Free CAD

[Retired]

Hi,

Many thanks David. I used the 32bit download and I'm on XP home edition. I've now got more than enough drawing programs to confuse me with but I intend to build on my success so far. Makes you sick doesn't it when someone runs off a drawing without blinking?

Only a week to Rufforth; see you there and hope the snow isn't too deep.

Kind regards, Col.

[Yorkie]

Only a week to Rufforth; see you there and hope the snow isn't too deep.

Kind regards, Col.

Well Rufforth is on Dec 1, so I hope we don't have a repeat of Dec 1 2010! It started snowing on 28 Nov, and it wasn't until well into the new year when it started to dissappear.

It was chaos at airports over Christmas 2010, with many thousands of flights cancelled and several regional airports closed altogether. It's being so cheerful that keeps me going

Attached are pics of my wife Jennifer clearing the snow off our front, while I was supervising, looking after health & safety and quality control

Then it snowed again overnight and she had to do it all again next day. It fair wore me out watching her!

[Radio Fixer]

I didn't know you could do that sort of stuff in Powerpoint David? I would have thought it was done with Visio?

Gary

[Retired]

Hi,

You certainly know how to spoil a lass David.

Kind regards, Col.

[Yorkie]

Hi,

You certainly know how to spoil a lass David.

Kind regards, Col.

'Treat 'em mean and keep 'em keen'

TIC of course! - I've always acted towards the women in my life as though I'm subservient to them. It seems to make them anxious to please and it's helped me bimble along nicely. I once had a secretary who was so hard that you could strike matches on her face. I soon discovered that she'd do anything I asked, (for the avoidance of doubt, I mean work-wise!), but nothing that she was told.

I guess we're all made like that - I could never quite understand why people thought she was 'prickly'.

[Yorkie]

I didn't know you could do that sort of stuff in Powerpoint David? I would have thought it was done with Visio?

Gary

Don't know Gary - it's beyond my wit. It was sent to me in Powerpoint, so I just assumed that PP had been used to create it. From what you say, probably not. I think that rather than dabble in several programs and to not get properly involved in any, it must be best to choose just one, and stick with it. I'm fairly OK using Photoshop to clean up dial scans and PCB artwork, but clueless when it comes to creating anything.

[Radio Fixer]

That could be the case, produced in a drawing package eg: Visio and then output in a commonly available prog (for those that have Office) such as Powerpoint, for someone else to use ... I have done that but used PDF.

I think thats the answer David. Pick a program that has a good and probably long track record with an enthusiatic band of amateur users and stick with it.
It is one reason that I choose Corel Draw + great support. Of course the Pro package of choice is Adobe Illustrator but it has a reputation of being hard to use and best for those that are using it continously. Also it doesnt have a relatively cheap Home and Student addition.

I keep notes, often on completed Corel diagrams, of the steps I used to do things. It helps a lot when I want to do the same task, or similar, a year later.

Gary

[Yorkie]

I've trawled through my e-mails to see if I still had the original from my chum who designed the front panel for the Bygones Wobublator based on the original dial, but modified to incorporate a sawtooth generatior for the scope timebase. I found the e-mail (August 2009) so have solved the mystery. He did indeed use Powerpoint to create the artwork, and wrote to me thus:

The original artwork isn’t very good quality and I also needed to make some changes, so I took the [front panel] artwork from theRadio Bygones article and used it as a basis for a new panel that I put together using MS Powerpoint! I know it’s not meant for this sort of thing, but I can drive it, and it does what I need. Each dial was put together line by line so it was very tedious. I built up a small library of images for each dial and then simply positioned them on the final panel. The images are .TIFF format so you could use MS Paint or any other drawing package to put together a final panel layout for yourself.

I think with all these things Gary - your own dials as published in the Bulletin for example - when we see the finished item, it doesn't convey any idea to those who aren't 'CAD literate' just how much time and effort goes into creating the artwork.

