Re: easy way to find your robot weight.
 

I didn't mean to post something that would be offensive for all the inventor/solidworks. Me, myself is a inventor designer. I like inventor... the reason why I use it. All of my designs that has been posted here was created in inventor.Yes you can get the mass of the robot using inventor properly.

Point of this thread was Tytus pointing out HOW to get the robot weight using Autocad. It had nothing to do with how you weigh your robot using inventor or solidworks. The thread wasn't created to bash the inventor or solidworks user. It was a tip for the rookies who are using Autocad.

Let's keep the thread on topic...

and thanks Tytus for giving the Autocad users the tip.

Re: easy way to find your robot weight.
 

My tip for rookies or anyone using AutoCAD is: don't. It is inferior to Inventor in several respects. The reason is still used in the industry is because the industry does not keep up with modern times. The most complicated piece of electronic hardware found in many businesses is the thing they use to run credit cards, and they just got that only about a year or two ago. Computers are still a very new thing for a lot of older folks out there. A lot of the people who ventured into computers when AutoCAD was the latest greatest thing simply don't know there is anything better or are too stubborn to try anything else. AutoCAD is an archaic piece of software with a catchy name and it stuck. People don't realize that we have moved on. Inventor is much more suited to doing just about anything that's not 2d, but the industry hasn't discovered that yet. Also, I find it a nightmare to do anything in AutoCAD, but I think a competent 8 year old could manage Inventor just fine.

Re: easy way to find your robot weight.
 

For carbon epoxy composites (the most commonly available form of carbon fiber) you can use a density of 0.056 lbs/cuin. That is for a high performance, aircraft grade composite with about 33% epoxy content. If you're slapping wet resin on carbon cloth it will be a little lower strength and density.

Re: easy way to find your robot weight.
 

I hate to have to disagree. AutoCAD is a great program, and has its uses. I would, however, reccomend inventor to FIRST students simply because all teams have free access to it.

For many things, AutoCAD is actually the prefered method. Inventor is a great modeling program, but AutoCAD is primarily a 2D application and a great one at that. You cannot even really compare the two. I'll stop there. It has been covered already here.

Re: easy way to find your robot weight.
 

As a frequent user of both AutoCad 2005 and Inventor 9, I can say the following:

Inventor is for anything that has to do with motion and is 3d. You can do active springs in Inventor. In version 9, you can FINALLY stop parts from intersecting too. It's just very realistic. As for the 2d drawing part, its ok. It could be better, but for robotics its fine. If you get to know all the keyboard shortcuts and all, you can CAD really fast. But basically its best for assemblies and 3d stuff.

AutoCad is ment for 2d sketching. It is like drafting, but a whole lot faster (duh, no more pencil and graph paper). It is more powerful than Inventor, as in you can do more stuff faster, but who cares? This is robotics, not the real world (laughs). If you learn how to use AutoCad well, it is much better than Inventor at what it was made for.

In the end I prefer Inventor. I started on Inventor so I am much more comfortable using it. Also I am always dealing more with assemblies than with individual parts. Also I like how Inventor can export to a lot of different formats, especially .dxf, which you can just send right to a CNC watercutter and *poof* you have a robot.

However, for all you people that want to go to college for mechanical engineering, I would learn AutoCad as well. Because nobody uses Inventor. Though I personally think they should.

Re: easy way to find your robot weight.
 

I have extensive experience with Inventor 8 and very limited experience with some version or another of AutoCAD. I like inventor, but it seems primitive and underdeveloped. I think that as a relatively new product, it has a long way to go. Even so, it is ridiculously easy to use and adequate for most applications.

I am eager to play with the new stress analysis features.

Has anybody had experiece with both SolidWorks and Inventor? How do they compare?

Re: easy way to find your robot weight.
 

With what I've seen and heard about SolidWorks, it is a whole lot better than Inventor. SolidWorks is supposedly a lot better because it has lots of engineering calculators and tools, stuff like moment of intertia, etc. I have used it a little, and it is rather assembly friendly as well, so it pretty much beats Inventor on power. But I still found Inventor easier to learn and use.

Re: easy way to find your robot weight.
 

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