Tuesday July 19, 7pm – 10pm in the Main classroom at the Hack Factory

This will be the first of a series of presentations discussing the current tools available for CAD design. We will start with Solidworks and in subsequent presentations will discuss the other tools like Pro/Engineer (Creo) and Alibre Design. The class will consist of theory and practice. A few educational licenses of Solidworks will be available in class. First come, first served. We may have some TC Maker computers loaded as well.

This class is open to members and non members. Pre Registration will be required. The cost of the class will be $25 for non members and $15 for existing members.



http://www.eventbrite.com/event/1825878251

Excellent! Worthy of blog post and calendar entry!

For people who've never been exposed to a good parametric solid modeler there will be a lot of "wow" moments. Not quite like a ride in a Ferrari (Catia), but definitely like a spin in a good fast Mustang. Once you see what can be done using design tables, equations, and global variables to control the shape of things, your life will be changed forever.

It should be mentioned that a full SW license starts at about $4K per seat. Maybe that Blender interface isn't quite so tough after all...



The Alibre personal at $199 will likely be the most interesting commercial product to Makers. It will export STL's.

I also saw a Sketchup plugin called Driving Dimensions which adds parametric features to Sketchup, available in both a crippled free version and a paid version.

Also, for anybody with some Python chops Freecad is totally free and open source.

-Jim Hart

So what is the deal with solidworks? TC maker has received licenses from Solidworks or what?

Solidworks student licensing terms are here.

The student license is pretty explicit:



Although they are pretty explicit about the "degree seeking" part, they don't specify what kind of degree. It's possible that if you're on the 10 year program in medieval Latvian literature at the local community college they might let you slide.

-Jim Hart