Thread: CAD drawing

Does anyone have any CAD experience and can help me? I have two designs that I'd like to have waterjetted out, but they need a CAD drawing to work from. I have no idea how to do that. Can anyone help me?

I have some CAD experience as well as VectorWorks. What exactly are you looking to get done???

I know my way around 3dsMax (see my avatar for example) and I'm sure I can export in a format that can be read by a waterjet. Pm me if you want my help.

Pm inbound

I think I can just go in Illustrator and export it as DXF, easy enough

Hows it going?

I have AutoCAD 2009, and can help as well. I have some razor designs I am working on myself. I have not had any work done with razors yet, however I designed a 100 size RC Helicopter in Carbon fiber that I sent out the DXF file and had it milled. Let me know if I can help.

Cody

Updating this post:

Piet, my computer took a dive, so I wasn't able to get the files downloaded to look at them. Thank you so much for taking the time to make the patterns for me. T was very much appreciated, I'm sorry I couldn't use them.

Cody Carlson/Tattooface also pm'ed me with an offer to help. This is the picture. He originally sent.


I was going to go with it until I noticed the tangs were a little too narrow. So, I emailed him and asked him to increase their width to 0.53". At the same time, the machine shop guy said he could cut out at least 8 blanks instead off the previously thought six. I offered a blank to Cody since I asked him to do more work. He sent the following revisions and his design.


Last night at work I thought, "I'd like to do a western ground fixed blade based off this design," so another email to Cody. I asked him to widen the tang at a certain point and move some other stuff around. I also suggested maybe we should identify the individual designs somehow. Also, I decided to have him completely square the bottom corners of the square tips.


Then I said, "why don't we have his tail past the pivot on my wide tang blanks.". And "oh by the way, do a round and a square."


Then, this morning I realized that the top corners needed to be square as well. Another email to Cody. Also, "can you take a look at a certain razor and copy the barber's notch? And narrow the tang and the tail a bit on it. And make a barber's notch on my stub tail blank." Also, #9 is another one of Cody's personal designs. Less than two hours to go before cutout time at this point.


"Hey, do you mind making the notch 70% of it's current width, keep the same depth of cut, and take the excess off the bottom." "Also, can you make a square point with the narrow tang and the monkey tail? Also, hurry because I'm meeting the guy in 45 minutes."


"Ok seriously, last one because I'm driving to meet the machinist now. How about a narrow tang, monkey tail, round point?" Cody must have noticed a pattern and been watching because he came through again!

And this is what I ended up with! I didn't do every pattern this time, but I think the others will be making an appearance shortly!



For those keeping track, that was six major revisions, 5 in less than 36 hours, which included maybe 12-15 minor adjustments and suggestions and changes.

CAD design credits and certain design elements credited to Cody Carlson.

Thanks again for all the offers of help. It's stuff like this that make SRP great. I hope some day to be able to make such a huge contribution to someone!

Originally Posted by medicevans

Updating this post:

Piet, my computer took a dive, so I wasn't able to get the files downloaded to look at them. Thank you so much for taking the time to make the patterns for me. T was very much appreciated, I'm sorry I couldn't use them.

That's too bad but it only took me a few minutes anyway. Some interesting blanks you have there.

Originally Posted by Piet

That's too bad but it only took me a few minutes anyway. Some interesting blanks you have there.

The only snag I can see is that you can make blanks something like nine times as fast as you can do anything that follows, and if the ideas keep flowing, the archaeologists will be puzzled to find a stratum of them someday.

It isn't that hard to do your own CAD work, and pretty good fun, on the simple, two-dimensional level that is involved here - i.e. `my level. But it is absurd, and for most of us impossible, to buy Autocad for amateur or even professional-in-something-else work. Turbocad is an excellent alternative, at a fraction of the price, and it can be found on eBay at considerably less than their recommended price, and less for new but superseded versions.

Mine is Turbocad Designer 18, which is two-dimensional, and offers a useful saving over the three-dimensional version. It has the very useful quality of letting you save CAD drawings as .jpeg files, giving access to many other programmes, printing services, printers of coffee mugs, etc. etc. But CAD normally works with lines of infinitely small thickness, and conversion may produce a style too thin for many purposes. You may need to change the line thickness before conversion.

You need to check the features of any superseded version, but this can be done in users forums for most of these programmes.