Week 2 - Computer Aided Design

The assignement for the second week is to develop a CAD model of our final project with a proper CAD program. Since I am not really sure, what my final project will be, I am using the time to play around with some of the availbale tools and doing some tutorials.

Corel Draw

I am a big fan of Corel Draw. I am using X8 for a while now. It is very intuitive and makes 2D designing very easy. It works directly with our Fusion M-2 Laser here in the Lab and there is a plugin, to use the vinyl cutter. In the picture is the cut scheme for a cardbox with fit joints for business cards, which I have made. I used only vector graphics, also for the pattern part. The red lines are outlines, which are cut. These are represented as hairlines in Corel Draw.

In the picture on the right hand side is the difference between a raster graph, in this case a .png and a vector graphic .svg. The laser has a wavelength around 10 µm. The resolution is so high, that the pixel on the right hand picture would be engraved as well. http://www.coreldraw.com

Tinkercad

Tinkercad is a nice easy ant intuitive program, to get in touch with 3D modeling. It is browser-based, so you can acess your files from everywhere. The prefabricated geometrical objects making it easy to dive into modeling. The tutorials are great and in 15 min you are ready to design your own project, which you can download as .stl-file.



https://www.tinkercad.com

Solidworks

Solidworks is a very powerful program. I did the tutorial and made pressure plate. The walktrough makes it easy but you can get lost in details. For a quick prototype model it is definetely not the right choice but if you want to make a serious design and you can spend a while, to make yourself familiar with the program, it is definitely worth it. One disadavantage it the price, though.


http://www.solidworks.com

Open SCAD

The other program I tried, was Open SCAD. This free tool is a little hard to learn but very useful n the end. With little lines of code, you can create geometrical shapes. This comes in handy, when you want to create repeating structures. The web is full with tutorials for Open SCAD.




http://www.openscad.org

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