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Yooper
Apr 30, 2012


NewFatMike posted:

The thing that separates good from great designers is how little breaks when you have to change something way upstream!


This is what really makes a person productive. When I first started I made some lovely stuff, moved one component, and watched it all fall apart. The real difficult part is understanding why you shouldn't project that hole or reference that corner when it seems like the easier thing to do. You look like an amazing wizard when someone comes in and says "Yah, so just move all of that poo poo another 3 inches." and all you have to do is extrude one end and it's all perfect.

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Yooper
Apr 30, 2012


Ambrose Burnside posted:

Yeah, this is the real benefit of ~parametric design~. come for easily iterating variants on a core design, stay
for the broad resilience and adaptivity it adds to all your work.

That and importing from Mcmaster / parts warehouse. Half the time I ignore other sources because I can't bother to 1. go to website, 2. spec out the poo poo, 3. sign up for an account, 4. re-spec out the poo poo, 5. download the poo poo, 6. unpack it and realize I hosed something up, return to 4. Then deal with a sales call when I just need to know if it fits.

Yooper
Apr 30, 2012


I'm gonna join the EAA and get my sweet Solidworks license. Day job is a Fusion shop, anyone have a good resource/YouTube personality to get me rolling?

Yooper
Apr 30, 2012


Argh, gently caress me.



Joints gone wild. I guess I won't do a bellows like that.

Yooper
Apr 30, 2012


What's the goto portable shareable file format? I'm working on a machine project and one supplier is using Solidworks, another is using SolidEdge. IGES? Step?

Yooper
Apr 30, 2012


NewFatMike posted:

If you're not editing, it'll be great.

In this case it's one piece of a larger machine bolting up to another suppliers assembly. All they need is bolt locations and poo poo. So I should be good!

Yooper
Apr 30, 2012


biracial bear for uncut posted:

:same: gently caress Titans of CNC Academy.

What is so lovely about it? I'm not familiar with Titan other than seeing him on some MSC catalog.

Yooper
Apr 30, 2012


DaveSauce posted:

What is a good resource for free 3D models of stuff? I'm talking about basic widgets like toilets/sinks/tables/chairs etc. Household sort of junk, obviously not needing to be high quality, just good enough for general layouts and whatnot. Also stuff like generic fasteners would be nice, but I suppose I could grab those off McMaster or something.

Preferably in generic formats that FreeCAD can take (IIRC STEP and IGES)... last thing I tried to import I ended up having to run through SolidWorks first. I'm sure this has been asked/answered but I looked around and wasn't able to find anything.

I hate googling stuff like this because it's inevitably 1 good link hidden among a thousand scam sites.

GrabCad

https://grabcad.com/library?page=1&time=all_time&sort=recent&query=couch

Yooper
Apr 30, 2012


Anyone got a CAM recommendation for turning? I'm running Fusion at the moment and it's OK, but curious what the next step is. No live tooling (yet).

I'm assuming MasterCAM?

Yooper
Apr 30, 2012


NewFatMike posted:

Fusion makes it really easy to make assemblies, but makes it really hard for a novice to make assemblies well.

I use Fusion just often enough on complex assemblies to be able to do it, but not often enough to get really good at it. I'm getting better, but I've absolutely run into situations where it was easier to tear it all down and start from scratch than deal with the ghost dependencies in a hole pattern or something. A style guide, or some such, would be awesome.

Yooper
Apr 30, 2012


Kaiser Schnitzel posted:

I'm a bit frustrated in Fusion, probably because I'm a dummy. I'm trying to draw a workbench, and am having some problems with components and I think the browser. Here's the thing:

I've got 5 boards, which are all copies (made with the 'Move' tool) of the first board. I would like the two vertical boards to be named 'Apron Boards,' but when I change their name, it changes the name of all of them. Is there any way to make a clean copy of a component that isn't still connected back to the component it is a duplicate of? Like can I just copy it somehow to gently caress around with and not have it change other ones? Similarly, is there a way to move things up a level in the directory? If I go to the body a component is made of, click that and try to make a new component, it is always nested under the original component the body belonged to, which isn't what I want. I want new, clean, unencumbered components that I can make into whole different assemblies!


I think I should not be using components for every single board and just use bodies instead, and have the top, the aprons, legs whatever be components made up of multiple bodies representing boards. The reason I have made them all components is that I would like to use the 'Parts List' tool to generate a cut list-as far as I know that's the only way to get fusion to spit out something like a cut list and it only looks at components, not bodies. Because of that, I'm making each board it's own component labelled with it's dimensions. Is there a better way to do this?


