New Offseason Build

[Sperkowsky]

Originally Posted by cxcad

It's a huge step in the right direction and I applaud your effort.
I would recommend perfecting the lift and drive, no embellishments, because it's important to take small steps as you learn. Nothing spells disappointment like over reaching. However, I would recommend designing for flexibility, so that improvements can be made once you have time or see the need to.

Do you have ME mentors with CAD experience? CAD-ing is one thing, but designing is another. Furthermore, I recommend consulting with your sponsor so that your parts are easy on them. Remember, they are giving you an expensive service for free.

We don't have any mentors with current CAD experience. Our main mentor has a lot of paper drafting experience and experience with older versions of Autocad.

Our waterjet sponsor is pretty awesome. He has a pretty crazy machine at his place from what I hear. Is there anyway to make them easier?

I have also been helping him convert .STEP files into .dwg files for cutting. Apparently thats a big problem for him, and with solidworks it only takes a minute.

[cxcad]

Originally Posted by Sperkowsky

We don't have any mentors with current CAD experience. Our main mentor has a lot of paper drafting experience and experience with older versions of Autocad.

Our waterjet sponsor is pretty awesome. He has a pretty crazy machine at his place from what I hear. Is there anyway to make them easier?

I have also been helping him convert .STEP files into .dwg files for cutting. Apparently thats a big problem for him, and with solidworks it only takes a minute.

Try to minimize tool time and material usage.

A good way to minimize tool time is to cut down on the length of the tool paths.
For example, those fancy belly pans (a la 254) takes up a lot of time that could be used to cut many other parts
As in material usage, I would try to minimize the parts that have are awkward in geometry. Your sponsor would probably like to pack as many parts on a given area of sheet.