everything I need to do in 2D can be done by hand ,It is still nice to learn new things even if it's just a basic understanding of them

[Danny Fenton]

hi David, I am afraid they were a one off. I keep meaning to go through them again one day and write notes.

if you want to dabble in rhinoceros its is a free download to try, you are restricted to 25 saves before you have to buy it. Good for a play.

Cheers

Danny

[julian]

David,

I use Autocad because that is what we use at work in our joinery drawing office.I dont know if it's better or worse than other cad programes because it's the only one that I've used.

I liked using a traditional drawing board but with drawings now emailed instead of sent by post,we have had to conform!

I went to college for one evening a week for 24 weeks to learn but,the speed and efficiency is acheived by using it every day.

As your opening post said-you would love to learn cad.Your local college would be a good place to start but it would,as has already been pointed out,be Autocad because it seems to have become the industry standard.It's not cheap though if you just want to "muck about with."

[Erfolg]

Although it is not essential to learn to use Autocad, it makes a lot of sense.

Most commercial systems have many similarities with Autocad. It also reminds me that there is a general convergence of methodologies on Autocad. In many ways it is similar to the increasing similarities with programming languages, they may have started of in different places, yet with time fro the users perspective, they start to have the same features. One thing I did notice, is that the most software packages started to look and feel like Windows products, with pull down menus and layouts. Very different to the packages I started with. These required sets of co-ordinates to be typed in, in combination with commands which described what to do with them. No image until you complied the data, and then a graphical output would be generated.

Also, if you want to print a file out, every print shop will print dwg files. Some of the other print formats will not be supported or very rarely used by the print machine operators.

In the work place, there are a lot of commercial advantages with Autocad. Additional bolt on packages are available at economic prices, such as Isopipe, which you know work, support files (catalogues) can be additionally purchased and that operators are available without additional training. You know what you get, what the bottom line costs are.

For the amateur user some of these thing are not important, to commercial applications vital. The printing issue is though, as not many of us will have a plotter or even want to provide the space or pay the cost of buying one.

It is hard to believe now, that I also was keen to introduce CAD packages. They were certainly were fun, possibly still are, enabling all those things you dreamt of, being realised. In my time the promise was there, never completely delivered, just a few more hills to climb and we will be there. Yet I did see a lot of progress, never got to he top of the hill.

Have a go at CAD, just stop and ask, is this what I want, or is it building, or maybe flying models, that is more important to me. Just be certain why you are doing what you are doing, and where you hope to get to.

[David Bess]

Julian I will probably get turbocad and play with that to see if I have any aptitude for it ,its cheap and not much to waste if I don't get on with it Autocad is far too much even the cheapest is 95 quid if I like turbo I may upgrade to Autocad but that will be a good while yet (suck it and see) ,So are you a joiner Julian and are you busy things are slack here ,I wish things would pick up , could do with more work

[Danny Fenton]

not wishing to be argumentative but as printing has been raised, there is a neat feature in turbocad, it may be in others packages I don't know, but you can print your drawings on a normal A4 printer. it draws crop marks in the corners of each page allowing you to paste/tape stuff together. i use it all the time.

tonight i needed a plan view of the radiator scoop for my Brian Taylor Hurricane. scanned the section of the bentley drawing, enlarged to the size i needed and pressed print. 2 minutes work. however as Erfolg states it took some learning/playing to get this proficient.

Cheers

Danny

[Mike Etheridge 1]

As indicated above if anyone is looking to take up CAD seriously then Autocad is the most popular / commonly used system used today and the system I would also recommend. In 2001 a number of us were made redundant from a local authority architects office. The managers explained to us that we all had enough expertise to get other jobs in the private sector. We pointed out that we were Bentley Microstation trained and that Autocad was the most popular system in use, so we were sent on a week's course on Autocad at a local college. Well we even managed a bit of 3D work at the college but spent a lot of time telling the college lecturer in jest that Bentley Microstation was better and easier to use.

As I mentioned before the two systems were eventually made to 'talk to each other' . This happened in 2003 when Bentley produced Microsation V8 which could open drawings from Autocad 2003 and vice versa. A number of the advantages of Microstation were lost to align it with Autocad and there were discrepancies especially with wording translating from one system to the other.

A useful tool in Microstation is the fence tool which can set round a particular detail on a drawing to print it out on an A4 printer, something I have not been able to do on Autocad.

The use of CAD in offices has led to the establishment of CAD managers and as I mentioned before the exclusion of some personel practicing CAD.

I have to agree its much quicker to do drawings by hand as I used to with Rotring pens on Irish Linen. However correcting a linen drawing in the same spot more than twice with an electric eraser often left you with a hole in the drawing. With the construction of full size aircraft CAD systems must have tremendous advantages especially in instances where works including some of the aircraft design is sub-contracted. You can send CAD drawings by E-mail anywhere in the world in seconds. I assume outlines are sent as 'X-refs' that cannot be altered other than by the originators and have to be 'imported by the sub-contractors'. Engines and all ancillaries I imagine would then be added on agreed 'drawing layers' in agreed colours I guess.

My last office now works with Auto-Cad 2012-you have to keep up it seems and keep paying the licence fees. Get behind with the systems and do not practice and you are stuffed!

MJE