Is there a good 'you're a dummy that is just now colliding with fusion/3d modelling, START HERE' youtube series or soemthing? NYC CNC is great but there stuff seems more focused on CAM which is still a ways away for me, and thye don't seem to have a basics playlist. They do offer a paid program on their website-anyone ever tried that?

You can copy a component and then "Paste New". It will then be independent.



I've run into issues if you just have a body and not components, specifically you can't do joints with bodies, but you can with components.

Yooper
Apr 30, 2012


Leandros posted:

Due to the size of the print, I'm not having much success getting it to print with nicely meshing gears, and am now reconsidering the mechanism.
This was already idea 2.0, with a screw thread that reverses handedness midway being another, but my FDM printer cannot create nearly as smooth a surface for that. I'm not trained as engineer or anything so don't know if there are standard reference works for simple mechanisms like above? Any tips would be welcome :)

There are mechanical motion books, https://www.amazon.com/507-Mechanical-Movements-Henry-Brown/dp/1614275181/, for example. There's a 4 or 5 volume set of mechanical motions from the Soviet era that was recently linked in the Blacksmithing / Metalworking thread. I can't seem to track down a link to the books right now but they are pretty cool.

Yooper
Apr 30, 2012



gently caress yah.

Yooper
Apr 30, 2012


biracial bear for uncut posted:

EDIT: Yes I know it's possible to start in the Drawing part of Solidworks and just draw whatever (and eventually take that data and make a model later if you want to) but that's a whole different course and a much clunkier way to do poo poo than learning how to model.



Excuse me sir, the drafting class is down the hall.

My grandfather was at an auction 10 years ago and called me saying he bought me a blueprint plotter. So I'm thinking a digital "plotter", instead he arrives with gallon jugs of chemicals, light boxes, large trays, and then I realized it was actually for making "blue" prints.

Yooper
Apr 30, 2012


biracial bear for uncut posted:

This was back in 2016, but still applies.

I can't believe they still market and sell it.

For production parts we use Draftsight almost exclusively. But we strictly do grinding and plating with a touch of lathe work. On top of that we normally re-draw the customers prints to our own internal drawing so that they sign off on only the needed stuff. So for us a 3d model would be overkill. Now for any tooling, maintenance, machine layout, I use 360.

2d cad has a place, but it's becoming the niche, and not the norm.

Yooper
Apr 30, 2012


armorer posted:

What is it, for those of us not logged in?

Yooper
Apr 30, 2012


A Proper Uppercut posted:

I was always under the impression that edrawings was more of a viewing/publishing tool than a full fledged cad system, am I wrong there? Checking out the website it's a bunch of marketing bullshit jargon I don't understand.

We use Draftsight, also a Solidworks product, for our 2D poo poo instead of Autocad. No idea how it handles more complex poo poo, we tend to use it for simpler stuff.

Yooper
Apr 30, 2012


Kaiser Schnitzel posted:

Building actual cabinetry designs out with joints etc. I'm not aware of any plug in that will take those parts and try to nest/optimize them onto a sheet of plywood. I'd love something that will just generate a reliable cutlist without me having to put all the dimensions in the part name, tbh.

There are some plugins for Sketchup that do this if all of your cuts are right angles. I think some are designed to export into CutListPro or some such program. I didn't pursue it as all of the cuts on my most recent project are not right angles and it's like $2,500 a sheet so I did it all like a giant stupid jigsaw puzzle in Draftsight.

Yooper
Apr 30, 2012


NewFatMike posted:

I’d much rather see an ad for your website than Practical Machinist threads from 2012 that never resolved trying to find some of these things.

Practical Machinist is the worst forum ever. Makes GBS look functional.

Interesting, moderate, but not difficult question answered by...

1. "It's not that hard, but why would I tell you?"
2. "Lol, you young kids can't figure anything out! In my day we did it on a sliderule..."
3. "gently caress off, u prbly aint evn in the US. Lik im gunna tel u."

Yooper
Apr 30, 2012


honda whisperer posted:

One place I wish fusion spat out canned cycles is for the lathes. All our lathe guys have way more experience with and prefer the way it's done at the control. 90% of the time it's fine but one has live tooling and can mill and another is a twin spindle multi axis with live tooling.

Every time milling comes up its a mild pain to copy paste the cam gcode into the middle of their program.

I think it does? But if I recall right it's finicky as to features, you can ask it to make canned cycles but if there is something outside the scope of the canned cycle it just won't do it, nor will it tell you why.

Yooper
Apr 30, 2012


cruft posted:

Does anyone here work with physical gizmos enough to have advice on this? I might try printing it sideways to see if it runs smoother, or maybe just sanding the pieces would be enough. But I'm hoping that someone who doesn't blow goats when it comes to mechanical design can toss me a few pointers on how to improve this.

