[DFTF] The Question of CAD
 

This is part of a series of posts called Drinking From The Firehose on getting Dr Joe back up to speed on All Things FIRST.

Today's topic:
The Question of CAD

For most teams, I think this solution is more or less preselected for them, but I find myself in a position where I have a lot of pros and cons, but no clear answer.

Relevant Facts:

• I use ProE at iRobot
• I use Alibre in my hobby work at home
• I know SolidWorks tolerably well from a prior life
• I used to be a tolerable UG (now NX) but this was over a decade ago
• My school has NO CAD in the building at all.
• The students on my team have never driven CAD at all (unless you count using AutoCAD at a summer camp in 6th grade)
• I want to have 4-6 kids learn the software and be able to help with the design stage (as well as transmit designs from engineers -- me at present -- to the kids on the build team so they can build stuff to print when the engineers can't be on site)

Thoughts:

• ProE is a pretty heavy lift to learn and over powered for our needs
• Alibre and AutoCAD are pretty easy to learn and powerful enough for our needs but as far as a CAD system to know going forward, seems is a little less useful than other choices.
• SolidWorks seems to be winning in a lot of the market, is plenty powerful, and is easy to pick up (imho)
• I've got no dough, so I am hoping that I can find one of these companies that is willing to allow FIRST teams to have a few licenses on the cheap (as in free if possible)

So... ...what should I do? Thoughts? Other than the AutoDesk licenses that come with the kit (they still come with the kit yes?) are there other CAD software companies that are FIRST friendly?

Thanks in advance.

Joe J.

Re: [DFTF] The Question of CAD
 

Dr. Joe,

Autodesk student licenses are now available to any high school or college student. All that is required is that the the student must sign up online with a school e-mail address, or send a request to a teacher with a school e-mail address to approve them as a student. The Autodesk licenses are one-year licenses of the full program and any files created with it carry a student version watermark when printed out or added to a non student version file.

Pros:
Students can download from home
Licenses are free for students
All of Autodesk's programs are available (AutoCAD, Inventor PRO, Inventor Publisher, Showcase, 3DS Max, etc.)

Cons:
You aren't familiar with Autodesk Inventor
Even though the only CAD program I know is Inventor, I have always found the interface to be a bit cumbersome


In terms of Solidworks, there is a Solidworks rep for FIRST (correct me if I'm wrong but I think her name is Marie Planchard) who you might be able to PM about getting a few Solidworks licenses for your team. The most popular programs for FIRST are definitely Solidworks and Inventor and there will be resources in FIRST everywhere for students to ask questions. Either program is perfectly capable for FIRST.

Hope this helps!

Jack

Re: [DFTF] The Question of CAD
 

You actually don't even need a school email address to download the latest Inventor anymore, any email address will do.

Re: [DFTF] The Question of CAD
 

I know a couple of my students taught themselves basic Inventor using a two monitor set up and YouTube over the summer.

One question though, what are you going to use as your preferred means of transmitting designs? We ran into some issues trying to find a "cloud" solution that wasn't blocked by the school district's firewall and was easy to use.

Re: [DFTF] The Question of CAD
 

I have heard a little about you Dr. Joe. You are a legend. I still use your spreadsheet on chainvisualizer. It is very useful. Thank you.

To answer your question about CAD. For a FIRST Robotics team, you can get any CAD software for free: PTC Creo/Elements (formerly called Pro/E), Solidworks and Inventor. Our high school uses PTC software for CAD classes so it was a no brainer for us.

For the benefit of students, I would recommend Creo or Solidworks. That's what good engineering schools are using these days and many small to medium size companies also use them.

In terms of software functions, PTC Creo/Elements is the best. And it is closest to the high end software like CATIA V5, making it easier for students to learn in the future.

In terms of ease of learning, Solidworks may have a slight advantage. PTC Creo is more rigorous in terms of expecting you to do things correctly and won't allow sloppy work. Otherwise, students may get into bad habits of just putting something in that look close enough.

Here is the link to get started with free PTC software. It is www.ptc.com/go/first and click on the link at the bottom. They have very nice and free online tutorial called PTC University that covers many topics from very basic to advance uses. If you have any questions about PTC University, just PM me.

Since you use Pro/E at iRobot, I am sure you don't need me to tell you about it.

Self disclosure: I gave you my honest opinion even though PTC happens to be one of our sponsors

Re: [DFTF] The Question of CAD
 

Joe,

Pro/E, Solidworks and Inventor are all available to FIRST teams for free, so selecting one is a matter of preference. Your bias against Pro/E for FIRST use is, barring any external pressures, warranted -- in my opinion. It is the least friendly of the three packages to work with and doesn't offer anything particularly useful.

