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that's some mighty fine grasshoppering. dickbutt stitch for 2024
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Dec 19, 2023 17:14
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Wowza I didn’t even try zooming in that far  that’s great!
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Dec 19, 2023 17:48
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Duuuuuuuuude/ette This is awesome keep it up
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Dec 19, 2023 21:43
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Sagebrush posted:It's pretty obscure but I think it's cool, yeah. Goons are so freakin cool. Is Grasshopper included with Rhino? And is it reasonably easy to learn for someone with no programming experience or is it a whole thing in itself?
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Dec 20, 2023 02:24
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Pretty sure it's a free plugin and it's kinda it's own thing, what's nice is that it's very visual with dragging around instruction blocks and using wires to connect inputs and outputs. You certainly don't need to be a programmer to use it, but if you understand some basic principles of programming it can really help. If you already have rhino its very worth playing around with, you can do some very cool stuff pretty simply.
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Dec 20, 2023 02:54
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Kaiser Schnitzel posted:Goons are so freakin cool. Grasshopper rocks! It is included with Rhino. Grasshopper is essentially a node based visual programming language. I know for me it meshes well with how I work out problems in 3d space. YMMV, but it took me 1/10th of the time to do something in grasshopper than it would take me to do in anything else. If you like factorio, you gonna love grasshopper. One of the biggest issues I find with it is the lack of a good change management system. Just got 3 phase installed, so I'm resurrecting my project to make a grasshopper node a la robodk/Kuka|prc for my Staubli robots. Grasshopper 2 is in alpha (beta soon), but is a game changer for me, as it includes python3, and a whole bunch of qol improvements.
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Dec 20, 2023 03:14
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+1 for grasshopper, there’s like ten thousand tutorials on how to use it on YouTube that are great ways to get a grip on how it works.
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Dec 20, 2023 04:07
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Yooper posted:This is so cool! My mom had one of those when I was a kid. I remember playing with the cams and she'd give me a I totally remember those cams from when I was a kid too!
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Dec 20, 2023 04:13
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look. There's probably a good chance she still has them, I can bring it up at the holidays if you're looking for more.
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Sagebrush posted:It's pretty obscure but I think it's cool, yeah. this fuckin rules dude, I've always wanted to do sth with cam computing but never had an application (beyond programming custom stroke rhythms for a pedal-powered cam-timed sex machine i designed when I was excruciatingly unemployed, and never built)
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Dec 23, 2023 05:21
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since there are only a few really practical patterns, and the rest are kind of gimmicky and only used for occasional decorative work. And of course they didn't actually end up making more cams going forward, because the 1980s came along and so did electronic machines. The 6690 here was their first microprocessor-controlled machine, and you can clearly see the family resemblance.
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doublepost to ask: I have product designs I'd like to sell both as physical 3D prints as well as STLs, because almost all of my potential customers already have 3D printers. what's the play wrt software selection. I have to do clean-sheet redesigns for several reasons, and am not tied to any particular program. right now I personally have solidworks student version, and am not considering playing with fire with someone as ruthless as dassault wrt going after people making money off of non-business licences. At work I use Alibre Expert, specifically chosen because it was a reasonably-robust basic mechanical CAD platform that we could buy a lifetime license for for, like, $650, and CAD design is in no way our business, I just needed something for designing all the tooling, organizers/tool holders, and general Solutions to Problems I produce on a daily basis for my medical lab-adjacent role. the easiest thing to do would be to just buy myself a copy of Alibre, I'm extremely comfortable in it already and all, but idk what else might also be smart. it's possible I could make due with a temporary/per-month licencing structure, because I'd be able to churn out a bunch of the designs I wanna sell to an acceptable level of polish in the space of a few months, and then ease off of designing stuff indefinitely / until I'd accumulated enough new product ideas worth chasing months or years down the road. Solidworks is incredible overkill for any of my conceivable applications, although I do hurt for the assemblies that effortlessly intuit what you're trying to do with just clicking and dragging parts around, and the FEA/fluid simulation stuff would occasionally be very nice as well. Fusion seems to be the most bang-for-yer-buck option, but I'm just not on board w/ cloud-based stuff where you never really control or own your own work, and lose access to it once you stop subscribing. Ambrose Burnside fucked around with this message at 05:37 on Dec 23, 2023 |
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Dec 23, 2023 05:30
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If you like Alibre and think you can do all of your intended work in it, I say just get that. I've never used it but $650 for a lifetime license is pretty cheap for professional CAD, and you've already invested time into learning it. My enthusiastic recommendation is of course Rhino, but it doesn't do automated assembly stuff like SolidWorks or Fusion, so no dice if you're specifically looking for that. It's perfectly capable of making accurate mechanical parts (see my post above) but it is at its core a surfacing tool with a different approach to modeling than parametric solid modelers. Different pros and cons. It's $995 for a lifetime license. Fusion is what I personally would get instead of SolidWorks these days if I was freelancing, but I also think subscription models and cloud-only storage suck rear end and I generally don't care for AutoDesk. It's pretty powerful software though for a somewhat less gougey price than SolidWorks. If Rhino added something akin to SolidWorks' mates and sketch relations, I would probably never use anything else.
