CAD, why is the software so monumentally un- intuitive?

[Munkul]

You add to, or take away, depending on what makes more sense (need to use a bit of judgement and experience, only gained after getting it wrong really)

e.g. drawing an RSJ, you'd sketch the end profile, and then extrude the entire length of the RSJ that you needed. Then copy, paste and alter the length of extrusions to get all the other beams you need.
You COULD draw each beam out of a solid cuboid and remove material to create the RSJ shape... but you wouldn't be able to copy/paste/alter very easily that way.

 

[bricol]

2hours? Expect to spend 200 hours before you are reasonably competent and 2000 hours before you are comfortable ….

And then the new intake of employees at the CAD software company "improve" things . . .

Certainly got to invest some time to be able to do anything useful. And for something you are playing with after work, it's not good. I've been lucky that I got paid to work out how to use CAD - usually from a decade out of date set of manuals that bear little resemblance to the system as it is now

 

[ukracer]

You add to, or take away, depending on what makes more sense (need to use a bit of judgement and experience, only gained after getting it wrong really)

e.g. drawing an RSJ, you'd sketch the end profile, and then extrude the entire length of the RSJ that you needed. Then copy, paste and alter the length of extrusions to get all the other beams you need.
You COULD draw each beam out of a solid cuboid and remove material to create the RSJ shape... but you wouldn't be able to copy/paste/alter very easily that way.

Yes but that's easy.....the part I have biggest issue grasping is adding a couple of extra parts to the side and top of the Rsj.

 

[Munkul]

Yes but that's easy.....the part I have biggest issue grasping is adding a couple of extra parts to the side and top of the Rsj.

I used to struggle big time in Cobalt and prodesktop, even autocad 3d seemed hit and miss, for sketching onto planes.
Solidworks is super easy though, at least for flat planes. If you have a flat surface, it's as easy as telling it "I want a sketch on that flat surface". Once the sketch is made and all the lines closed, it will extrude easily.
Curved surfaces are more of a challenge, to make a flat plane on a curved surface. You need a reference point on the curve, and I forget how.
I can do it, but tend to work around, by making stuff flat, sketching and extruding the features, and then radiusing the original shape. It would be easier if I used it every day, but I just pick it up now and again to draw my own stuff.
You can even create curved planes, but I couldn't work out how to do it so I gave up and made a flat plane instead, lol

 

[Agroshield]

Blender is a 3D sculpting/modelling program. It's not meant for engineering type designing.

This is more for Screwdriver, but it appears that there is a CAD/engineering module for it.

Please look here if interested:

 

[Hood]

I think I understand that but my biggest problem is that I can draw in 2D and it makes sense.
But start to draw in 3D and adding sketch to an existing model and boom ...nothing does what you expect it to do.

I will try and screen record what I mean when I get time.

Here is an extremely quick and dirty drawing to hopefully address some of your issues. I am doing as I eat my dinner so....

Also for @Munkul showing plane on a tangent feature which is very handy.


Ok better get back to the boat.

 

[Munkul]

Ah man, that's even easier than Solidworks. It's also a cheaper licence to buy.... which I need to do really at some point

 

[Tangledfeet]

Here is an extremely quick and dirty drawing

For a moment I did wonder where you were going...

 

[bricol]

I reckon cost of components is directly related to the CAD jockey's experience in the system they are using.

When they start, simple, blocky, easy components to model, detail and therefore manufacture.

Roll on a couple of years, and to quote Disreali "inebriated with the exuberance of his own verbosity", the components are needlessly complex and therefore much more expensive and time consuming to make, simply because they can model such silly shapes in CAD.

 

[Misterg]

I think I have exhausted the abilities of my preferred design program (Sketchup) and it’s time to move on. I have tried Fusion and don’t like the interface or the workflow

Definitely move on from Sketchup! (Great for pretty pictures, but I *really* don't like it for engineering work.)

Unfortunately, the workflow in Fusion360 is typical of other 3D CAD programmes and probably emblematic of the differences between 2D and 3D CAD:

Creo (which I've used quite a bit); OnShape and Solid Edge are all very similar to Fusion360 which I currently use a lot. (I haven't used Solidworks).

IMHO the steepest learning curve is getting properly into 3D in the first place. Thereafter, it is relatively easy to switch between packages (if a little frustrating at first as you figure out what things are called and where they're hidden).

It's the sort of thing where having somebody look over your shoulder and help you to create your first model is absolutely invaluable - I reckon 30 minutes with somebody who knows what they're doing is worth days of Youtube videos. (More than happy to oblige if anyone is struggling with F360 in N Wales).


I believe that this tutorial is one of the best for trying to understand F360:

(Edit: Stick with him through the bit about whether it's better to use drop-down menus or shortcuts - I disagree with his approach, but it doesn't detract from the usefulness.)

 

[Richiew]

This bloke gives a good introduction to Fusion 360 with a series of videos.

I was won over with the sentiment in the title.

 

[Hood]

The thing about extruding in fusion that I also like is you do not have to delete parts of the sketch you don't want, you select the parts you do. That is why I showed me editing the extrusion 3 or so times to show me choosing different parts to extrude. In Solidworks I had to make sure the part I was extruding was the finished shape, again that may have changed since I last used it.

 

[Hood]

Also the other thing, I usually use shortcut keys for things such as extrude (Q key) hence the reason my mouse jumping about trying to find the right Icon

 

[Munkul]

In Solidworks I had to make sure the part I was extruding was the finished shape, again that may have changed since I last used it.

You don't have to select all of the shape(s) but you can't just pick and choose any closed shape lines like you just did in fusion.

 

[Misterg]

This bloke gives a good introduction to Fusion 360 with a series of videos.

Fair enough if it helped you get your head around the software, but I've watched the first two and (IMHO) he demonstrates some pretty bad practice. (You don't need to use construction lines in the way he does to locate things - just use a dimension! In his 2nd video, if he made his glasses case bigger than 52mm, the model would break - putting what are effectively two components onto the same sketch is silly and totally unnecessary. His sketches aren't always fully constrained, either - all the sketch lines need to be black, or there will be trouble down the line.)

 

[bricol]

You don't have to select all of the shape(s) but you can't just pick and choose any closed shape lines like you just did in fusion.

Surely you mean "can"?

Depending on your selection choices and selections of only selecting lines up to intersections or corners, surely you can still select which ever lines from a sketch to extrude/rotate to get what you want?

Seem to recall Solidworks beat NX as you didn't actually have to have a closed sketch to rotate - "clever" enough to close off if lines ended at/crossed the axis of rotation.

 

[Munkul]

Surely you mean "can"?

Depending on your selection choices and selections of only selecting lines up to intersections or corners, surely you can still select which ever lines from a sketch to extrude/rotate to get what you want?

Seem to recall Solidworks beat NX as you didn't actually have to have a closed sketch to rotate - "clever" enough to close off if lines ended at/crossed the axis of rotation.

You can, but its not as easy as hood made it look.