Inventor is popular since it's been available to FIRST teams longest. I don't like it and it is not used in industry much, so if you're interested in giving your kids a marketable skill, it's a bad choice.

Solidworks is what I use for my team (and professionally) and we were able to secure 25 licenses by filling out this form -- http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=91132550276

There is good support among the FIRST community for both Inventor and Solidworks with respect to available KoP models and people who know what they're doing to help you out.

Re: [DFTF] The Question of CAD
 

Joe,
I have jumped back and forth between Inventor and Solidworks for several years. It used to be that I preferred Solidworks because it ran better on my laptop than Inventor, but then I got a better computer that no longer mattered. Both now run equally well on most moderately equipped PCs with assemblies of 1000 parts or more and both have a similar suite of features. Both are available free for FRC members with minimal red tape. Its almost like a Coke vs Pepsi thing now. The differences are down in the realms of personal preference.

Personally, I prefer Inventor, mostly due to my own familiarity with it. The built in tutorials are very good now and it is pretty easy to teach. I have taught numerous students how to use Inventor. Some of the advanced features like the Dynamic Simulator and FEA modules are very powerful once you figure out how to use them. If you want to make really pretty pictures, I think Inventor is a bit better.

All of these newer CAD platforms can export and import geometry to and from one another, so compatibility with suppliers or other teams is not really a big deal anymore either.

Re: [DFTF] The Question of CAD
 

If it was up to me, I'd go with Solidworks.

I have learned both Inventor (FRC) and Solidworks (college), and attempted to learn Pro-E twice (back when I was on an FRC team).

You already know some Solidworks, which is good. (OK, so you knew it, but it's not that hard to pick back up again.) It's easier to learn than Pro-E (or whatever they're calling it now). It's also used a lot in industry. For the students, it'll be better. Jack is correct on the name of the Solidworks contact; I'd also figure that she'll be posting in this thread in a day or two.

Re: [DFTF] The Question of CAD
 

I started with Inventor, used it for 4 or 5 years, switched to Solidworks, was instantly more productive, probably only took a few weeks to get fully up to speed. Used Solidworks for the last 6 or so years, loved it.

We switched from Solidworks to Inventor at work last week...it has not been a happy transition. Going back to Inventor is incredibly frustrating. Things take more clicks, are convoluted, or just function in a manner that I do not find logical. The user interface is all over the place and requires clicking through too many tabs for things that should be available at all times (for example, the mini toolbar under the actual toolbar in SW that has all the 'view' tools).

I would highly recommend Solidworks, as it is free, more widely used in industry than Inventor, and just easier to use.

Re: [DFTF] The Question of CAD
 

I've learned Pro/E, Inventor, SolidWorks and AutoCAD, and have used them all for significant projects in industry (as well as Pro/E and Inventor in FIRST). However, I'm a little out of practice with the latest versions, so maybe things have changed.

I still like Pro/E* the best, but you've got to be a bit of a perfectionist and quite industrious to make it really work nicely. When it's configured well, though, it's great. I love the responsiveness of the Pro/E sketcher compared to the others. But it has a bit of a mean streak—regeneration will always fail at inopportune times, and early datecodes of every version tend to crash suddenly—which may be a negative for teaching purposes. Pro/E integrates well with Windchill (version control), but in my experience, I'm the only one who bothered to try to figure it out. (And I was actually quite disappointed with the Windchill web interface. Lots of potential, but full of awful UI and, at least on the free PTC-hosted server for FIRST teams, exceedingly, unusably slow.) I don't think it's really too difficult to learn Pro/E; it didn't take me long at all, back in 2003.

I never really liked Inventor. I could deal with it, but its interface was always counterintuitive, and like Cory said, it takes way more clicks to do things. It was a resource hog when I last used it regularly (but that was about six years ago). Vault version control sucked; I thought they'd replaced it, but I don't know with what.

SolidWorks was always decent. It's probably the most marketable as a job skill these days, in small and medium engineering businesses at least. They always struck me as the most willing to create a product that's great for engineering schools, and presumably great for high schools too. If you're worried about Pro/E, then this is the CAD software for you.

AutoCAD is not the way to go, unless all you want it for is toolpaths. It can do much more of course—but it's just not worth the aggravation.

In any case, they're all free to FIRST teams (and university students), so that part of the decision is easy.

