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Bill, I'm using Intellicad, the open source "Autocad clone" and it has 3D
capability. I'm not familiar with the difference between this 3D
capability and "solid modeling" that you speak of.
I've done a simple RV-6 fuselage in 3D, with each bulkhead's corner
coordinates as shown on the Van's dwgs, from tail up to firewall. I added
the tailwheel and then the main landing gear - which took a LOT of searching
and trying and careful "checklisting" of how to get an "auxiliary view" to
locate the landing gear.
- Definitely a big "learning curve" to climb up!
David Carter
----- Original Message ----- From: "BillDube@killacycle.com" <billdube@killacycle.com>
To: "Rotary motors in aircraft" <flyrotary@lancaironline.net>
Sent: Monday, April 11, 2005 2:18 AM
Subject: [FlyRotary] Re: CAD instruction ...
At 10:58 PM 4/10/2005, you wrote:
>All,
>On somebody's recommendation I bought TurboCad last month. I assumed
>there would be some sort of tutorial or something. Evidently not. The
>local Tech school has a course I could enroll in but they use AutoCad
>(8). Are the packages similar enough that I could learn the basics in
>this course and proceed from there?
I think that enough folks on this list are interested in CAD
generally that this is worth an on-line response.
There are "solid modeling" type CAD programs and 2-D type CAD
programs. Unless you are doing wiring diagrams, PCB layout, or need to
work
with legacy drawings, solid modeling is probably what you want for
aircraft
design.
AutoDesk AutoCad is a 2-D program that has 3-D abilities.
AutoDesk
Inventor is a solid modeling program and is complete departure from
AutoCad. They have virtually nothing in common. (They have so little in
common that AutoDesk provides a copy of Mechanical Desktop (top of the
line
AutoCad) with each copy of Inventor so you can still do something with
your
old drawings.)
I know AutoCAD very well and it was not any help when I moved
over
to Inventor. It is that different.
Your main choices for solid modeling are SolidWorks, Inventor,
and
ProEngineer. There are others, but they are less popular than these main
three. If you are a student, you can get a very sweet deal on these. So
much so that it you would save money by enrolling in your local community
college just to get the discount on the software.
If you are comfortable with computers, it is likely that you will
be able to learn to use one of the solid modeler programs from the
tutorials that come with the program. It is faster to take a short course,
however. It will take a several weeks of study to learn it on your own.
I should add that one of my favorite parts of Inventor is the
"sheet metal" modeler. It is astounding. You tell it the type of metal and
the thickness and it figures out exactly how it will stretch when it
bends.
I have made really complicated sheet metal designs and they come out
perfectly. You can even drill the holes before you bend the sheet and they
will all line up. I just print out the unfolded sheet on the plotter,
stick
it to the sheet with double-sided tape, then cut, drill, and bend on the
dotted lines.
If you buy ANSYS DesignSpace, you have a direct link from the
solid model that you draw in Inventor to the ANSYS finite element
analysis.
Just click on the ANSYS icon in Inventor and your model is in ANSYS ready
for structural, thermal, magnetic, or electrical analysis. You can even
add
in computational fluid dynamics if you need that (for a price.)
Bill Dube <LED@Killacycle.com>
http://www.killacycle.com/Lights.htm
>> Homepage: http://www.flyrotary.com/
>> Archive: http://lancaironline.net/lists/flyrotary/List.html
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