Good free 3D CAD software
 

Right now I am bored out of my mind. I find myself staring at the cieling counting the speckles. I would build something but I don't have the money. I would build it in Inventor but I don't have it or the money to buy it.

So, I need some free 3D cad software that will work pretty good. Good enough where I can lay out a whole robot and have all the specifics of it's drive system.

Any suggestions? Also, it can't be a trial, I want to keep it free for quite a while.

Try doing a search on google or altavista or your personal favorite search engine.

If I were on google with the parameters you've specified, I would so a search for:

"3d CAD" +"free download"

From the links you get with that, you'll be able to either find what you want or refine your search with more appropriate keywords.

indieFan

IronCad!
 

I've just dl'd a free evaluation of IronCAD, you can find it a IronCAD.com. It's similar to a mix between inventor and Acad2002, but it's a whole lot easier to use. And it's alot cheaper. You can get the eval for free and it's worth it.

www.emachineshop.com
 

look in this thread - http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...threadid=21685

-Kevin

Re: www.emachineshop.com
 

For what it's worth, I played around with that software briefly and could get nowhere with it. It's very limited and very frustrating to use.

Sanddrag,

There are many people (Including myself) that have educational copies from proEngineer. Many of the Battlebots builders use it (notice the stickers on all the robots) You may want to go to their site and tell them you situation.

Matt

ProE will provide 300 FREE licenses to any teacher who takes a three day class on how to teach students about ProE. While I like Inventor, we have decided to use ProE as our team's standard CAD program for the simple reason that EVERYBODY can have a copy.

This is a tremendous advantage when everybody has to use their home computers to do robot stuff. We have computers in our build facility, but we only have access to them during team meetings and build sessions. This makes it difficult to do design work on them as we have to fight the programmers and systems people for time on them. No longer will we have to worry about who has which version and whether or not this file is backward compatible so Fred can use it.

It is well worth the personal hassel of learning yet another CAD system.

ANYONE CAN DOWNLOAD PRO/DESKTOP EXPRESS FOR FREE !! :yikes:

Pro/Desktop is a "light" version of the heavy duty Pro/ENGINEER commercial software. And Express is their FREE "trial" version which supposedly has some features disabled (I can't figure out what is disabled). This software is very similar to Inventor, some would say better. I have used most of the major CAD programs over the past 20 years, and I can say that these new desktop packages are capable of doing most of what any design engineer needs - with a very intuitive interface which is easy to master.

The requirements for the free download are simple ... you must first register on the Pro/ENGINEER (Parametric Technologies) website (http://www.ptc.com/appserver/common/account/basic.jsp). Then you go thru the software download/learn/try page (http://www.ptc.com/appserver/it/icm/...e=en& tab=try) - link at lower left - and accept the license agreements. Then you download the software (WOAH ... 32MB!) and install. The first time you run the program it walks you thru the process of getting your "key code" which is good for approximately 6 months, after which time you just get a new code (again for FREE!). I have been doing this at home AND work for the past 1+ years and it works GREAT!

Cool, I think I'll try this out, btw congrats on winning that Segway raffle.....

Can I borrow it? :D

Seeya guys...

Btw, for those familiar with SegwayChat.com I'm registered there under CodeMonkey263....if anyone was wondering.

I just recently found out about MLCAD from Jon Lawton. It's a free CAD system for Legos, and is very fun. It's included in the full distribution of LDraw, which is very cool because it requires a few other components from LDraw (but which aren't included, if you just download MLCAD). It includes models for practically all Lego products, including the Technic series gears, motors, axles, etc. They even have a model Lego RCX.

Anyway, it's not really useful, but I thought it was worth mentioning...

See if you were at Northeastern, you could download it (AutoCAD 2002) off direct connect.... its been done. by people in my Engineering Design Class.

I've used PRO/DESKTOP before and thought it was alright for being free... since I've used Inventor and AutoCAD a lot I didn't favor it over them at all, obviously.

As for MLCAD.... I got bored tonight and checked this program out and all I can is WOW... this program is pretty awesome and sure beats buying hundreds of dollars of legos. I've noticed an increase lately in LEGO models of gear boxes and drive systems and what not on the forums and to those that are building these I think this program would really help you guys out.