topic Re: gears? in Modeling

gears?

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 15:08:22 GMT

Hi,

I just got the student license and was trying to create a gear. I started to realize I may have the wrong software. Is Archicad useful for making gears or mechanical type drawings. I'd like to work on prototyping my ideas.

Thanks,
Tre

Re: gears?

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 15:49:42 GMT

Ahh, not so much. Autodesk's Inventor is a great program for that. Check out the website

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/pc/index?id=13717655&siteID=123112

Re: gears?

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 16:09:11 GMT

I guess I should say that I'm using a mac computer. I've been checking other options out and I am happy about Archicad cuz it has a free student license, so I'd like to use it, if I can.

Re: gears?

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 16:23:31 GMT

Inventor has a free trial, but not a free student license. You can do CAD in ArchiCAD just fine, so if that's all you need, I guess this will work for you. Are you in school for engineering or just messing around at home?

Re: gears?

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 16:59:54 GMT

I am not interested in bootcamp or parallels to run Autodesk. I am not going to pay for those software right now.

You stated that I can do CAD in AC. I have attempted this and wasn't able to find any resources on it.

Have you designed any gears on AC? If so please tell me how or where I can learn.

Thanks,
Tre

Re: gears?

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 17:04:03 GMT

You can do 2D cad in ArchiCAD, but this is an ARCHITECTURAL program, and it does not have a "gear tool". If you need to do something more complex, I would suggest another program.

Re: gears?

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 17:22:55 GMT

Ok Steve- so your point is that AC can't be used for making gears. Thanks for your posts.

I have come to the forums for a general opinion, this is not directed towards you steve, and welcome other users experience with this program.

Archicad seems to be a great resource for students but I am not in architecture. That being said AC seems to have a tool set that is far better than say doodle cad.

If you have used Archicad for making gears or mechanical drawings or know of others that have posted about this, I am in rcgroups a lot and the forum user there are very creative with their resources, please post it as well.

Thanks,
Tre

Re: gears?

Dwight — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 17:49:49 GMT

Gears are easy enough to schematically model, but there is no parametric gear object - where, for instance, you could define the diameter, teeth, pitch, etc, and the application creates the specific object.....

Re: gears?

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 18:07:16 GMT

That looks nice! I assume you can pan around it 360 degrees? I have never used a cad program, except for the minimum amount of time I spent on AC.

I see what your saying about not having gear specific tools. About how long did that take you to make?

Re: gears?

Dwight — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 19:57:11 GMT

Less than five minutes:

1: Set up a complex profile for the gear body section, to be drawn as a circular wall.

2: Set up a complex profile for the tooth section, to be drawn as a column. For syncromesh — tilted teeth — tilt the column - the top and bottom column surface stay horizontal.

3: The final assembly must be saved as an object.

Re: gears?

Dwight — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 20:15:56 GMT

And a VR object lets you pan all around.

See this:

gear gets gyroscopic gyration, gravity notwithstanding

Re: gears?

Dwight — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 20:19:37 GMT

And here's the object with GDL code intact.

Re: gears?

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 20:20:12 GMT

Dwight wrote:
Less than five minutes

For you Dwight!!

Re: gears?

Dwight — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 20:24:39 GMT

Does this look difficult?

Re: gears?

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 21:41:57 GMT

Hi Dwight,

Thanks for the lesson. I downloaded the zip file and will give it a thorough look by Friday.

Now that it has been confirmed that Ac can in fact create gears. Let's look at the next step.

How easy is it vs. the cost of purchasing another program that specifically offers this type of cad. If I remember correctly Vectorworks offers software for around $1900, not in my price range!

Re: gears?

Dwight — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 21:57:57 GMT

There seems to be some confusion:

if you merely want to draw some gears, I am sure there are plenty of gear symbols in dwg or dxf format hanging around.....

If you want mechanically accurate gears , some kind of mechanical engineering design software is your answer. These provide animations where the drive parts actually motivate other parts......

AND: there are many modelling programs cheaper and more adaptable than Archicad......

Re: gears?

Dwight — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 22:41:53 GMT

Did you consider searching Google?
I find that there are so many applications that are using the Archi - CAD convention.

There MUST be a GearCAD.

Sure enough :

frigging GearCAD!!!!!!

Re: gears?

Anonymous — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 00:17:28 GMT

I get emails from the nice people at Solidworks all the time. Not much of an idea about features or cost, but I'm sure they would have something to suit you.

note to self...unsubscribe from solidworks email list

Re: gears?

Dwight — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 00:18:36 GMT

s2art wrote:

note to self...unsubscribe from solidworks email list

Now that it has been proven that Archicad can make gears.

Re: gears?

Anonymous — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 02:20:21 GMT

The drawings don't have to be that accurate right now. I am just doing some planning for the future.