New toy, Afinia 3D printer

[Musht]

I am not hugely au fait with Sketchup but I believe it only moves in one direction. You build up a complex shape but 20 minutes down the road when you find the duff dimension you inserted in shape #1 you can't go back, edit that dimension and have everything that connects to it, qoes around or through it, sort itself out automatically. Many machines are drawn with Sketchup and look wonderful, but when it comes to cutting perhaps all you have is a convenient outline and hole plan that can be copied item by item into a CAD program.

Sketchup will scale in any direction, and its possible to group objects and scale them independently, it`s quite capable, but its a drawing program with its roots more in architectural than mechanical design, so it treats things as wireframes rather than solid objects like Solidworks or Inventor do. Though its very extendable with things like Sketchy Physics.

It`s fast to pick up the basics because the push/pull tool is intuitve. For modelling the 3D warehouse is unbeatable.

Catch for machining is its STL and DXF export can be poor, in the end sprung for Viacad 2D/3D, as reccomended here, it has the push/pull tool and decent DXF export.

[dsc]

S[cut]

Catch for machining is its STL and DXF export can be poor, in the end sprung for Viacad 2D/3D, as reccomended here, it has the push/pull tool and decent DXF export.

Agreed, I found DXF export appalling, especially when doing round-to-side-view exports for dimensioning. There's other annoying things like clipping of faces, disappearing faces and printing issues, but you have to remember it's free (well the free version is free). Sure Solidworks is better, but you pay monies for it to be that good. Still I'd recommend moving away from Sketchup if you're planning to use it a lot and for complicated models.

Regards,
dsc.

[Robin Hewitt]

in the end sprung for Viacad 2D/3D, as reccomended here, it has the push/pull tool and decent DXF export.

I looked at Viacad this morning and critical dimensions look like an afterthought bolted on to an arty concept.

I use Alibre because they had a special offer, $999 software for $99. It can drive me bonkers when I get it wrong but the concept is good. I don't think it is worth $999 so I cannot recommend it.

You rough draw 2D outlines that define the shape. You can create as many planes to draw 2D pictures on as you like.

You add constraints to your 2D drawings and then add dimension arrows. As you dimension you pull the rough drawing in to an exact shape.

Then you extrude, loft, cut etc 2D drawings in to a 3D shape.

Every 2D drawing, plane, extrusion etc. adds another entry to the list on screen left. At anytime you can right button any entry on that list and select edit. Change any item and you change everything below it on the list that references back to it. If your constraints make the change impossible it stops at the awkward item so you can figure out how you are blocking it.

If a program doesn't have that list of drawings and commands that go into building your final shape, you have to wonder if it remembers the shape of where you are now rather than how to build it. Once you lose the information on how to build it, you lose the references that tie it together. I count that as the difference between CAD and making pretties.