*I still can't get used to "Creo". It seemed like a strange marketing move, throwing away name recognition...but maybe they wanted to shed the "hard to use" stigma.

Re: [DFTF] The Question of CAD
 

Okay. I am thinking that SolidWorks is the best choice for us. Thanks.

By the way, I am surprised that nobody has mentioned the BIGGEST drawback of them all: Every CAD system has a different set of button clicks to zoom, pan, and rotate!!! If you switch between software often, it drives you crazy.

Ah well, my brain has managed to figure out how to switch between ProE during the days and Alibre at night (with an occasional 3D PDF in the mix as well*). Somehow, my brain will have to force my fingers to drive SolidWorks. I'll manage...

Joe J.

*3D PDF's are really useful if you don't know what they are. When I was consulting I would often export the CAD to a 3D PDF and send it off to my client. Anyone in the company could then open the file and see the CAD in 3D without having to have any special software installed -- yeah, I know that there are tons of free CAD viewers out there, but seriously, who is going to install all those views? You may have your qualms about Adobe, but they do manage to get their software on people's PCs...

Re: [DFTF] The Question of CAD
 

Just to throw another opinion out there: From my experience, it doesn't matter what system you use as long as you're comfortable using it. I'm relatively competent with each of the big three; Inventor, Solidworks and Pro Engineer (Which is now Creo after WF5, I think) and have very few issues switching between the three.

ProE is probably my least favorite even though it's the only program I have formal training on. I've always found the interface to be a bit counter intuitive (especially when learning), but it's more powerful than Solidworks or Inventor so I guess it's a worthwhile trade off.

My personal favorite is Inventor because I know it the best and I think it's easy to learn and/or teach.

Re: [DFTF] The Question of CAD
 

I would agree that Pro/e or creo whatever they are calling it is overpowered for FRC. I personally agree that Solidworks is much faster to pick up and agree that productivity increases when switching from Inventor to SW. New CAD resources from 1323 are also a big help.
http://www.atomicrobotics.com/resources/cad/

Re: [DFTF] The Question of CAD
 

For teaching a group of new students how to CAD, I would definitely advocate for SolidWorks. It's used industry wide, and is very easy to pick up (yet still has some powerful tools for more advanced users).

I think your inclination to go with SolidWorks is a good one. We switched from Inventor to SolidWorks now 4 years ago, and we haven't looked back.

-Brando

Re: [DFTF] The Question of CAD
 

Joe,
#1 thing to do to get around the whole which button orbits, pans, etc is to get a 3-d Mouse. It takes a little bit to learn but is a huge enabler.

http://www.google.com/products/catal...d=0CHIQ8wIwBw#

Once you get one of these, the interface can be the same on every CAD platform.

Re: [DFTF] The Question of CAD
 

I would be surprised to see a school district block access to the dropbox website. I was even able to install the client on a school computer, without admin privileges. The convenience and ease of use of dropbox is second to none IMHO.

Re: [DFTF] The Question of CAD
 

I've never been able to consistently use a 3D mouse. For whatever reason, I just prefer to have my hands on the keyboard and my other hand on the regular mouse. I felt like it almost took more time to constantly take my hand off the keyboard, adjust the view with the 3D mouse and then put my hand back on the keyboard. It's definitely a personal preference/feel thing!

-Brando

Re: [DFTF] The Question of CAD
 

I've been a big supporter of the 3d mouse for a while. I've got one at work, and one at home. With the basic Space Navigator, you only get two short cut keys on the 3d mouse itself. With the higher end 3d mice, you get a boat load more programmable shortcut keys. I rarely go back to the keyboard at all anymore.

At 2056, we use Solidworks(as well as in my professional life). I started off using Inventor years ago, but switched and never looked back.

I've never been a big fan of multiple designers on the same project. You really need clearly defined limitations and interfaces if you are going to have different designers designing different sub assemblies on the robot.

It's been my experience that the vast majority of teams don't use CAD software to drive their design. Most teams lack a competent enough designer to really get the most out of their CAD Software.

Unless you have the manufacturing capabilities to get parts fabricated with an extremely quick turn around time, you really don't have weeks and weeks to play with the CAD model.

So what am I really trying to say? Don't waste too much time struggling with a CAD package for the sake of drawing it beforehand if you're not competent enough with the software to really get the full benefit of it. Sometimes you just need to make the part. That being said, if you are an experienced user, I really believe CADing the entire robot is hugely beneficial... if you don't have to spend weeks doing it.

