gears?

[Anonymous]

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

[Anonymous]

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

[Anonymous]

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.

[Anonymous]

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?

[Anonymous]

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

[Anonymous]

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.

[Anonymous]

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

[Dwight]

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.....

[Anonymous]

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?

[Dwight]

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.