Thanks!

You're trying to get a slip fit which will be challenging with short throw switches. Another potential difficulty is roundness of the two parts. A good, non-3d printed example is an industrial push button. They have a bore with a fairly tight fitting, smooth, shaft. We have high cycle machines at work and even with a ton of lithium grease that bore wears out and the button sticks. There are a lot of places that friction or poor fit can seize up your mechanism. One spot I'd look at is adding a second tab for support so keep it from moving about the axis of motion. I'd do it on each of the switch arms.

Yooper
Apr 30, 2012


Sockser posted:

Am I blind/stupid or does Fusion not store values for move features?

I moved a body by some amount in the x and z axes
I needed to adjust this later
I go to edit the feature and ... every box is set to 0
I can now set the z to 1mm and it'll move it by 1mm, but if I go to edit it again, it's showing 0, and setting z to 1 will move it an additional 1mm in that direction

Did I do something wrong at some point or is this the intended behavior?

I'm seeing the same thing. If I move it as a "Component" it doesn't even appear in my history bar. But if I move it as a "Body" it does, but everything is still set at zero. I don't recall this from the past, but I could be wrong...

Yooper
Apr 30, 2012


honda whisperer posted:

AFAIK just moving stuff doesn't create an action in the time line. But if you want it to stick there's a capture position button that appears on the toolbar in the upper right. This does go on the time line. But you cant use that to adjust it.

If you do the moves with joints those are adjustable, but you have to open the drop down for joints in the tree on the left, right click and edit to get control.

Is the design intention to always use joints? Normally everything I do is joined, but sometimes it's nice to move it, see how it looks, move it, etc.

Yooper
Apr 30, 2012


NewFatMike posted:

Man there’s a person I kinda have to put up with who is convinced:

1) the SOLIDWORKS hole wizard has bad data
2) that masses calculated by CAD are wrong
3) that using the SOLIDWORKS assembly modeling space is dumb

Which has caused a person I love dearly to spend many hours angle grinding fasteners as well as big pieces of metal to reduce weight, and despite all that effort a failure because the designer didn’t do interference detection.

Just…. Incredible stuff.

I've worked with some pedantic fucks, but it's managements job to slap that dumb poo poo. Why have the tools if you aren't going to use them? If person doesn't trust the data then they need to prove the case, lay out solid evidence, and find a solution. Increasing production time with that sort of poo poo is unacceptable. So they just stumble around like an rear end in a top hat trying to prove a point? gently caress them.

It's probably something like, "When I added a 1920's era Whitworth fastener the hole wizard had an incorrect thread pitch which could lead to an improper mass on a thread that is 870 feet long. Hence I cannot trust this."

Yooper
Apr 30, 2012


Process question in Fusion. I've got an assembly with about 100 different components. There are a few mounting plates that have evolved as the design has, but the plates are still present. Maybe they have a new notch, or a hole, or whatever. But certain things, like a bearing block, were inserted when it was still design 0.1, it's now design 336. I just changed a hole size that was referenced off that bearing inserted at design 0.1 and Fusion flips the gently caress out, re-renders back to design 0.1, then has to rebuild everything once I finish. There's a cascade of warnings as a bunch of poo poo isn't there anymore.

It feels wonky and like I'm doing something wrong. Am I missing something?

Yooper
Apr 30, 2012


Hadlock posted:

Ok apologies for the photo, this is a... Photo of YouTube on TV of a print out of a cell phone photo of a computer screen

What is this software, and which view is he using



Kind of looks like fusion 360 but they all look the same to me

The actual item in question is a specialty go kart leaf sprung front axle if you're curious

I think it's Autodesk Inventor.

Yooper
Apr 30, 2012


His Divine Shadow posted:


There's just this annoying thing in Fusion drawings when I want to get angles. Now this is really to me an angle of 12.86 degrees on the miter saw or my table saw. Not 77.14 degrees. Does anyone know how I can change this so I get the value I want. I mean it's not a big deal, but this is one of those repeated annoyances I've had to live with when dealing with angles in the drawing module.


You can "sketch" onto your drawing and add the proper extension line, dimension it, and then delete the construction-extension line (or keep it). It's not ideal, but about the only way I know to do it.

Yooper
Apr 30, 2012


some kinda jackal posted:


Is there any functionality to add an engineering blueprint border/information plate/etc?


Does the free version not do Drawings?



That's a screenshot so some stuff is fuzzy, but you get the idea.

Yooper
Apr 30, 2012


some kinda jackal posted:


e: Oh gently caress are you serious, there's a whole "DRAWING -> FROM DESIGN" in the dropdown I just somehow missed! Thank you <3

Cool.