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Dec 23, 2023 05:46
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If you're already in the SolidWorks workflow you can get the Makers subscription which is good up to I think $5k of revenue. There's a deal on annual subs right now for like $38USD.
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Dec 23, 2023 17:31
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I’m also going to recommend Alibre if you’re proficient with it because it’s hard to beat pricing wise. The SOLIDWORKS Makers Offer does allow you up to a few grand in “profit”. There’s an open wink and nod among a bunch of folks in the community about it, and to be honest for selling prints, I think you’re good to go on that front. One of the things I pitched early to the Makers Offer folks is a ladder to the Startups program. If things start going gangbusters for you, I’d be very happy to bridge you between those two projects at Dassault. I work for a reseller but happen to be close with the directors of both programs, and I think they’d go gaga over a white paper/marketing opportunity for that kind of thing.
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Dec 23, 2023 22:17
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Has Makers improved much from the last time I looked at it a year or two ago? At that time, the consensus was "holy poo poo stay far the gently caress away", I gave it a try anyways and gave up in favour of a traditional Student licence within like 48 hours despite just having dropped the cash for the Makers sub i remember looking at forums with people who worked for dassault / resellers and they were talking about how guilty they were that they had to push Makers on businesses who didn't know about their options, knowing they'd probably end up as unhappy former customers as soon as they could wriggle out of their contracts, etc etc. literally couldn't find a single person with anything good to say about it who wasn't actively doing their paid job trying to sell Makers, it was dire Ambrose Burnside fucked around with this message at 06:13 on Dec 24, 2023 |
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Dec 24, 2023 06:09
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Most of the problems have been 3DX platform related, and the platform is still the centerpiece. Resellers aren’t involved with the selling of the product, so I’m curious about who was posting about it. In any case, the 2024 release is certainly the strongest one yet. The installer is improved and the experience is overall smoother. It doesn’t even bother me about non Quadro drivers every time I launch software anymore. I’m not routinely encountering license problems anymore on multiple devices. A permanent problem, however, is giving makers a full on PLM system. I think there will always be a sense of having a fighter jet when you wanted a Volvo. The upside is that it is very much an upgrade compared to other systems, the downside is that even if you save your files locally, you do have to interact with it every once in a while. Onboarding looks like it has improved as well, at least. It wasn’t uncommon to read about folks taking multiple days to get their platform email. My biggest caveat is that I *do* touch the 3DX platform daily working for a reseller. I’m not required to do it, though. I like the new tools that it includes and someone has to figure them out, so it might as well be me because I document things. That said, I’ve got 4 years of familiarity with it, so I’ve watched it evolve a lot. At work we have the option for desktop SOLIDWORKS Premium or 3DX, and starting with 2024 I’ve opted to keep 3DX installed on my machines. Besides a bug that required uninstall and reinstall (which isn’t unusual for desktop SW, either) I’m feeling bullish overall. No problems besides that one. TL;DR Between overall improvements and the price drop, I’m not as hesitant to recommend the Makers Offer as I was before. There’s still some kludge factor, but 3DX SOLIDWORKS is as usable for me as desktop for my daily actual work software. NewFatMike fucked around with this message at 16:09 on Dec 24, 2023 |
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Dec 24, 2023 15:43
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My experience so far is that 3DX isn't entirely awful. I don't like the whole internal server stuff, but it isn't terrible. The biggest issue I had so far was with actual SW and that stupid font issue in the 2024 update I mentioned before. I do like having web tools available on whatever computer I'm using that has the bookmark. Doing a stripped down web version of SolidWorks on a 10.5 year old MacBook or an Android tablet is pretty damned cool. Also: I just sold a design I made in SW and paid for the yearly Makers sub in one shot.
