4 replies to this topic

[camelracer]

One of our WTW members has asked me to build another set of High Lift jack mounts that I have made for several members but due to the difficulty of buying steel in small quantities and being lazy I have stopped production.

 

I have offered to provide him drawings of the brackets to have them made locally and thought it would be a good chance to learn CAD on something simple. I downloaded a free program called BabaCAD and have had zero luck figuring out how to use it. If any of you know of a free (or cheap) easy to use CAD program for a Mac let me know.

[ntsqd]

As you've likely figured out, not a lot of CAD type programs written for a native Mac environment. Is a windoz emulator possible? That might open up some options, but CAD is math co-processor intensive and probably will run slow.

 

I've also seen google's Sketch used on some forums, but have no idea about what it is native to, if anything, or what it's functionality is. I'm spoiled in this dept. as I spend 2 to 10 hours a day in SolidWorks, but PM me if I can help flatten the learning curve. Learning parametric modeling has an extremely steep learning curve early in the process.

 

Alternately, if it's an option, I'll guess that SBCC offers an evening intro class in SolidWorks. I know VCC does because I've taken it to get up to speed on a new version that my then employer didn't buy.

[takesiteasy]

I've fooled around in SketchUp on the Mac. It's fun and easy to learn. The downside is it doesn't translate easily to CNC type applications, if that's where you're headed. There are conversion programs but I haven't had good success with them, probably due to my own lack of knowledge in both. I know a lot of people use SolidWorks and theoretically you can import SketchUp files to Solidworks but I've never done it.

[ntsqd]

"Sketchup", thank you.

[camelracer]

I looked at Sketchup and it seems easier to use the the one I've tried. I'll try it out when I have time and post the results.