New Toy
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No doubt metal mounts is the good stuff, but not everyone will have a £1200(?) mill to make them?
Anyways, to get off the off topic off topic, just published a (parametric) fusion sketch as a template for making bellows to protect ways and rails.
Used to be a nice site that generated similar templates, but looks to be offline, so fired up fusion and poked it a bit.
Lazy mode is on, so won't try it until I can laser it. However the sketch does line up so can't see why it shouldn't work as a template.
If of interest: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3629856
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@bearer said in New Toy:
No doubt metal mounts is the good stuff, but not everyone will have a £1200(?) mill to make them?
Do I sense a hint of jealousy or is that just bitterness?
Oh, you can add on another £600 or so for tooling, then I guess you could add on another £1,200 for what I spent on an insulated door for the garage to put it all in. That makes about £3k or about £500 per mount. Cheap at half the price as they say
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I sure hope it doesn't come across as bitterness!
But would I like to have a real mill instead of a 300x400x80 CNC router? Sure. But I've gotten the CNC to do some light aluminium milling, so I'll get by, sort of:)
Bellows template is one of many steps to beef up the little CNC, but it'll never cut steel.
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@bearer I used a wood working router to make a groove in the underside of my aluminium bed plate when I first got it. In fact, if I had to do it again, I'd likely have to use the same method because the bed plate would be too big for the mill. So your CNC router wins of my milling machine.
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Ok, so you guys didn't REALLY ask... but...
I despise fusion 360. Really hate it. Also use it a lot because it is powerful and free.
Why the hate? I've used MANY MANY CAD packages for way too many years to admit. Each of them had quirks in their UI, and a learning curve associated with those quirks (once you got past basic CAD learning curve). OK, no problem, that's just the nature of human-created software where authors think differently than each other.
However... I'd swear that Fusion employs a huge team of people who's sole objective is to make the UI as non-intuitive as possible. Really, there's no other explanation. It can't be an accident and it can't be ignorance. It is just too pervasive to be anything but intentional.
Tons of examples, here's one that comes to mind off the top of my head:
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Draw a "sketch" (that is, 2d objects) with the intent to turn it into 3D later, probably via extrusion.
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Great, draw some lines, use snap or similar to get some good shapes, life is great. Lines and vertex points are draggable, you can specify line lengths as parameters, this is really intuitive and cool.
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Now, extrude part of the sketch to 3D.
Wait, the rest of the sketch disappeared!! Well, no problem, select the sketch in the browser and it re-appears.
Click on the next part you want to extrude. DANG, it disappears again!
Counter-intuitively, there is NO left mouse click sequence (i.e. "selection") that will actually select the sketch. You must RIGHT click the sketch (in the browser, because the sketch itself disappeared) and select "edit sketch" from the context menu... and then... Fusion hides the prior extruded 3D object, re-orients the drawing space completely and presents you with the re-scaled, re-oriented sketch. Icky poo.
Continuing the above example:
- Edit the sketch (via all that non-intuitive stuff) and extrude a different area.
Suddenly the sketch will stop disappearing, and is perfectly selectable (although still not editable except through the context menu).
More examples:
- There are many ways to get an object "high-lighted", yet that object is really not selected and can't be moved/changed, etc.
- In the "manufacture" workspace (i.e. CAM), everything is nicely arranged in a tree browser where double clicking on an entry opens nice tabbed dialogs that organize the hundreds of settings involved in generating a toolpath. Very powerful and still easy to use. Except... Ah yes, that little "exception" that drives you crazy with the inconsistency. It seems that "inside v outside" on contours couldn't be put in a setting (which all other CAM packages do...); instead, it is non-intuitively controlled by clicking on a little arrow on the drawing itself.
OK, this post is already too long. You get the drift. I use it because it is very, VERY, capable. At the same time, I find it extremely challenging in areas that it would seem quite simple for the developers to fix.
P.S. Disclaimer: Part of my day job is "User Centric Design" of UIs.
Delta / Kossel printer fanatic
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When I see youtubers videos using it, I have the same feeling. I'm using Onshape, which, I think, as a shorter learning curve, and have great features. I think assemblies are much powerfull in Onshape.
On the other hand, Fusion360 has more stuffs, like integrated CAM or finite elements computation, which I would love to use. But I'm using Linux...