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Dec 24, 2023 16:21
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If you use the URL https://www.solidworks.com/makers-cloud and use your credentials, it’ll pop you into your own tenant. Similarly, https://www.swym.3ds.com will take you to the public forum. Inshallah the web tools will get expanded. 3D Creator is pretty great on my iPad Pro, and I had a lot of fun messing with the browser based sheet metal tools. I managed to get them to include CAM, so I’m keeping my fingers crossed I’m equally compelling for the other stuff 
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Dec 24, 2023 16:29
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Sagebrush posted:It's pretty obscure but I think it's cool, yeah. Holy moly. That's amazing.
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Dec 24, 2023 19:24
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NewFatMike posted:Inshallah the web tools will get expanded. 3D Creator is pretty great on my iPad Pro, and I had a lot of fun messing with the browser based sheet metal tools. I managed to get them to include CAM, so I’m keeping my fingers crossed I’m equally compelling for the other stuff Browser based sheet metal?? Is that in the maker’s sub, or an add on workbench?
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Dec 24, 2023 23:29
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Snapshot posted:Browser based sheet metal?? Is that in the maker’s sub, or an add on workbench? I’m on mobile, so pardon the screen shots. In short it’s an add on workbench on the commercial side. There’s SOLIDWORKS branded browser roles which are bundles of apps (an app basically being a workbench). On the commercial side, there’s a bunch!  I have a few meetings a year with the Makers Offer folks, and on the last one I asked them to include some additional browser roles so the Makers Offer has parity with Onshape. The browser based roles are still a touch underbaked (e.g. the xDrawing app only just got 2D views in the 2024 release, prior to that it was MBD only). If you are commercial, it does have price parity with the entry level Onshape paid tier: https://www.solidworks.com/how-to-buy/solidworks-cloud-offer But yeah, the Sheet Metal app is very cool! I’m hoping they’ll heed my requests like they did with CAM, I feel like I made a very compelling case but things move slowly with a massive company like Dassault: 
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Dec 25, 2023 00:48
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Will they ever enable the legacy icon colors in the maker version? I can't stand the grayscale icons and use the proper yellow/green/orange color scheme on my work machine, but I've been stuck with the gray ones at home. Unless they changed that in the last couple months in which case I need to go switch it.
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Dec 25, 2023 00:57
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oXDemosthenesXo posted:Will they ever enable the legacy icon colors in the maker version? If it’s not in the system options, probably not. It’s their branding thing to unify with the CATIA interface which uhhh causes me to sigh routinely.
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Dec 25, 2023 01:07
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NewFatMike posted:If it’s not in the system options, probably not. It’s their branding thing to unify with the CATIA interface which uhhh causes me to sigh routinely. It kinda looks similar, but the dialogue boxes are nothing near it from the last time I poked at it. Also the solidworks cloud sheet metal is cool, but I keep getting bombarded with instagram ads for catia at the same price, no clue on the work benches though; shame I’m not doing enough with it at home to warrant that cost.
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Dec 25, 2023 01:16
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Snapshot posted:It kinda looks similar, but the dialogue boxes are nothing near it from the last time I poked at it. If you’ve got a link to the CATIA offer, do post it. I’m happy to check it out for personal understanding and posting it back to the thread
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Dec 25, 2023 02:02
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Just gonna drop in to say that the new thread title is A+
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Dec 25, 2023 14:39
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I’m pretty shocked that line just casually got dropped with very little reaction.
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Dec 25, 2023 15:32
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NewFatMike posted:I’m also going to recommend Alibre if you’re proficient with it because it’s hard to beat pricing wise. I also like that Fusion lets me have one license on basically as many computers as I want but I can only use it one computer at a time, and the I don't hate the cloud aspect of it. It's nice to be able to work on something just as easily at home as at work. It looks like Alibre licenses are per-computer not per-operator? Dance Officer posted:Just gonna drop in to say that the new thread title is A+ Sad I had to shorten the rest of the title, but glad the whole thing would fit.
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Dec 26, 2023 17:08
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Kaiser Schnitzel posted:What it doesn't do well is generate a BOM or parts list, Good god I recently tried to put a BOM together in Fusion and nearly went into a frothing rage over it. Onshape kicks its rear end, and SW above those two. It was really disappointing making sure I had actually printed everything in a part and it needed such a roundabout way of getting there. Does Fusion still not allow you to override the mass of a part, except by making a custom material for it? Dassault’s 3D Creator has the same limitation, I submitted an enhancement request for it. Kind of a bummer for when things are built to weight and a vendor gives you incomplete CAD or the software assumes it’s all a homogeneous material.
