Free CAD program to design (simple) robot bodies
Mightor
Posts: 338
Hey there peeps,
I am looking to make a mini-sumo robot body out of Plexiglas material but I am not sure if using 5mm blocked paper and a pencil is the way to go here. I have no budget worth speaking of so anything commercial is out. Are there any good free alternatives out there that people have used and found to be good? I'll resort to paper if I have to but that's just sooooo 4000BC.
Gr,
Mightor
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| What the world needs is more geniuses with humility, there are so few of us left.
| "Wait...if that was a compliment, why is my fist of death tingling?"
| - Alice from Dilbert
I am looking to make a mini-sumo robot body out of Plexiglas material but I am not sure if using 5mm blocked paper and a pencil is the way to go here. I have no budget worth speaking of so anything commercial is out. Are there any good free alternatives out there that people have used and found to be good? I'll resort to paper if I have to but that's just sooooo 4000BC.
Gr,
Mightor
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| What the world needs is more geniuses with humility, there are so few of us left.
| "Wait...if that was a compliment, why is my fist of death tingling?"
| - Alice from Dilbert
Comments
-Phil
www.alibre.com/xpress/software/alibre-design-xpress.asp
Also try and "google" feeware CAD. There are a few other options out there.
Also, if you use CAD at work, most of the licenses allow you to load the software at home. You should make sure that your company policy, as well as the software license, allows this.
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John R.
Click here to see my Nomad Build Log
Gr,
Mightor
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| What the world needs is more geniuses with humility, there are so few of us left.
| "Wait...if that was a compliment, why is my fist of death tingling?"
| - Alice from Dilbert
Hm... one thing CAD software does make easier is weight estimates. Anywho, paper and pencil may be old tech, but they still work just fine.
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Lunch cures all problems! have you had lunch?
If paper was good enough for the Egyptians to build their pyramids with mm precision, I guess I'll manage designing a 10x10cm robot with it.
Gr,
Mightor
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| What the world needs is more geniuses with humility, there are so few of us left.
| "Wait...if that was a compliment, why is my fist of death tingling?"
| - Alice from Dilbert
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| What the world needs is more geniuses with humility, there are so few of us left.
| "Wait...if that was a compliment, why is my fist of death tingling?"
| - Alice from Dilbert
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- Stephen
i got turbocad deluxe v11 off ebay (brandnew) for $11 including shipping. i use it to draw projects for my cnc router.... for· the price /power i dont think it can be beat.
dan
ps it has the ability to draw house plans too, sometimes a good justifcation
Sawmiller, as for using the house excuse, haha, I am not sure it would fly. We own an apartment right now and the chance of us owning a house, let alone designing and building one in the next couple of years is slim to none [noparse]:)[/noparse] Thanks for trying though.
I will, however, check out EBay to see if I can find TurboCAD. Are these kinds of programs hard to use? I have never used a CAD program tbh.
Gr,
Mightor
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| What the world needs is more geniuses with humility, there are so few of us left.
| "Wait...if that was a compliment, why is my fist of death tingling?"
| - Alice from Dilbert
Also, cadcourse.net is selling TurboCAD Deluxe v14 for $99, and it comes with a training CD for 2D CAD. The CD is only available in the non-upgrade editions, so purchasing an older version via ebay won't get you the training cd, but you could get the v14 Deleuxe upgrade for $50.
There is also a 2D only version of v14 called TurboCAD Designer v14, which can be found in some retail stores (in the US), and a few places online. It retails for $40, but it also has the same training CD as the deluxe version.
The eMachineShop website looks like a clearing house for multiple service providers. I doubt that they do any machining themselves. That said, there's no reason to assume they don't have service providers in Europe.
I looked at several of their tutorials this evening and came away rather impressed. Most design work is done in two steps: a CAD drawing, followed by the CAM post-processing. This can make the CAM part very difficult, since so much has to be inferred from the original drawing. What's neat about their approach is that the CAD and CAM steps are blended together. As you create the drawing, what you're actually creating are the machining steps required to produce the desired shape. This makes the CAM part (which you never see) much easier for the service providers and, consequently, less expensive.
I used to produce my own printed circuit boards. But internet-based service providers have rendered that a senseless endeavor — even for one-off protos. I still own a CNC mill, but I now wonder how much longer it will make sense to machine my own parts!
-Phil
Gr,
Mightor
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| What the world needs is more geniuses with humility, there are so few of us left.
| "Wait...if that was a compliment, why is my fist of death tingling?"
| - Alice from Dilbert
It IS fun to play with, though...
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Don't visit my new website...
Go here to see some examples of what it can do:
3D Warehouse
edit: spelling and such
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- Rick
Post Edited (RDL2004) : 8/2/2007 11:18:15 AM GMT
Gr,
Mightor
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| What the world needs is more geniuses with humility, there are so few of us left.
| "Wait...if that was a compliment, why is my fist of death tingling?"
| - Alice from Dilbert
For those of you using Google Sketch Up, are you using any of the bonus packs?
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Whit+
"We keep moving forward, opening new doors, and doing new things, because we're curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths." - Walt Disney
I find that 99% of the stuff on 3dwharehouse is junk. you have to pay but I prefer getting models from sites like www.formfonts.com
if you end up using sketchup, Id invest in a few plugins at www.smustard.com also if you had any question about how to use sketchup feel free to ask.
It's on my to do list to make a lot of the common of the shelf robotics components, batteries, servos, parallax modules. so when designing a bot Its easy to know if a part will fit and how it will look. I'd love to make this a community effort.
good luck.
Whit, I do use the bonus packs but not that much. I use sketchup for work and that's where I really use them.
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A complex design is the sign of an inferior designer. - Jamie Hyneman, Myth Buster
CoCreate OneSpace Modeling Personal Edition (PE)
which I can recommend to you.
Check out: www.CoCreate.com/free
Best Regards,
>CAD-User
An old program that I have used in the past is called DRAFT Choice... The version I have is really old .. version 1.51a (<- read old DOS program), and I would probably still use it if it would allow me to print to a USB printer.
One day perhaps I'll try to come up with a workaround.· For now, I still use it every now and then mostly·to work an idea out of my head.
What was nice, is that I could print out an exact scale on a piece of paper and 77-spray (<- Spray adhesive) the paper to whatever material I wanted to use... Wood, plastic, metal, etc. Then it was off to the band-saw, grinder, drill-press, etc.
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Beau Schwabe
IC Layout Engineer
Parallax, Inc.
Try the following to get at your USB printer:
* Turn on File and Print Sharing.
* Share the printer on the USB port.
* Connect to the printer via the following command line:
net use lpt1: \\MyComputer\PrinterShareName
I've used this trick with several types of programs that didn't support newer printer connections and/or "normal" print connections.
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John R.
Click here to see my Nomad Build Log