Computer-Aided Design

Hey all,

So I've had this a few times when using the text feature, and when the DXF is put into fastcam it gives thousands of entities due to the letters not just being lines and arcs. I can do CADClean/CADCompress and get it down to a few hundred but it usually will also change the shape of the letters at times, changing from the result I am hoping for.

If I cut it on my plasma with this many entities it'll cause almost a serrated edge from so many tiny stop/starts, although I can file these edges down. Thousands is not really workable.

Is there a way to reduce the amount of entities before fasctam? Can I smooth out my letters without manually traciing over them in Inventor?

Also, fairly new to making posts on Reddit, not sure how to attach screenshots, I can provide if necessary!

Thanks in advance!

My workplace uses solely microstation and I think it's a worthless piece of software. I'm used to cadding in autocad, solidedge, catia, rhino, revit, tekla etc etc. But I find microstation to be terribly difficult to work with and I need like 15 clicks to do something that requires two clicks in any other software. Am I just using it wrong? Is there a master course I can take to get used to it?

It has been a while then I had a head injury. I used Sketchup and FreeCAD before but I cannot navigate step by step like I used to.

I have a simple request. I need a modified spring drawing to submit to a manufacturer. It’s really quite simple. A 9mm OD (1mm gauge piano wire) compression spring. 100mm length with (2) 25mm straight mandrel ends (running centric down middle of ID).

I don’t have a lot of money being a person with a disability - but what I do have is a lot of passion.

I have a couple CAD files of reasonably close dimensions - if that is easier. The issue I’m having is flaring the mandrel ends.

PM me if you have a moment and we can arrange something that works for both of us. Thanks in advance.

I use sigmanest for our large laser at work. Does anyone know if it can do solid etching on metal. Similar to this: https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/proxy/d5FMZt3HAavwQiVk28mnZR4WmH8emZgGUqxVKx_Zq2zidv9g1Zy2du1GKvatTAadpL0StuSyuN5AqZWjRB1K6bnYlNgn7KE

I've only been able to do single line etching, tech support doesn't seem to understand what i'm trying to do. This is the laser we have: https://www.mitsubishi-laser.de/rx-f-fiber/?lang=en

I am really really good at using CAD software. I have experience with solidworks, catia v5, autocad, microstation, and arcgis / esri. I can adapt to new software that I haven’t touched in a few hours.

I’ve worked at 3 different companies in the last 7 years, and I’ve been by far and away the best designer / planner / drafter in my group / team. I have been doing twice the work of the next best designer. My quality is the highest and I’m always helping everybody else out, despite making $5/hr less than others.

So my question is, how do I let companies know how good of a designer I am? I’m looking for a fully remote position and want to market myself better.

Seeing a lot of these ads right now.

Do their products come with any CAD software? Or is that sold/subscribed separately?

Hi guys,

I’m helping someone out on a tight schedule and needs to have different drawings for their project (isonometeix, axonometric…) sorry for the spelling.

Is there a way to take a picture of your model and upload to autocad in order to draw it for you?

Please advise.

No it is not me lol. 😂

Edit: CONVERT

I’m involved with a company building prefab home using cross laminated timber (CLT) wall sections. We need to decide on a CAD system to use and hire someone proficient in the chosen software. We need to be able to produce architectural drawings for building permits and other approvals but we would also want to be able to export all of the wall sections to be cut on our CNC, nest profiles to optimize materials and possibly optimize the manufacturing process in other ways. My background is mechanical so I can imaging ways to do this with SolidWorks, or inventor but I imaging other software packages may be better suited. I’m looking for the communities collective knowledge to help inform my decision. Any recommendations are appreciated. Cheers!

Edit: We are looking for a 3D modelling software and we would also like to produce photo realistic renderings.

Hi all

I recently migrated from MicroStation V8i to 2023. There are dgns I created in v8i that are struggling to display when I attach and reference them in. If I open the dgn as an active file, I have to double click on the levels for the data to display. It doesn't just turn on when highlighted. If I reference the same file...nothing displays. I've fidgeted with view display, global display, global freeze, coincident, coincident world...still nothing. The file in question is georefenced correctly over the area I'm interested in

Any advice would be appreciated.

Thank you

Real newbie question. I’m outputting a DXF file and the file is a group of individual lines and curves.

The customer I’m sending it to is asking for joined shapes for their cutting device, is that possible in DXF?

The software I have is for printing, and there are no configurable options for the DXF output.

Does DXF support single path shapes?

