marwen1

My Feedback: (6)

Sounds good. But, mainstream software is what I would suspect the average person would like to use. All these ULTRA high priced pieces of software are great but personally I think they should be used for what they were designed for. That Industry! In e ssence, the majority of people today have things like ADOBE Photosop & Illustrator. If they open these "off the wall" extensions that were desighned for drafting. Hey, more power to themot

JonnyJohnston

I agree with you, both Unigraphics and Catia are not for the feint of heart. The are the top of the line graphics software. There is no better. I use SolidWorks 2003, CADKEY Workshop EX21.5 and AutoCAD 2005 in my business. I use Unigraphics NX, Catia v5r13 and AutoCAD 2005 at my current contract. I know from past experience in forums that if you mention something you usually get a reply sooner or later. I am looking for a license file for UG or Catia. I am not going to take the files from my current contract. That is a bit unethical to me. I will pass out my license file for CADKEY. It is no longer being produced. KEYCREATOR has replaced it. I may even do the same for SolidWorks. I only want a license for Catia. I do not have the machine to run it. I do have the machine to run Unigraphics though with a 2 gig mem upgrade. I will trade copies of Catia and UG NX for a license file.

Jonny

JonnyJohnston

One other thing, using CAD software of anykind is like using the other. It is all about data creation. Once you understand how data is created it that program you have it made. I lied about knowing Catia. I know how data is created in it because of SolidWorks and UG experience. Heck I learned Inventor in about a month. Not because of brains but because I understand the data creation in high-end sketched based software.

Jonny

JonnyJohnston

I mean I lied to the contractor about me knowing. I am not the only there struggling wwith it. The full time employees have been using it for about 6 months now and I have passed up 2 of them in only a month. Remember people, DATA CREATION in the software you are using. It transfer to other software albeit in different commands.

Jonny

Hope this is the last post tonight :-)

marwen1

My Feedback: (6)

Keys! You're absaolutely right. Tey work well. However, thay tend to give you far to MANY to chose from

JonnyJohnston

OK one more time. I must hop on the soapbox for AutoCAD Users. I just read the rest of the thread for the few weeks. A preface first. I was a btea tester for Auodesk for years. I get it for free now. As far as AutoCAD's drafting none can surpass it. Nothing. As far as solids go, it goes. Out the door. I think it is harder to use than Catia is. I use CADKEY for alot fo things that I hate using AutoCAD for. 3D is one of them. You are always drawing in 3D in CADKEY. AutoCAD is to detailing what UG NX is to Everything else in the world.

Jonny

Thanks for your'lls timew. <yes I am a hillbilly>

allanflowers

There is an option if you are a STUDENT in college. Through Journeyed.com, you can get great software at a tremendously low cost, although it is in the form of a yearly lease.
I have been using Alias Wavefront Auto Studio for years. Through Journeyed, it was about $300/year because I taught auto design in San Francisco. Now, being reassigned to San Diego, I no longer qualify for the educational software but can access the company licenses, at least when I am at work.
Alias is the standard professional software for autobody design. Auto Studio runs over 30K but it is fantastic, and fairly intuitive. It is NOT a drafting program but is great for real time visualization of designs. I will attach a couple of fairly simple images.
Allan

rossmans

Adobe Illustrator is supposed to be very good. In fact its used by Martin Simons in doing his glider and aerodynamics drawings. He gives the gen in an article in the UK mag "Quiet & Electric Flight" that it can take drawings and save in PDF and then you can take them or send them via net to a print company. However its best if you can get hold of the mag (Nov 2004 edition) from Carstens Publications. com They rep Traplet the publishers. Having read the article just wish I had the prog. Reading the article gives the whole spiel (and the mag is excellent for Glider and Electric men as well).

fredjordan

Hello,

Well, I may be a bit biased, since I am the author of the software, but I found RcCad (www.rccad.com) really handy to quickly draft projects since it lets you see in real-time 3D what your project looks like....[:-]

Fred.

SoCal GliderGuider

Thought I would revisit this thread. Remembered this software:

http://www.upperspace.com/products/1019/

ModelCAD a subset of DesignCAD. I have not used it so I can't say good or bad.

However I have recently used A-Dope-Pee I'm-Ill-ustrating. Yes it's totally *****Backwards to the way anyone thinks or uses a computer. But it will take a PDF file and rip it back into the native AI or EPS files it was created from. Good way to extract text and images.

It does a marginal job of translating it's drawing data (vector based by the way) to Acad file formats; DWG and DXF. But I've found that you get a more workable translation taking the AI into WMF or EMF format and importing them into Acad. Reason? The bezier curves that AI uses translate into splines. These are totally unworkable when you have to edit them. It's an alien form of a polyline. All of the text should be using a basic Windows font and be horizontal. Any font that is skewed will come in as outlines. If any AI user knows of a way to change the bezier curves into polyline BEFORE the translation I would like to know about it.

I've heard good about FreeHand; a Macromedia program.

rpvpilot

Im surprised. No one here using Bentley MicroStation?

