CAD Help

Question

I am working on a project and need to do some 3d cad work for the internal gears and stuff for the project but do not know which CAD software to use (free would be nice)

Any ideas or suggestions would be greatly appreciated and I do want to be able to export to a 3d printer when I get one so this would be nice but not a necessity?

also is there any software out there to run simulations on mechanics of a closure with gears ran by water?

Thank you all

AJ

Nate1616 · Accepted Answer

Hey AJ

Fredrik is right that the Autodesk 123d Design is a great free tool for modeling but will not have any simulation capabilities. Some other free software is Blender, OpenSCAD, TinkerCAD(cloud based software), sketchup again non of these have any simulation options but are free. For paid versions you can look at Solidworks, ProE, Inventor, CATIA which will have some form of analysys/simulation which could be either integrated or a add on module. Out of the paid version that i listed which arent the only ones the market has to offer just ones that are widely used, Solidworks and Inventor are the 2 easiest to use. Here is a list of some others http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_3D_modeling_software. As most printers use STL file types for printing make sure you have the right tools installed to do this. Hope this gets you started.

Nate

alamorobotics · Answer

Howdy... Maybe Autodesk 123D would work for you, check it out. http://www.123dapp.com/design I use SolidWorks and love it, however it's not a free software. /Fredrik

Former Member · Answer

I have used AutoCAD for some 25 years and recently been porting my programming over to Bricscad. I am not familiar with your discipline but I would check out their product and the variety of 3rd party programs available for it. Just food for thought. :-)