Hi all, is there a way to remove all number tags (valves, bellows ect..) from a P&ID so I can start again ?

I'm curious if anyone here has taken their CAD skills to careers outside of the USA? If so, tell me about it!

I'm from the USA and I'm just starting my career working for an engineering firm. I was recently in Australia and a friend who lives there was talking about jobs in the field and how I should move down there. I'm not sure Australia is for me but I am thinking I'd like to move abroad in the future -- but I'm not sure how practical it would be with this career. Obviously, outside of costs and visias, adjusting to metric would be a challenge but I'm curious about those with personal experience.

“When a curved surface is tangent to a plane surface, no line should be shown where they join (a). When a curved surface intersects a plane surface, a definite edge is formed (b). In the case shown at (c) no lines would appear in the top view.” (Basic Technical Drawing, Spencer & Dygdon, p155.)

https://imgur.com/a/feFLGgN

I know there's a fairly large group in NYC focusing on Solidworks and another on Revit, but I'm wondering if there's anything else going on. I'm hoping for something focused on Adesk Inventor, but I'd love to hear about anything a-tall.

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Thanks so much

Joe

I have a few models made in Blender and I would like to make engineering CAD drawings of them. Unfortunately, whatever file format I use, the dimensions are not being picked up inside SolidWorks drawings. The tool is not snapping to any of the model vertices. I am not sure what to do or how to approach this problem. Can anyone help me?

I have tried working with .stl and .bj files.

Humble Bundle is having a pretty banging sale on a Ashampoo CAD 11 and Home 9 bundle. I've looked up reviews, and the only real stuff that I can find on it is from a few years ago. I watched videos of it and it looks pretty user friendly.

I've been using Sketchup free for my DIY projects, and I have a student license to Revvit (I haven't used it yet), but I hate subscriptions. If I can get a good program for a one time fee I'm willing to learn another program from the ground up

Currently a small business owner getting into custom tool manufacturing to fill needs in the industry I supply. (FYI)

Some of the tools I currently have in the pipeline are less than 2” long and 3/4” high and have little odd shaped pockets/tabs to act as a flexures. (Just for some context of what I’m finagling with)

My budgets kind of tight and I’m wondering if there’s and low cost cad software that will allow for complex geometry that’s affordable

I unsure as to what the radius is for the iphone 15 pro max corner profile/ all sides profile. It has a center line starting at 0 and going in the (+) and (-) directions. It does not call out a actual radius(R).

The company I work for has different plot styles depending on the team we work for. Different drafting standards for different customers. I was assigned to help another team out a year ago and had their CAD settings and more importantly, their plot styles set up on my machine. We don't use templates at my company so there is not a base file to import the plot styles from. Everything I read up on says this is dependent drawing to drawing, yet it seems to default to the secondary teams plot styles randomly. I have reset my own default .ctb time and time again. I have uninstalled and reinstalled CAD fresh and that solved the issue for about 6 months. It is now starting to crop up again. I have gone as far as to delete the .ctb in question from my C drive just to give myself a buffer. ACAD can no longer find that plot style but it still attempts to default to it and i am kind of at a loss on how to get my plot style to come out. Has anyone here had any issues with this before?

I’m sure y’all have seen this post close to 1000 times but it’s my turn to ask it. So the quick and dirty timeline here is I work with a company who recently acquired a small manufacturing facility that makes some heavy equipment/construction industry products. When I say small I mean 10 employees in the heart of the ozarks small.

Now back in 2006-2008 an employee worked there who used Alibre to make some basic CAD designs of parts we manufacture. He no longer is with the company and the owner is wanting someone (myself) to start doing CAD designs and be able to access the old files. Long story short we have a flash drive that has all of these old CAD files but obviously cannot be opened as we don’t have any software.

My ultimate question is should I go ahead and purchase Alibre for $2000 which gives me a lifetime license to use it or consider other options? I’ve talked to Creo and SolidWorks but I felt like creo is way more than what I’m looking for at this moment in time and didn’t get a good impression from the SolidWorks rep. I’ve looked up AutoDesk but it seems awfully pricey for someone with no CAD experience. To add some context, we’re obviously not building rockets here so the designs are rather simple, mostly just welded metal, tanks, and some hydraulic or cylinders thrown in.

Is Alibre a good software for someone with no experience? Obviously it won’t be easy to just pick up and start designing but it’s landed in my lap and I’ll just have to buckle down and figure it out. Any and all comments, thoughts, and/or advice is welcome. Thanks for taking the time to read this.