I also use Draftsight for legacy 2D DWG/DXF stuff, it's OK for popping into a drawing quick like but we don't use it for production poo poo any more. It's like $250 for a yearly license. AutoCAD LT, is $460/yr in comparison. The Drawing features in F360 can still be lacking, and you'll know it when you start referencing angular poo poo in a weird way or off an unusual datum. But for like 99% of what I do, F360 Drawings are fine.

Yooper
Apr 30, 2012


some kinda jackal posted:

DWG is paywalled but I can export an individual sketch as a DXF so could be an option, but honestly I think just screenshotting this is probably enough to get me what I need, so that is enough to keep me on Fusion. I really appreciate the tip!

If I had to pay for one product I'd just find a way to score Fusion vs Autocad or learn a new app.

I do get weird behavior from the DXF export in F360. Just a heads up to validate it until you get a good feel.

Yooper
Apr 30, 2012


NewFatMike posted:

Oh weird, are you getting things like endpoints not joining or something else?

I’m curious because I used a lot of DXF experts in there years back and don’t recall anything off the top of my head, but it was usually for output to lasers.

Some pieces would be scaled like 500 times the rest. My laser provider called up and asked if I really wanted a 500 inch arc or something weird. After that I started opening them up and occasionally would see half of the pieces scaled weird.

Yooper
Apr 30, 2012


NewFatMike posted:

If only I could shitpost in 3D :negative:

Judging by what I see on MyMiniFactory there are a lot of people shitposting in 3d.

Yooper
Apr 30, 2012


NewFatMike posted:

poo poo so many of my customers don’t even need full 3 axis CAM. Plates with holes really make the world go round.

I don’t think I’ve even been party to a sale for a customer doing 2 axis turning, the folks that need CAM for turning machines are usually doing multiple spindles or mill turn.

We roll with a big fat Haas lathe, strictly 2 axis, and the guys normally program it on the machine. I've broke out F360 a few times for weird paths and to show off, but other than that it's CAM free.

Yooper
Apr 30, 2012


NewFatMike posted:

Are those taking conversational or just plain ol writing the code? Besides posting code I haven’t gotten to touch the big Haas controller.

Plain ole g-code. This is the older Haas control pre-conversational. It has some very rudimentary conversational but not like the new ones. There's another shop in town that runs Mazak lathes and it's amazing what they do without ever touching a line of G-code.

Yooper
Apr 30, 2012


His Divine Shadow posted:


I was thinking if the best way was to make a big solid cuboid and then make 2D profiles from two sides and use those to remove material, then try and round corners and stuff later.


That's what I would do, then you can chop it up or add to it as needed.

Yooper
Apr 30, 2012


We just commissioned a machine today that I designed in F360. Really cool to see it go from start to finish and have someone operating it. I worked with two other people who are both machinists/fabricators and it was great to model a bit, animate the movements, let them push and pull slides, and get instant feedback. I sourced so much stuff from McMaster just because I could drop it into the model without doing the create an account, download, unzip, upload, convert dance. I had some serious anxiety that some components wouldn't match, but they did. Every single time.

I was curious how other folks are handling revision control in 360? Do I just 'save as' my production models and work off a revision folder?

Yooper
Apr 30, 2012


I'm glad to see my method is on par for industry standard.

Yooper
Apr 30, 2012


It's a really awesome moment when someone is like "hey, can you make that piece wider?" in a really complex assembly and your constraints are done well and the model grows perfectly. :smugdog:

Of course there's another moment where the constraints are done wrong, the joints are all stupid, and the model goes into gently caress gently caress land. You all know what I mean, the CAD kaleidoscope of incompetency.

Yooper
Apr 30, 2012


NewFatMike posted:

The Fusion 360 team assured free users that the free version would maintain feature parity with the base commercial version to perpetuity for years before this happened, it’s a little different. Makerspaces and libraries were basically crushed overnight when this was announced with less than a week before deployment.

Onshape have not made promises or product strategies to that effect to my knowledge, but they have come out with *new* things that do not get into the base version.

I’m curious about their EDU enterprise Edition — my library has a pretty competent makerspace and if they’ll have me for a volunteer, I may explore that option if it’s something the library is willing to pay for.

TBH my ideal world lets me make a reasonably priced CAD/CAM software that’s pretty basic but hey! Maybe Alibre CAD will do that.

I tried Alibre a couple of months ago and it had a retro feel to it. Parts of it felt crisp, while others felt clunky. I just didn't have the bandwidth to keep loving with it.

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Yooper
Apr 30, 2012


How is revisioning and group usage for OnShape? I've been the only designer in house using Fusion, but now that other people may have touch my designs, I'm seeing a pretty big black hole functionally.

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