outside looking in
<b>Registered Member</b>
These are taken from a project I worked on in college. I guess what I do now is pretty much the same. All CAD design.
What I do for a living (warning: large pics)
- Thread starter outside looking in
- Start date
ris
New Member
nice pics oli, although i still couldn't get them all on screen maximised on 1600x1200 
i can use cad very basically [2d stuff main;y], i'm hoping to pick up some 3d at some point soon, but i love hand-drawing too much to swap it for cad visuals that i probably wouldn't do as well.
Attachment(s):
CP7LongElev.jpg, 18.65kb
i can use cad very basically [2d stuff main;y], i'm hoping to pick up some 3d at some point soon, but i love hand-drawing too much to swap it for cad visuals that i probably wouldn't do as well.
Attachment(s):
CP7LongElev.jpg, 18.65kb
ris
New Member
i'm sure they do, but i can guarantee that the quality of line and image won't be up to architectural hand-drawing.
it took us months in an office to get a 2d archi cad program to get close enough to hand drawing for the boss to want to use it regularly
still love those 3d's though....
it took us months in an office to get a 2d archi cad program to get close enough to hand drawing for the boss to want to use it regularly
still love those 3d's though....
MuFu
New Member
Cool, Ozzlie. Love doing stuff like that, although for me it's been mostly NURBS stuff... doing wing-sections for school aerospace projects using Rhino3D. Wouldn't mind doing some 3D compositional work one day. 3DSMax is awesome.
Although now that I'm at uni and I have to do CAD for my degree I'm sure it'll become a whole lot less fun.
MuFu.
Although now that I'm at uni and I have to do CAD for my degree I'm sure it'll become a whole lot less fun.
MuFu.
Justintime
Guest
Cool stuff dudes! 
outside looking in
<b>Registered Member</b>
Believe it or not, that's straight up AutoCAD.
(except for the large curvy flowing part in the second pic... that's a carbon fiber swingarm suspension structure, and I did that one in ProE... more control over sweeps and variable fillets).
What you can't see from those pics is that then engine contains all the internal parts as well, and the gearbox (kinda transparent there) contains all the shafting, bearings, gears, clips, springs, bolts, etc.
When that project was finished, the model contained over 4000 individual solid parts, and over 2000 surfaces.
(except for the large curvy flowing part in the second pic... that's a carbon fiber swingarm suspension structure, and I did that one in ProE... more control over sweeps and variable fillets).
What you can't see from those pics is that then engine contains all the internal parts as well, and the gearbox (kinda transparent there) contains all the shafting, bearings, gears, clips, springs, bolts, etc.
When that project was finished, the model contained over 4000 individual solid parts, and over 2000 surfaces.
outside looking in
<b>Registered Member</b>
Originally posted by MuFu
Are they cart parts? The rims look like cart rims. Impressive stuff.
Edit - scrub that. Suspension travel is way too far!
Is it a buggy of some kind?
MuFu.
It's called a MiniBaja vehicle. It's part of an intercollegiate competition. We raced against (yes, raced, head to head) over 100 colleges on a motor-bike supercross track.
15" suspension travel, 10hp motor, full roll cage, 5 point harness, continuously variable transmission.
outside looking in
<b>Registered Member</b>
Hell, here's a picture of the car the year before... not nearly as advanced.
Not a good shot, I know. I've got some better ones on my local computer, but they're all larger than 100kb.
Not a good shot, I know. I've got some better ones on my local computer, but they're all larger than 100kb.
outside looking in
<b>Registered Member</b>
Originally posted by Shadowfax
Straight up AutoCAD?
Even more impressive! How can you render so detailed? When I render, the surfaces are never 100 percent smooth
(1) model detailed. Every fillet, every chamfer is modeled. Even the sockets in cap head screws are there.
(2) Apply materials. Most of the parts aren't default shaded colors, but have materials applied to them. I took the time to find just the right look for most of the parts... playing with transparency, reflection, roughness, color, lighting, etc.
(3) Use photoreal rendering instead of the default. Use lighting, check the apply materials box in the rendering options, use AA, and use shadows.
(4) Render to a file, and select an ass-high resolution. You can go upto like 4000 x 3000 or so. These pics weren't that high, but still fairly large.
Obviously, there are much more capable programs than AutoCAD to render with, but it doesn't do so bad if you're patient with it. You'll never get photoreal, but you can get a nice looking rendering still.