John A

I haven't seen this one listed here, so here's a link
http://www.aerodesign.de/

Click on the "profile" tab, then scroll down to the profile v2.2 link under airfoil software

Fortunately, though the page is in German, the program is in English. It makes a set of patterns for cutting foam templates. It lets you put in all the parameters you need, including skin thickness, wire thickness, leadins, washout, etc. to make super accurate cores. The download link is near the bottom of the page. Very simple and very cool program. If you make foam wing cores, this is a very useful program. There are also some very good 3 views of a lot of European designs we don't see around these parts much. Mostly competition Electrics and Sailplanes.

mnrcaerobat

My Feedback: (197)

Can anyone comment on the software that Tower sells? It is called Viagrafix Modelcad 3000. It sounds like I could tile print with this software. Is this worth buying??

lex2bits

My Feedback: (12)

Heheh... is that Via-graphix or Viagra-fix? Might get stiffed by one of them.

durone

Take also a look at IsiPlot ([link=http://www.profili2.com/ip_eng]www.profili2.com/ip_eng[/link]).
For 10 euro you have a true DXF viewer/printer (tiling included) and also a raster tiling printer.

ciao
Stefano

grh814

I can't say anything about ModelCAD 3000; however, I've used ModelCAD 98 for some time. It has the ability to tile drawings, and if I remember correctly, their website (same as DesignCAD, there's a link in this thread somewhere) says 3000 has this ability too.

mnrcaerobat

My Feedback: (197)

I have an older version of TurboCad. I can open cad files, but have trouble printing. Will newer versions of TurboCad tile print?

Carleto

Sorry, but umm... does anyone know what operating systems these work on?

The reason is that I award Microsoft's Windows the first prize for the "Weakest Security", and I like to work o FreeBSD instead, the down side to this is the lack of good software.

DustOffUH1

My Feedback: (2)

The easiest way to find out what OS any of them will work with, is look them up and check the system requirements.
Also Windows XP is a very good OS, and if you install updates, have a firewall, and be careful, whats the worry. If you're just posting to bash MS, please do it somewhere else. After all it is a RC forum, not a PC tech forum. BTW get used to it. Programs are written for MS & Apple operating systems, whether ya like it or not

rvt

Jonny, you will not got banned from here, maby I do
I am working with pro Engineer wildfire version 2. I know it´s overkill, but on the other hand not but I could never ever ever work with auto-cad alike software. Unlike Catia that shokes your system, Pro/E is a little more friendly when it comes to computer recourses needed. I only run it on a 3 years old 1.8Ghz laptop with 512Mb, but I could run it with 256Mb to.

Pro/E is is one of the best, and if not the best parametric 3D modeler out there, it´s NOT forgiving like inventor wich is a pro and a con at the same time. Pro/E will let you do thing right which let to a steep learning curve. But once you are on the top of the Pro/E hill, you will have a beautifull view. A other con is that Pro/E is expensive.
The Pro´s are multitude Pro/E will do surface modeling right (almost like Catia does or can do, both are different in that!!!).

Pro/E, like many other 3D modelers are not designed to do one task, I know trains, planes, cars and (big) boats have been designed in Pro/E. So don´t expect that pro/e will tell you your model will fly!!! But the cool thingy is that you can enter model rules into pro/e, and later pro/E can give you design hints (advanced users...) and even can do model optimalisation depending on these rules (based on calculations...) and no...I am not selling pro/e as a job.

Pro/E used to come as a free desktop version but unfortunatly it´s not available anylonger, maby somebody still has it????

Hopefully, one of these months I can post my design here aswell and I need lot´s of comments since I ain´t a aeronautic designer, but current makeing a 2D design into 3D, a plan I found on the web one day.

I wonder if I am alone in this with Pro/E


cheers,
Ries

lbrande

My Feedback: (16)

Jonny,

Dont feel too bad, I use CATIA V5R14 and UGNX. I also have a copy on my home PC, and since there are no Network issues to bog me down, CATIA is speedy.

Lew B

rvt

it's amazing to see that there are so 'many' catia and Pro/E user(s) (I think I am the only one with Pro/E )

Ries

lbrande

My Feedback: (16)

Pro-E is an excellent program, but my company decided to purchase 2500+ licenses for CATIA, as they feel that it will be the standard in the industry. I've worked on so many systems, that one overlaps the other. I've been using 2D and 3D systems for 30 years.

Lew B

hobbyenthusiast

ive used AutoCad 2004, 2005, and 2006 to create a few ideas for planes. all of them are basically the same but 2006 is the best so far because it is the most current version. AutoCAD can be difficult to use but once you get the hang of it, it is easy. ive also used mastercam which is also very good too but can be complicated. im only 16 but ive had the oppurtunity to use these programs through a vocational school i attend. they have a cnc machine right in my classroom which makes it even better.

rvt

I always tend to think that AutoCAD is a up-scaled drawingboard. I have been using the DOS version of AutoCAD a lot and I have seen using the Engineering department where I was working autoCAD a lot for big objects (generally boats).
My problem with AutoCAD is that it's not assosiative/parametric. That means, I can draw something fast, but doing a lot of changes to a drawing can take up a lot more time (I have seen that...)... This works quite well with a associative/parametric drawing package.
In doing any design it's not the initial drawing that takes up the time, but everytime you need to make changes (ECR, Enginering Change Requests).
For complex objects this can take up far more time then doing this in a paramtric modeling package...

The wing attached is complete paramtric,
that means I can change the airfoil and all associative parts (ribsetc), intersects and features get automaticly updated.
When I have my 2D drawing, also this drawing get's updated automaticly aswell all dimensions without (much) user intervention.
This process takes up to couple of minutes from airfoil change to heaving all changes done in the 2D drawing...

Mastercam, as far as I know is not a real modeling package, although it's possible to do so....

Ries