Our typical timeline goes something like this. By the Wednesday of week 1, we finalize the conceptual design. By the Wednesday of week 2, the full robot model is "done", and we start fabrication. I say "done", because we all know that things always change as the season goes on, but the model always gets updated with these changes. We always make changes between ship and regionals or Championship. Having an accurate and updated model makes planning for changes much easier, and when we do unbag the robot, the upgraded mechanisms or parts fit the first time, and don't require a ton of fiddling to get running.

Why do we push so hard to have a model done by the middle of week 2? We currently don't have access to resources to get really quick turn around time on parts. We also like to have a practice robot running by the end of week 3, or early week 4. So to fit all this in, we need to have drawings out by the middle of week 2. If at some point, we do secure faster machining resources, we will push back our design release accordingly.

Re: [DFTF] The Question of CAD
 

In my opinion which CAD program you use really shouldn't matter. What I mean by that is that rather than teaching how to use software you should really be teaching the principles of CAD and drafting in general. I have used Inventor, Solidworks, ProE, Solid Edge, AutoCAD, Google SketchUp, and a few others. I can switch betweeen all of them relatively easily. When I started learning CAD (and now how I teach CAD to team members), we started with drawing by hand, then we move on how to use the various features, and so on. Basically it is just how to use CAD in general, because CAD is basically the same except for the user interface (and the more advanced features of the software).

But in general I think that making use of the Autodesk student website to get the software is the easiest way to get them using the software. if you can get solidworks to donate licenses that's even better because it runs the faster than Inventor on slower computers. However I think that which software you use really doesn't make a big difference if they are learning how to use CAD rather than just how to draw in a specific program.

I personally prefer to use Inventor because its free for students and they can download it at home on their own computer.

Re: [DFTF] The Question of CAD
 

This is a good point, practice makes perfect.

On the other hand, I think Solidworks is the more user friendly piece of software, and a much more marketable skill. Small and medium firms are dominated by Solidworks, and CATIA is very popular amount larger companies (Boeing, Airbus, Bombardier, etc). Dassault Systemes makes both Solidworks and CATIA, so there is a significant amount of carry-over (I've been told). I interviewed with a Boeing structures manager and they were much more excited about Solidworks experience than NX6.

Re: [DFTF] The Question of CAD
 

Joe,

I am going to throw a monkey wrench in your decision to use Solidworks....PTC offers money, that stuff your team doesn't have right now, to teams that apply for the grant, and use PTC products.

www.ptc.com/go/first for more information.

Re: [DFTF] The Question of CAD
 

The form says the deadline is September 30, but I've heard that they've extended the deadline until this Friday.

Re: [DFTF] The Question of CAD
 

Another vote for Solidworks.

We contacted them and just recieved our 2012 discs and licences. Having used various CAD softwares before; Inventer since 2004 (I'm a PLTW kid)... then ProE, UG NX, SolidEdge, in classes at college, making the switch to Solidworks for the FIRST time last year was fairly simple.

Inventer and Solidworks to me are the most user friendly at a young age, a couple of our kids picked Solidworks up in one single session of training.

One thing to take into concideration is if one of your sponsors uses a specific software, designing in the same can make things easier (in our case, solidworks = what our sheetmetal guys use).

Re: [DFTF] The Question of CAD
 

They would have to offer a lot of money for it to even be worth considering teaching all our kids to use their product, imo.

The learning curve is so much steeper than SW/Inventor.

Re: [DFTF] The Question of CAD
 

It is also worth working out how you are going to keep track of all your CAD files. I know a couple of teams, mine included, use SVN to revision our CAD files. This lets us keep track of what is the latest revision of the robot, and go back to previous versions easily. The CAD software packages have tools available as well. SVN is accessible over HTTPS, so it should be available on most locked down school networks.

Re: [DFTF] The Question of CAD
 

We have a sub team in which all we do is CAD etc. I learned Pro-E 2 summers ago and now I'm teaching about 7 or 8 kids each week how to use the software and PTC has many many learning tutorials which make it pretty easy to learn.

Re: [DFTF] The Question of CAD
 

I started my adventures in CAD with Inventor 5 (love it, runs great on old hardware), and stuck with it through 8, 10, and 2010 which I still use. I suppose this year I'll be making the move to Inventor 2012 for FRC, although I'll still be using 2010 in the classes I teach. I took a brief break from Inventor while in college during which time I used Solidworks 2004, 2007, and 2008. I found Solidworks 2008 to be very slow running. However, during that time I regarded SolidWorks as being a much better program than Inventor, especially on the drawing side of things.

