CAD CAM II

Host Gene Neighoff

Monthly Meeting January 27^th 2007

(Return to Home Page)

Neil's latest engine project in progress......

The Infamous Russ Huffman Collet Closer from the Yahoo Messages......

The brief notes.......

There are several types, and grades, of Cad/Cam software.

There are several price ranges from free to Fort Knox versions

The free ones are what we want but wish they were Fort Knox quality

CAD software seems to go through revision about every year.  We are likely to get a version and lock in and stay with it once we master it.

CAD/CAM software is not a once in a while use thing.  If you don't work with it on a regular basis, you may be like me and forget the basic commands

As home shop people we might want a 3D system to allow us to move parts around and look for trouble spots as we design and make things

The programming of the machines Gene has showed that when the system does not behave as planned, it is not trivial to get them back up and running.

The results we saw on Gene's little machine were very impressive.

CAD is for drawing and planning the parts we may want to make.

CAM is for telling a computer driven machine how to make the part we want.

Some software packages auto translate the CAD design into machine instruction sets and/or 3D virtual models

A suggestion was made and somewhat timely for me, if someone is able to hold
a "class" on a fairly inexpensive CAD program to go over simple basics that
would be great for many of us.

Some resources provided by members:

As for a viewer for one to be able to see and print .DWG and .DXF files
Solid Works allows FREE download of eDrawings

AutoDesk also distributes a free viewer (I sure liked VoloView Express, but they canned it)

.DXF Viewer

.DWG Viewer:
 

Google SketchUp

Updated 2/10/2007