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Week3: Computer aided design

Assignment: Model (raster, vector, 2D, 3D, render, animate, simulate, ...) a possible final project, and post it on your class page.



Softwares

Solidworks

I learnt Solidworks in High-School (Solidworks 95!!!) and kept using it during my engineer work. Here under is a screenshot of the Mechanical part of the Gamma project, that I'm working on using SolidWorks 2016.

SolidWorks is a closed, paying software. It can export in few "stadard" format like STL or STEP.

FreeCad

Thanks to the Fabacademy I am already learning HTML through Atom and GIT through GitBash. Both being open standards and open source.

For parametric CAD, is there an open source software I could learn to use?..

I'll go for freeCAD . Though it is still under development (the v1 is YET to come), it is similar to solidworks; and should allow me to export designs in a script language. This script can then be modified and rendered with "OpenScad", directly in a browser.


Sketching with FreeCAD

It watched online tutorials in French!. Going from Solidworks 2016 to FreeCAD v0.16 felt like a set back. I needed more time to adapt.
In May/June I tried the new freeCAD v0.17 (released in April 2018) in order to generate the CAD files for my final project.

I really wanted to use FreeCAD. There was a lot of good in the v0.17 release, compared to the v0.16: But FreeCAD is still very limited. What I didn't like: In the meantime: back to Solidworks!
NB: Going through *.STEP I could: 1/ work in FreeCAD with the fan I modeled in Solidworks. 2/Work in Solidworks with the plate I modeled in FreeCAD.

Source files

The freeCAD source files can be found in this folder on gitlab folder, along with the solidworks parts and assembly of my final-project.

The essential fabrication file is the wood plane, that you can directly download in:


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