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Dec 26, 2023 17:21
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Yeah that'd be nice, sometimes I'm redrawing things when there's no vendor cad model and simplifying the poo poo out of it but would like the weight to be accurate, especially for sensors and electronic stuff on robot end effectors where weight and COM accuracy is real nice.
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Dec 26, 2023 17:31
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meowmeowmeowmeow posted:Yeah that'd be nice, sometimes I'm redrawing things when there's no vendor cad model and simplifying the poo poo out of it but would like the weight to be accurate, especially for sensors and electronic stuff on robot end effectors where weight and COM accuracy is real nice. Yeah, both SW and Onshape are aces on that front, so I’m glad there’s at least one free option with it
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Dec 26, 2023 17:35
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Kaiser Schnitzel posted:Following up on this. I have a paid subscription for Fusion360 and it basically does everything I need to it do (modelling wooden furniture for work, some 3d printing stuff, making shop drawings from those models, a little bit of CAM for my baby CNC router). What it doesn't do well is generate a BOM or parts list, and it's SaaS instead of a perpetual license. Can Alibre do all of the above for a one-time purchase and how hard is it to learn? I really hate SaaS, but otherwise haven't had any beef with Fusion (except the drawings workspace is clunky but I also have never spent any time trying to really learn it) and have had good tech support experiences when I have needed tech support. I use Alibre Design Expert and it has BOM generation. I don't use it very much as most of my stuff has a low number of parts but when I have it worked fine. I think you need at least the pro version to generate BOMs. If you are familiar with Fusion360 then Alibre is very similar in approach. The main differences are in how sketching works. In Alibre, you generate a feature from a sketch as is. You can't select elements of the sketch as you can in Fusion.
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Dec 26, 2023 18:30
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Lotta Grasshoppering around, and I thought I'd share my project from the last few months on the Dassault xGenerative Design tool. It is extremely similar to Grasshopper, just browser-based. There's a desktop client for CATIA channel folks. This application lets you save your designs to use as custom features later on, and I wanted to get some isogrids going on round surfaces because it's a huge pain to model them. I'm planning on using them for some additive projects around the house and maybe some fun model aerospace designs:  Yesterday I finally managed to get the helix angle correct for equilateral triangles all the way through, so that was very exciting. It works best on conical and cylindrical faces, as projections get a little weird on substantially deformed faces, but it's still neat:      Tree detail for funsies: 
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Dec 27, 2023 17:24
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Kaiser Schnitzel posted:Following up on this. I have a paid subscription for Fusion360 and it basically does everything I need to it do (modelling wooden furniture for work, some 3d printing stuff, making shop drawings from those models, a little bit of CAM for my baby CNC router). What it doesn't do well is generate a BOM or parts list, and it's SaaS instead of a perpetual license. Can Alibre do all of the above for a one-time purchase and how hard is it to learn? I really hate SaaS, but otherwise haven't had any beef with Fusion (except the drawings workspace is clunky but I also have never spent any time trying to really learn it) and have had good tech support experiences when I have needed tech support. Alibre is pretty easy to learn if you're already good with a typical mechanical CAD platform, it has its own UI/control preferences that are different than SW/Fusion etc, but you can specifically configure SW style, Fusion-style etc control schemes, so that part is fairly painless. I don't believe there's any CAM functionality in the Pro/Expert versions of the software, there -might- be basic 2.5D stuff for the weird baby CAD thing they sell specifically for basic router work with no CAD background, but I've never used it. I'm doing some ambitiously-large assemblies in it right now that i'll need to produce dimensioned prints, for, and it handles that stuff fine, as long as you use it the way they want you to use it. Like, I used mirroring to generate some of the parts in a design, and I think the BOM wasn't picking the mirrored parts up as duplicates of other items in the BOM, so I had to go back and add them manually. Annoying, but not a huge deal. I also haven't used Fusion's BOM functionality in years, so can't say how it stacks up. And yeah, Alibre is per-computer. You can just unlink your key to an instance when you're done if you plan on using it at home, it'll let you use it on multiple systems that way, but it's a little clunky. Iirc there's some weird activation method you can ask them for that's specifically for people using one licence on multiple PCs exclusively, but I don't know anything about that, I just saw it mentioned as an option if constantly linking and unlinking a serial isn't sustainable. it's a pretty small company, so you can probably just call em up and ask about whatever, I've been able to get immediate support outside of business hours that way before.