I'd post some pics of the government projects I've been working on, but Uncle Sam would shoot me.
outside looking in
<b>Registered Member</b>
Originally posted by MuFu
Nice.
Sounds, err... scary.
MuFu.
Actualy, I guess it is. But, it's hella fun too! The latest car has a carbon fiber and chrome alloy stell frame/body, and is fairly light. It can do nearly 45mph on dirt. It's painful sometimes, but the car is tough... it can take the abuse if you can.
I wish I could upload some of the the other pics... there were so many wrecks it was just sad. Less than half the field even finished the race. There's one shot of a guy carrying the rear axle and wheels one one shoulder, and he's walking behind two other guys that are pushing the rest of the car like a wheel barrow!
Shadowfax
<b>mod cow</b>
Thanks, OLI
I'll give that a try! To be honest I haven't worked with AutoCAD 2000 for quite some while....I've been putting a lot of effort in learning Mechanical Desktop 4 with PowerPack
An amazing piece of software! I think you'd love it too, although you probably already know it
I'll give that a try! To be honest I haven't worked with AutoCAD 2000 for quite some while....I've been putting a lot of effort in learning Mechanical Desktop 4 with PowerPack
An amazing piece of software! I think you'd love it too, although you probably already know it
outside looking in
<b>Registered Member</b>
Yeah, we're actually using MDT5 at work now. Took me a while to swap from using primitive solids and boolean solid editing commands to using the parametric feature based modeling in MDT. By the way, all the rendered pics I've posted were created using AutoCAD R14 and primitive solids. Lots of work.
Autodesk's way of doing parametric feature modeling isn't nearly as easy for me to use as ProE or solidEdge for some reason. I think Inventor is supposed to be better in this regard, but I'm not sure.
One of the best things about Mechanical Desktop is that Algor (FEA) has a package that integrates with MDT. It has a feature called direct memory transfer, and creates the surface mesh inside MDT... and then exports the mesh data (matrices) to ALGOR. It's so much easier to create good FEA models using this process, instead of creating meshes from the ground up in ALGOR's modeler, or using IGES and hoping things come out well (and they never do).
All those tips for rendering work just the same in MDT4/MDT5 as they do for ACAD R14/2000/2002. I don't think MDT has any different or better rendering options... perhaps just a few better shading and orbiting commands.
While I'm at it, another tip, if you work with shaded models much: if you have a decent graphics card, go to Assist | options | system | properties. Changes acceleration from software to hardware, and browse and find the wopengl7.hdi (maybe 6 in MDT4) driver. This will allow the GPU to accelerate shaded models instead of doing software shading. With a Radeon 8500, the difference is astonishing. Even with a GF2 GTS, it's much faster in hardware. It can get rid of some odd shading artifacts too, but it seems to introduce a few of its own (my crosshairs tend to leave "ghosts" now?). There's also a D3D driver, but it had several glitches when I tried it.
Whew, need to get back to posting single word or smiley posts.
Lots of work.Autodesk's way of doing parametric feature modeling isn't nearly as easy for me to use as ProE or solidEdge for some reason. I think Inventor is supposed to be better in this regard, but I'm not sure.
One of the best things about Mechanical Desktop is that Algor (FEA) has a package that integrates with MDT. It has a feature called direct memory transfer, and creates the surface mesh inside MDT... and then exports the mesh data (matrices) to ALGOR. It's so much easier to create good FEA models using this process, instead of creating meshes from the ground up in ALGOR's modeler, or using IGES and hoping things come out well (and they never do).
All those tips for rendering work just the same in MDT4/MDT5 as they do for ACAD R14/2000/2002. I don't think MDT has any different or better rendering options... perhaps just a few better shading and orbiting commands.
While I'm at it, another tip, if you work with shaded models much: if you have a decent graphics card, go to Assist | options | system | properties. Changes acceleration from software to hardware, and browse and find the wopengl7.hdi (maybe 6 in MDT4) driver. This will allow the GPU to accelerate shaded models instead of doing software shading. With a Radeon 8500, the difference is astonishing. Even with a GF2 GTS, it's much faster in hardware. It can get rid of some odd shading artifacts too, but it seems to introduce a few of its own (my crosshairs tend to leave "ghosts" now?). There's also a D3D driver, but it had several glitches when I tried it.
Whew, need to get back to posting single word or smiley posts.