These days, I stick with Inventor simply for the reason that my school has a license, it's easy to get for home use, easy to learn, and it has a lot of educational ties. Also, it works well for my purposes. The downside? Hardly anyone in industry has ever heard of it. :-(

A year ago when I had a set of very old computers I needed CAD on, I investigated ProE and started going through their self-study certification training. I found certain tasks which are natural and very simple in SolidWorks or Inventor to just be atrocious in ProE, and quickly gave it up. I found its interface and work-flow to be rather archaic.

Re: [DFTF] The Question of CAD
 

Interestingly, Pro/E has an even more archaic interface mode: the menu manager (vestiges of which were still in WF5.0). It was actually quite efficient, once you knew where to find the options. Failing that, it was rather frustrating.

The current icon-based tabs are decent as well, but do take some getting used to—though no more so than Solidworks' custom ribbon, I would imagine. Either way, the Pro/E workflow is very good at enforcing robust geometric definitions, but tends to be much less helpful when you want to leave things undefined.

And at least in my experience, Pro/E can run on ridiculously underpowered hardware. In 2003, the first computer I installed it (Pro/E 2001) on was a Pentium II running at 450 MHz with 384 MB of RAM and an ATI Rage Pro. It worked great. I've had no trouble running Pro/E WF3.0 on a Pentium 4 2.8 GHz with a Radeon 9600 or an HD 3650. No such luck with Inventor; no version of that software has worked acceptably well on that computer. (I ran SolidWorks on a comparable computer with a FireGL; it was fine.)

Re: [DFTF] The Question of CAD
 

We applied. And you are right, if they give us the bucks, then it swamps other considerations, but failing that, I think that SolidWorks is a good choice.

Thanks everyone for the great input.

Joe J.

Re: [DFTF] The Question of CAD
 

I guess I helped put you in competition with us for the same funds - but that's the spirit of FIRST.

Re: [DFTF] The Question of CAD
 

If you use proE at work, I'm sure you can get past the learning curve with them.

Once students get immersed in the program their using, the location of tools, etc... really becomes a minor issue.

It's not like you're teaching them a CAD program that they must commit to for their entire lives.

Without the monetary incentive, I'd go SW (it's free, and just as easy to get as inventor); but money talks, and I'd go ProE if they sponsor.

Re: [DFTF] The Question of CAD
 

Joe, the PTC money can come by using other software, as well. Windchill and MathCAD both count. We used MathCAD for some autonomous development last year and received the PTC grant.

Re: [DFTF] The Question of CAD
 

Applying now, that's a great deal!

Re: [DFTF] The Question of CAD
 

Not really much of an "opinion" to state here, but here is Team 610's current software line-up with respect to our complete workflow (not just CAD):

- Google Apps for:

- Gmail: student, teacher + mentor e-mail addresses
- Calendar: shared calendar with meetings, supervision schedule, events
- Zoho Project: project management, task lists, wiki
- Groups: e-mail lists for entire team, mentors, student executive
- Docs: Team lists, project notes, budgets, inventories, "to-buy" lists
- Code: Code version control w/ SVN and integrate NetBeans client

- SolidWorks for CAD
- VisualMill Plug-in for Solidworks (to drive our CNC Router)
- Windows-based file shares for document storage on school intranet

- Remote access to shares using HTTP Commander

I've had a chance to try Inventor, PTC WildFire + WindChill, and various other software combinations over the past few years. This is the best I've managed to come up with so far, and so far I've been very happy with it.

Re: [DFTF] The Question of CAD
 

Hi Joe

Thank you for being a FIRST mentor. For SolidWorks sponsorship go to www.solidworks.com/SponsoredDesignContest

Also, you are a great SolidWorks customer and since we just moved our corporate headquarters to Waltham, if you want a crash rush - up to speed course, I am willing to come visit you. Just send me a private message to arrange a time. Also, iRobot helped me out when I was teaching design camp at Umass Lowell. Your engineers were very inspiring to my young students. Marie

Re: [DFTF] The Question of CAD
 

It is blocked at our school. We were told to try to use Live Mesh to fit our needs. It kind of worked but didn't give the same seamless operation as does Dropbox. We tried Live Mesh for a while but after concluding that it was more of a hindrance than a help we convinced the IT department to allow us access to an unrestricted internet drop so we can use Dropbox. However, we now have to employ our own safeguard routines (AVG, account access, etc) to prevent unauthorized/inappropriate usage.