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Dec 31, 2023 07:00
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This isn't software related but I figure the resident goons would know. What tools should I be looking into to better take measurements to make my models? I have some cheapo calipers and the usual decent drafting mech pencil and notebook. I somehow don't have a ruler around here which I'll sort soon (open to recommendations but I'd presume "straight" and "largely accurate" are fine) but I'm curious if there are other bits I might need. I don't seem to have a good way to handle curves and so on, but that can largely be accounted for via getting the diameter and slapping the radius into my CAD software.
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Jan 8, 2024 16:16
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A decent vernier caliper should go a long way.
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Jan 8, 2024 16:42
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In order of importance: Verniers Smooth flat surface 1-2-3 block (or two) V-blocks Gauge pin set That gets you measuring most small parts. I’d also put good micrometer in there but that’s more for measuring tighter than you’re probably looking for.
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Jan 8, 2024 17:58
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I'd throw a height gage in the mix too, it'll be similarly accurate to the calipers if you've got a decent working surface but in favorable situations a hell of a lot faster
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Jan 8, 2024 18:13
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I've had a lot of success tracing images. I think scanning is more accurate than taking pictures. I try to take the pictures from far away to flatten the lens error. I've also cut paper templates, traced things to paper, done a pencil rub, etc. Once it is squished to 2d we can start tracing. One I haven't tried is projecting light and tracing the shadow. There is a big difference between the requirements to interface with another part and visual similarity. For example, if we're talking about the curves on a cape for an action figure, I'd take some artistic liberties to minimize my labor and make it look close enough. But the way that cape clips onto the action figure would need more critical details.
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Jan 8, 2024 18:31
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^^^ Tracing images from a scanner is an excellent way to digitize small objects. Most scanners output a properly-scaled image with a known DPI, which should import into the graphics program of your choice just fine, but I always stick a ruler in the bed at the same time and use that to verify scale.Warbird posted:This isn't software related but I figure the resident goons would know. What tools should I be looking into to better take measurements to make my models? I have some cheapo calipers and the usual decent drafting mech pencil and notebook. I somehow don't have a ruler around here which I'll sort soon (open to recommendations but I'd presume "straight" and "largely accurate" are fine) but I'm curious if there are other bits I might need. I don't seem to have a good way to handle curves and so on, but that can largely be accounted for via getting the diameter and slapping the radius into my CAD software. Good quality calipers are the first step. I think Mitutoyos are the best, but these are about 1/3 the price and almost as good: https://www.amazon.com/iGaging-ABSOLUTE-Digital-Electronic-Caliper/dp/B00INL0BTS I personally would not get any calipers that don't have absolute zeroing if you plan to use them regularly. Those iGaging ones are the most affordable ones I've found with that feature. I have my Mitutoyos at my workbench but I keep a 4" iGaging in my bag. Mechanical dial calipers, or even actual vernier calipers, are also an option if you like. I have both but honestly just for speed these days I stick to the digital ones. Cheap calipers kill their batteries all the time; absolute-zeroing ones don't. A radius gauge set is a better way to measure fillets etc than estimating with calipers. https://www.amazon.com/OBPFY-Stainless-Portable-Measuring-%EF%BC%88R0-3-1-5/dp/B08BC3SM1V Similarly, a thread gauge is extremely useful for screws https://www.amazon.com/ChgImposs-Imperial-Whitworth-Industrial-Measurement/dp/B07J9V9JTK/ And a set of feeler gauges is useful for small gaps https://www.amazon.com/Hotop-Blades-Feeler-Imperial-Measuring/dp/B06XHXJG31 Finally a machinist's steel rule serves both as a measuring tool (not as accurate as a caliper, but surprisingly good when used properly) and an accurately ground reference straight edge. These are much stiffer and straighter than regular rulers. https://www.amazon.com/Mitutoyo-182-105-Chrome-Tempered-Stainless/dp/B00027958O And this is not strictly a tool used for measuring absolute dimensions, but a dial indicator is extraordinarily useful for mechanical setup. https://www.amazon.com/Clockwise-Tools-DIMR-0105-Indicator-Measuring/dp/B07C756TCM/ Beyond that you can start looking at things like surface plates, 1-2-3 blocks, height gauges, bevel protractors, telescoping gauges, micrometers, gauge pins, etc but you probably don't need anything like that until you know you need it. Sagebrush fucked around with this message at 21:08 on Jan 8, 2024 |
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Jan 8, 2024 21:01
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Is there a good YouTube or somethin on how to correctly use the digital calipers I have? I can get relatively different measurements of the same part based on which way I hold the calipers and how hard I squeeze the jaws against the thing.
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Jan 9, 2024 01:06
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