Auto Cad?

[Jeffel]

last week we just found out that the shipping date for the 3d animation project was bounced up about a month. while this is making us mad it will be kind of hard to make a quality project with such short time the way we do it. we use the prgm called "auto cad". it has the ability to make blue prints of any thing and other types of drawings.... VERY GOOD PRGM! any one else mad about the shipping date... any 1 else use auto cad?

[Gadget470]

I would assume the majority of people use AutoCAD. I'm using it right now actually to finish design of 470's gearbox

[Gadget470]

I never said it was going to be submitted. I'm working on the design so we can have the blueprints to build it

[Rob Colatutto]

3d animations are done in 3ds, they shipped a copy to every team. autocad is used by us at least to design some parts because its faster than hand drawings. i don't see why you'd do your animation with dwg files from autocad unless you are designing your whole bot in it.

[evulish]

There are free alternatives for 3D animation. Do a search on freshmeat.net...there may be some win32 programs. I do believe there is a Win32 port of Blender.

[Specialagentjim]

Originally posted by evulish
There are free alternatives for 3D animation. Do a search on freshmeat.net...there may be some win32 programs. I do believe there is a Win32 port of Blender.

Bah, 3d max is ultimate when you know how to use it correctly, watch, BEHOLD!



Yeah...its no where near done...but imagine the possibilites of a box..


Not to mention, what other program has a teapot as a basic primitive?

[FAKrogoth]

Don't they include Inventor with the kits?

I've found that, for actual modeling of the 'bot, it beats AutoCAD. And yes, I should know. I've spent the past three years learning CAD (4.5 credits' worth). Let me just say this: Constraints.

As for animation, Inventor will (if you're very desperate) do rudimentary animations. However, unless you have absolutely no alternative, DON'T TRY IT! There is no speed control: all motions/tweak groups happen in a set period of time. You can only use rotational and linear motions. All points/axes of reference must be on the parts, and some of them are not what you'd expect. It's a pain in the rear to get anything as complex as my Gimpy Stick Figure to move. I would put up a clip, but it's too big.

[Matt VP]

FAKrogoth, you a TA fan?

[Ryan Meador]

Let me tell you a little story...

In the beginning, there was paper. The shop teacher saw the paper, and knew that he could do better. The shop teacher bought AutoCAD, and there was summer vacation and the school year started again. The students used AutoCAD, and the shop teacher saw that it was good. But the students complained of the steep learning curve. And there was summer vacation and the school year started again. A student demonstrated Inventor to his class, and the shop teacher saw that it was good. Within days, Inventor appeared out of the ether - no one knows where it came from to this day. And now all the students can design like pros.

True story. I'm the student who had it first, via our team. And we haven't a clue as to who ordered Inventor. The UPS guy just showed up one day with a box. How cool is that?

[Jeff Waegelin]

The box that "showed up" was probably from FIRST. Inventor and 3DS Max are both donated by Autodesk and given to all FIRST teams. So, your team "ordered" it when you signed up for FIRST.

[Raven_Writer]

Our team uses both AutoCAD and Pro Engineer (P/E is way better in my opinion). They both work well though.

[BionicAlumni]

Solid Works, Solid Works, Solid Works

nuff said.

[Moshingkow]

AutoCad is the industry standard for making models and drawings for engineers or draftspersons. 3D Studio is definatley more for presentation. 3d studio really doesnt offer much in the area of dimentioning or other things like that. If you really want to learn AutoCad, learn how to use it with almost no buttons, all command line (like Me!) its much faster, and you get alot more workspace . 3d studio is beat however by things such as Lightwave 3D or Maya. these are High power 3d apps used mainly by game producers and movie makers. 3D studio however is used for most engineering and architectural purposes.

AutoCad is the app you want for designing your robot. Maybe inventor (ive never tried it, but ive not heard very good things.) AutoCad can do things in 3d, given you how (i diddnt know autocad had 3d for a whole semester!)

Use 3d studio for your animations. You may want to make your objects in autocad, it would be easier, then import them into 3d studio, but that doesnt always come up with good results.

Hope I helped

TENKAI

[Dave...]

Thanks to FIRST and AutoDesk for shipping a copy of Inventor to the teams (which includes Inventor and AutoCAD). As far as using any CAD software, there is an associated learning curve.

AutoCAD is great at quickly getting things in CAD, but has many drawbacks. Inventor is the way to go if someone had to learn a CAD package from scratch. Unfortunately, most teams (at least rookies) cannot learn the Inventor software in the few short weeks that come before Kick-Off, and build season is the wrong time for a crash course.

As mentioned in a previous post by Raven Writer, the Robocards (aka TEAM 5), uses both AutoCAD and ProEngineer.

Pro/Engineer is my preference, although Inventor is good too (my job uses Pro/E, hence I'm partial to it). Unless a corporate sponsor already has the software available, the price of the software would prohibit other FIRST teams from using it.

My recommendation is to learn/use CAD software that uses solid modeling (e.g. Inventor, Solidworks, I-DEAS, Pro/Engineer, Unigraphics) rather than a wireframe approach (AutoCAD).

As with anything else in engineering, there are always trade-offs. Get an idea of what they are (ask people who use the software), and have fun creating!

[Raven_Writer]

I think getting ideas off of people's work is sorta of a bad idea, but it works when you need to work off of something. I do that for many things really, but mainly because it shortens work. AutoCAD from what I've seen Independent Drafters do in my drafting class, is like, really hard....but I've only been in drafting for a year. Pro/Engineer is a great program overall. More simple in my opinion than Auto, great rendering like Bryce and Blender.