I will add that I am currently in my third qtr of community college taking AutoDesk, after 2 qtrs of AutoCAD.  These are not trivial programs, and not designed for quick and easy solutions.  Dimensioning, for example, has some 70 variables that control sizing, scales, text placement, height, style, etc....  I have a complete copy of AutoDesk which will run for 180 days and cost $33 and was included with a textbook.  Installation ran 1 hr. with 2 auto reboots!
   I am not trying to discourage you, but just make you aware of how much time is involved working with these programs.  In my working drawings class the students that are drawing by hand are still finishing before the "computer-aided" students, of course, that is 2-D drawings.  It may be like welding and painting, find a guy that does it every day and pay him(her).
   I'm off to school to fight with the plotter.
Kevin Lane  Portland, OR
e-mail-> n3773@comcast.net

----- Original Message ----- From: "BillDube@killacycle.com" <billdube@killacycle.com>
To: "Rotary motors in aircraft" <flyrotary@lancaironline.net>
Sent: Monday, April 11, 2005 12:18 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

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