Since I started FIRST back in the summer of 8th grade I’ve been collecting parts and learning CAD. I know there are many people that have CAD saved up from over the years. So a while back I started thinking to myself. There has to be better way to organize and allow people to share CAD. I wanted something more open source and available to community. The current CAD sites are fine, but I wanted a blend. For example:
[FONT=Verdana]You can only upload files to 3d Content Central. Autodesk’s FIRSTBASE wants a username and a mentor has to register for your team; FIRSTBASE also only supports inventor. I don’t want to knit pick at the other awesome sites out there. So for the past five months I’ve been zipping and organizing parts with the help of:[/FONT]
-Jeff From 801
-Sean From 1771
-Akash From 11
-Marie Planchard from Solidworks
-Special Thanks to Greg Marra for helping with site issues
The main goal of this is to make a central place for CAD. It currently has about 235 parts on there. I am trying to help teams that have never done CAD and need to find parts easily. Or people that are tired of saving files of basic CAD Parts. Before posting, please go through the site.
Another option I wanted to give CD is that whenever there is a CAD pic posted on CD media, people ask.” Can you PM the file to me or email it.” Most of the time the creator would love to share and has no place to make it available to the public. I have a category made for CD members and it could be a place where people could upload random drawings that do not pertain to the site’s current categories. Like cool sprockets made or random manipulators for offseason.
The advantages of the new CAD library:
-Most files have textures on them
-The name links to the place to buy the parts (need help to find the ones that don’t have links)
-Multi-Format Support
-You can Request Parts to be made
-Has over 200+ Parts
-Anyone can upload parts to the library
**How can CD help? There are a ton of parts still out there. **
-Please contribute parts if you can.
-If there is no link to a part but you know where it can be found, please use the contact page and send an email telling where it can be found.
-If there are inconsisties in a part, please report them.
-If anyone would like to take drawings and add more textures or make the weight more accurate, please do so.
-last but not least, thanks CD for encouraging teams and individuals to succeed.
I and the team of 1323 tried to give credit those people that have parts uploaded on the site, we do not by any means want to offend anyone by taking a drawing and labeling it someone elses. I have been collecting parts personally and editing them over the years. I may have made a mistake. If Drawings were labeled the contributor if it was fixed, modified or done better. If there are any disputes, please go to the contact page of the site and report it.
RC, this is awesome. I’ve been using firstcadlibrary for the longest time but I love the fact that this site is more of a collaboration. I’ll be sure to upload parts when I have them. I hope this site gets even bigger.
Not a huge fan of the iframes though. I’d rather have the page just scroll. But that’s hardly a complaint at this point. I’m very thankful that someone went ahead and did something like this. Great job!
Wow. Thanks a lot, this will help our team, especially since we don’t usually get very much done on cad. Good job on the site too! Keep the parts coming!
It depends on the part Most of the electronics and pneumatics and some of the wheels are Inventor 2008 but everything else is Inventor 2009. In other words if you use Inventor 2009 you will be fine
And for Solidworks everything is 2009
That is correct the STEPs and IGES will work with older versions
That’s pretty much the basis of a lot of the things we do now. Sharing designs is one of our priorities and we want to allow others the ability to better share their knowledge and designs.
We’ll be showing some other cool things later on in the year.
Things like this is just one reason why RC was the first person I talked to about EWCP. Thanks a lot for giving back to FIRST and CD man.
The parts look great, and I love the “open source” aspect of the library. A few thoughts:
The site looks clean and professional, but I’d do away with the frames and just let people scroll.
Are you at some point planning a more automated way of uploading content? I think that even without a system for this, the site is going to rock, but a nice interface would put it over the top.
I’ve sent the link on to my teams’ CAD folks - hopefully they will be able to contribute as next season approaches!
It’d be really nice if you could save them a few years back.
Also, kind of nitpicky, but it’d be nice for electronics/pneumatics/etc… if you made “dumbed down” models that just have the critical dimensions and mounting holes. This will let teams with lesser equipment model their electronics without the lag those fully featured models will create.
Sadly we can’t save them in an older version of inventor because the models were created in 2008 or 2009 depending on the part and there is no way currently to save to an older version. Because of that we have uploaded STEP and IGES models.
Sorry, I only have Inventor 2009, what do you have? It is ridiculous to ask them to make different copies for each different version, that is more work and more space used.
If the creators expect this to be something the entire community will utilize, then it’s not ridiculous to expect them to make different copies, it’s what they’ll have to do.
This is why FIRST CAD Library is good. You may not get a native file that you can easily modify, but you’ll get an accurate file that you can bring into any CAD program, whether your software is 15 years old or brand new.
Personally I don’t care about the file type. I’d be happy with IGES, STEP, or Parasolid files for everything, so long as they’re accurately modeled. I don’t see why I’d ever want the feature tree from Solidworks, for example, of a COTS/KOP item.
They would actually only need to make one file per each software, it would just be an older one.
I still have inventor 2008, I only keep it for working with people who have inventor, I’ll probably eventually upgrade. My team will also being using solidworks 2008 until near the start of the season. There are various logistical reasons for this.
There are some teams out there still using software several years old… I know they can get new software, they might know, but it doesn’t really matter.
With just about any service or product, you have to think about the user. Like with webpages, if you’re site looks awful with internet explorer, you can’t just say it’s the users fault for being stupid and using internet explorer.
And for reference, FirstCADlibrary uses inventor 6-7 or so If I remember right.