I think these libraries are great, but all I really need is to get a step into readable vertices (essentially an stl) and these are just too big to justify using, any c/c++ simple alternatives? I`ve been going insane looking for them because of SEO from model sharing websites

I am interested in a vendor-neutral parametric CAD file. Apparently, STEP-AP242 would be ideal for this, but no one had implemented it at the time of that post.

It looks like possibly Autodesk Inventor and Creo Parametric have. So perhaps one could export a STEP from either, import into the other, and parameters would be retained?

I only have Fusion360 so cannot test this (If I find the time I'm interested in writing a F360 script to export as STEP-AP242 with parameter info).

Can someone test this? Also if you've heard of other CAD programs implementing STEP-AP242 or have any news or takes on this in general I would love to hear. I simply want one universal parametric CAD file we can all share freely and it seems like STEP-AP242 is the move for that goal, but if you have other ideas please let me know.

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Update for posterity: It seems like STEP-AP242 can't be used for this / no one currently is; rip.

Hello, I'm getting back to work on a large assembly. Problem is now that I'm opening it, regeneration fails and every downloaded fastener is missing. These were all downloaded as solid works parts and assemblies to save time.

If I try to use "retrieve missing component" I can see the part in the working directory. If I click on it and select "open" the dialog box closes but there is no change.

This may be due to adding datums to the sld.prt file, so that I would have features to assemble with. This created files with the naming format "fastenerX.sldprt.creo". These files can not be opened.

This assembly worked fine and would open fine two months ago. What could have changed?

Been using Solidworks and CREO for years, but my team is now considering OnShape as well. How does SWX compare to OnShape in rebuild time and general modeling speed? We are going to be creating relatively low complexity engineering models based on simple ish industrial design surface models. Thanks all

So I have this mesh that I want to run a CFD analysis on but it does not let me close the enclosure, the green tick does not do anything when I click it and if I click off the text boxes for the dimensions I lose the entire enclosure and have to restart from scratch again. Any idea what the issue is? Had this issue in both Ansys 2021 and 2024...

https://imgur.com/a/VMaWf64

I want to take one apart, separate the heavy base, and make a lightweight travel version.

Hey guys, im currently trying to get somehow into CAD. I'm following some practices from "CAD-knowledge" and i'm stuck at one of the tasks. Maybe someone here can help me.

My task is to create this: Image

I get all the skateches and dimensions but all i can do is this: Image

I am searching for a way to connect both the upper edges with the lower edge-point. I'm using F360 and already tried to do it with "Plane through 3 points" and "Loft". Both ways didnt work out as intended.

Thanks very much for help in advance :)

Hi everyone-

I’ve seen a lot of Designers retire lately. These are the folks that used to use the drafting board, were lucky to be able to learn new skills and learn CAD when it first came out in 1980s, and are ready to call it a career. Many were not degreed engineers, but Mechanical Designers. Not drafters, but had enough knowledge in their field to become a Designer.

Which is making me wonder : Is the next generation pipeline for this field being filled? People on CAD or designing 40 hours a week, they love creating things, designing, and love CAD. Designers or degreed engineers…..

20 year - 40 year olds. Is this you? Or somebody you work with? Is the next generation coming up, LOVE to do this work. Or do you see a gap in industry like I’m starting to see?

Edit- please clarify if you are a Designer or Engineer.

I'm increasingly looking into doing freelance CAD work. I have a CSWA but I'm not a ME. Last few years I've been doing rapid protyoing - mostly 3d printing (FDM and sla) and thermoforming - and have a good grasp on the design limitations of these processes.

Recently an acquaintance from my time as a school teacher reached out because they're setting up a 3d printing farm and had some ideas for products, but no CAD knowledge. Trinkets and chachkis, no engineering needed outside of designing for 3d printing.

So my question would be, how do we approach this as far as the value of my work? Who owns the finished product? I feel like just charging by the hour and delivering a model is really leaving a lot on the table. I don't have any reason to distrust this person, just trying to avoid under (or over) valuing my work.

Hi

I'm trying to run a CFD Analysis on this Mercedes CLR 1999 model and need to find the surface area of this section however it is hollow. How could I find the surface area of this section? Should I fill it in? If so, how can I do that?

Image of my model as it is.

FYI, I purchased the model from a website online and only have a mesh of it. I use Fusion 360 to put it all together and Ansys to run the analysis on. This is for a university project.