Frédéric
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@danal Given your experience of "many many cad packages", what would you recommend for a non-cad designer like me who has only ever used OpenScad? The parts would be simple geometric shapes, nothing complicated. I don't need to produce BOMs or need any sophisticated analysis.
Or to put it another way, I don't actually need a cad package. What I really want is the ability to produce working drawings for parts that I want to make on my manual milling machine. I'm quite happy to continue using OpenScad but I'd like an easy way to produce dimensioned drawings from either the native scad file, or one of OpenScads output options. Any ideas? -
I believe FreeCAD is built on OpenSCAD so the little perculiararities that you may have learned for the latter won't be completely lost of the former.
FreeCAD isn't perfect but it has come along at a huge pace since if first looked at it and especially in the last two years.
Edit: Not used OpenSCAD myself though.
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FreeCAD is OK for simple shapes. Complex ones can be done, but it takes a lot more time than in a mature CAD (but it is improving!).
As for simplicity of use, from what I used:
- Onshape (there are/were some issues regarding the free licence)
- Solidworks, Autodesk Inventor (both not free), Fusion360 (one of bigger problems for me is that all files are on cloud, so if they decide to drop free licence for tinkerers, we are f...)
- FreeCAD (open source), PTC Creo (this is the dinosaur of the bunch and it shows, also not free)
And keep in mind that if you learn one of them, you will be able to do something in each of these. Maybe not Creo, the quirks this one haves, oh boy.
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Taking a step back and looking at this logically, I'm asking myself "why do I need (to learn) a new Computer Aided Design product " when all I want is to produce 2 dimensional drawings of fairly simply things that I want to make on a manual milling machine?
I think I'll just stock up on envelopes so that I can use the backs of them
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Heh, yeah.
If you do, go for FreeCAD, you already use it for some things, and fun fact, it really can handle OpenSCAD files natively. -
@danal readung your post it could seem like the designers have intended a sketch to only have a single feature, and once this has been turned to 3d it is hidden to avoid cluttering up the next sketch you want. And if you create your 2nd sketch off the surface of your newly created 3d object it will project the sketch geometry off that surface to your sketch.
I understand you want a different workflow, but if you work with the software instead of against it may prove more efficient.
Having said that my intiial experience was pretty much the same as yours.
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@deckingman, have a look at https://www.tinkercad.com, it may be enough for your needs.
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@deckingman said in New Toy:
... all I want is to produce 2 dimensional drawings of fairly simply things that I want to make on a manual milling machine?
I think I'll just stock up on envelopes so that I can use the backs of them
.............Unless you could use the sketches directly (like the screenshot over in the v-slot thread) then fusion is a bit cumbersome to make 2d drawings from the parts. Its very full featured, but I tend not to bother using it, its simply faster to just turn on dimmensions for sketches so they remain when not in sketch mode.
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I'll probably get tarred and feathered for suggesting this, but I actually still use Sketchup when I'm making a simple drawing for woodworking. Probably because that's just what I was used to using for that task before I learned Fusion.
It has its own quirks for sure and doesn't easily produce nice STLs for 3D printing, but for doing a line sketch with dimensions it's pretty decent.
Now that I'm more familiar with Fusion I'd probably use it for sketching instead, but sketchup has a place.
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I'll probably get tarred and feathered for suggesting this, but I actually still use Sketchup when I'm making a simple drawing for woodworking. Probably because that's just what I was used to using for that task before I learned Fusion.
lol, hope you'll stay clear of the tar, after all the best tool for the job is the one you're proficient with, and SketchUp was great until google sold it. With SketchUcam it was kinda nice, quirks and all.
Although I'd have to say I find the workflow pretty similar between the two for simple stuff like that, and you could easily repoduce the same images in fusion by enabling "show sketch dimensions" while in the modelling space of fusion. Fusion CAM blows everything else in its price point out of the water which is the sole reason I stick with it.
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@bearer said in New Toy:
Fusion CAM blows everything else in its price point out of the water which is the sole reason I stick with it.
One of my big reasons, as well.
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@bearer said in New Toy:
if you work with the software instead of against it may prove more efficient.
I'd LOVE to "work with it". Very hard to do when clicking with an arrow changes the color/highlight of a line/face/object, but does not actually select it. That's not a personal pref... that's just flatly a violation of UI de-facto behavior.
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It does have its flaws, I just don't see the sketch hiding as one of them after getting used to it.