If we see a solid object - a chair, or homebrew radio, we may not know how it was put together or quite how much time and skill went into it, but we can guess that it was considerable. But a radio dial? Only when we start to grasp some of the basics of the software can we truly marvel at what's been achieved.

If we hark back to the 30s - 60s, the designers of dials, and the makers, had none of the benefits of software packages yet created some wonderful screen printed dials. In some cases they proved durable - in others, not so, with the paint flaking of as dust. Those with water-slide transfers seem to have fared the best.

[Retired]

Hi,

The Wobbulator Front Panel drawing in your post #10 David is splendid and like you I could only aspire to such work. I agree with you David regarding Gary's top class radio dials; I've seen Gary's work in the BVWS Bulletin and Gary kindly keeps me updated with his projects via email; Gary has certainly got to grips with Coral draw producing top class drawings.

I'm no longer absolutely useless using CAD as I'm now making progress and have learned more in the last hour than in the last few years. I think I also know the reason I've had so much trouble with CAD; all the drawing and CAD programs I've tried to use have contained too many options to play around with; tool bars loaded with variables that were simply to complicated to get to grips with as a complete novice; the tutorials were excellent but an incredibly slow way to learn. Just looking at a blank drawing surrounded by tool-bars containing masses of options was most intimidating and after half an hours frustration I would pack the lot in.

I've settled with "emachineshop" and can actually produce basic very accurate drawings a sample is shown below. I can now quickly draw accurate circles adding reference lines to build on then remove the reference lines with a button click and press the delete key; sounds very easy but this is extremely difficult to pick up from scratch. I can also now "repeat" and move drawing parts around as in the holes with the cross lines; I needed a drawing giving hole positions for a steel clutch mounting and a couple of days ago was using my 50 year old drawing instruments with little success of great accuracy. Now I can draw giving precise hole centers including hole diameter and I'm becoming much quicker; I spent hours doing the first drawing but the drawing below was completed in an hour.

It is very important to keep "saving" and in this drawing I actually made a number of drawings saving each one. emachineshop drawing format is not recognized by my computer and I can only open the drawings through emachineshop so in order to post the drawings I printed then took digital images and downloaded.

The tool bars on the emachineshop drawing page I find a lot easier to get to grips with as there are fewer options but the options available have so far covered my needs and hopefully with a lot more practice gaining the basics I should eventually be able to move on to one of the more complicated CAD programs.

The pictures below show the build up of the final drawing; in order to save paper I used both sides so unfortunately shadow lines show through slightly. Even a basic drawing such as this is very accurate and yesterday I used my first drawing to successfully mark out the clutch mounting allowing me to drill and tap; I won't show the pictures of the clutch project here as I intend to add the story as a thread shortly.

Getting ahead of myself I almost managed a 3D drawing but there were "open spaces and un-joined lines" I managed to close the spaces but then the un-joined lines got out of hand so I'll have another go later as I'm now finding CAD to be fascinating.

Sorry to ramble on but after years of nothing but frustration with CAD the fog is clearing and for those members having the same problems I encountered may I suggest trying emachineshop and if you do please post your progress and experiences as I for one am very interested being a CAD novice myself.

Kind regards, Col.

           

[Radio Fixer]

Well thats unusual to creat circles and rotated lines in Powerpoint, not that I know the prog well, but it shows it can be done. As your friend says often a program of choice is the one we know well. So for me that means finding a few that I get along with and sticking with them.

I did swap over from Photoshop that I had years of experience with to Corel Paint just to have commonality with Corel Draw, not that this was essential. Was it a good move? At first I cursed a lot and would say No! But now its OK and I have got to grips with it ... I would say its no better or worse than PS Elements.

thanks for the nice comments re: the dials in the BVWS mag. The silk screen one was the most challenging but I learnt a lot.

Best thing for cad is a fast PC and a large screen. Recently upgraded to 24" but wished I had gone to 28" now.

Gary