Tim Bruening - Fab Academy 2016

Week #2 - Computer Aided Design.

The second week took us in to Computer Aided Design (CAD).  We were shown many versions of 2D, 2.5D and 3D CAD packages.  Some ran in a Windows environment and some ran in Ubuntu.  Some ran in both.

Here is a list of tasks as I see them for the second week. (Not necessarily in this order)

Download/Use different CAD packages.

I downloaded/used four different CAD packages.  Tinkercad, Inkscape, AutoCAD and SolidWorks.

Practice drawing in the different graphic packages.


Tinkercad allows you to drag different 3D shapes from a librry to the workplane.  You have the ability to edit the shapes through clicking and dragging.  The minimum resolution appears to be 1mm.   I was not able to find anyway to change that.  I would like to be able to use inch  units but could not find a way.  The shapes are easy to combine into one solid part.  Tha only way to save the part is to use their website or download to Thingiverse.  In general this is a decent CAD program for inexperinced users to create a quick part.  I need to investigate further to find ways to increase its accuracy.
Tinkercad is pretty intuitive.  It assumes you are going to combine the shapes into one component.

Inkscape looks a lot like TinkerCAD.  It has a lot of clicking and dragging of shapes.  I spent a couple of hours downloading, setting it up and exploring.  I was not able to do much real "drafting" with it.  I even had touble defining specific measurements for the shapes I created.  I would need a lot more time to get familiar with it.  One thing that caught my eye was its ability to trace a bitmap and turn it into a vector.  I plan on coming back to explore that feature.

AutoCAD is much more powerful than TinkerCAD.  I must confess I have some experience with AutoCAD.  I was able to draw the parts in 2D without much trouble.  The resolution in AutoCAD is much greater than TinkerCAD.  I have my system set for inches and four decimal places.  So far there are 2 components in the drawing with front, top and right side views.  I will include other components as my design is finalized.

Solidworks is used to create a 3D solid.  I drew the two main parts of the vacuum as one component each.  In reality there are several parts in each component.  As I get better with Solidworks I will try to update my drawings into assemblies.

Create 2D and 3D drawings of my project.

I  started with 2D drawings in AutoCAD.  One part is the vacuum box the molds will go into.  There will be an insert with holes to allow the vacuum to work.  I plan on adjusting the depth of the box by using different height wood blocks.  Initial size of the blocks will be 1.5" x 3" x 4".  I will make at least 4 of them to support the insert tray.

The second part is the vacuum heat box.  It has to be able to move over the vacuum box so the width and height will be 1" larger then the vacuum box.

Next I used SolidWorks to creat 3D models of both the vacuum bao and the vacuum heat box.  Eventually I will include the heating element and the rollers needed.

Graphic documentation

The following is a TinkerCAD image I created during experimentation.

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The following is an Inkscape image I created during experimentation.

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Here is an AutoCAD screenshot of my drawing

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And last are screenshot of SolidWorks showing the vacuum box and the vacuum heat box. smiley face

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Tim's Week #2 files:

CAD files for 2nd week.

  • SoliWorks drawing file.
  • AutoCAD drawing file.
  • Week #2 html file

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